Two hundred and 25 years ago this week, the revolutionaries who gathered in Philadelphia to throw off the oppressive yoke of the British monarchy were challenging more than starnp taxes and the excesses of red-coated soldiers.

They were rejecting the linkage of church and state. Most particularly, they were attacking the warped principle of "the divine right of kings"—which held that rulers were placed in positions of authority not by the people they served but by God.

This notion of a linkage between government and "one true church" was common to the British colonies, where those who deviated from the officially sanctioned spiritual path were jailed for that "crime." Even in the American colonies, Baptists, Catholics and Jews were denied the right to vote and hold public office on the basis of their religious beliefs.

The revolutionaries who founded this country rejected the blurring of lines between church and state. Indeed, writes historian Eric Foner, "The Revolution catalyzed a movement that transformed the meaning of religious freedom. The drive to separate church and state brought together deists like Jefferson, who hoped to erect a wall of separation that would free politics and the untramrneled exercise of intellect from the theological control, and members of evangelical sects, who sought to protect religion from the corrupting embrace of government and saw toleration as a way to enable men and women to lead truly Christian lives."

It took immense courage to suggest, as Jefferson did, that power should flow from the people, not from a supposed heavenly intervention on behalf of a corrupt and inherently immoral royal family. It was a bold act for Tom Paine to write a book titled "A Vindication of the Rights of Man" in an era when state churches preached that the proper order made human beings the subjects of divinely inspired kings and queens.

Citizens had rights, Paine and other definers of the American experiment argued. Among these was the right to believe in the God of their choice—not the God of King George III or the Church of England.

Jefferson, James Madison and Patrick Henry would eventually enshrine that right in their First Amendment to the Constitution. And they walked the talk. As Foner notes: "Throughout the new nation, established churches were disestablished—that is, deprived of public revenue and special legal privileges."

As significantly, the Constitution plainly stated that the most powerfill single ruler of the new land—its president—could not be forced to pass any religious test in order to serve.

Now, 225 years into the American experiment, a president and many in Congress seek to open a hole in that wall of separation with so-called "faith-based initiatives."

Cloaked in the warm language of charity and public service, these initiatives pose a genuine threat to both ends of the equation. Yes, they create the prospect of limitation upon political freedom and the untrammeled exercise of intellect because government-sanctioned services in particular communities could become bogged down in the dogmas of individual faiths. But, just as importantly, they are guaranteed to place the corrupting embrace of government on men and women who seek to live faithful lives.

The initiators of this American experiment were imperfect figures—as are the inheritors of their creation. But they got at least one thing right: They recognized that a wall of separation between church and state was needed by both the state and the church.

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