The Unitarians, Congregationalists and Episcopalians — who tend to be more liberal today — were champions of a Christian Commonwealth ideal at the end of the 18th century. The Baptists were the ones who championed the separation of church and state. In fact, it was the Baptists' passion for freedom of conscience, Church writes, that led directly to the First Amendment's "establishment clause."

The Unitarian, Congregationalist and Episcopalian churches were state churches — "they had no concern about God having a seat in government because they knew it would be their God," he says — whereas "the Baptists knew from the long experience of being religious outsiders that unless there was a clear separation of church and state, they would be persecuted." Already, Baptists in Massachusetts, Connecticut and Virginia were forced to pay taxes that went to support churches other than their own.

The 1800 presidential election between Thomas Jefferson and John Adams pitted the notion of what Church calls "sacred liberty" against "divine order." Both Jefferson and Adams, he says, had similar religious views (neither believed in the divinity of Jesus Christ or that the Bible was the revealed word of God, for example) but differed completely about the role of religion in the public square.

Adams and the New England clergy favored the English ideal of a Christian Commonwealth, and people like Jefferson promoted the French Enlightenment ideal of reason and personal freedom. At the heart of that divide was the nature of human nature. Adams, Church says, believed in the Puritan notion that humans were, at heart, sinners who needed moral guidance; Jefferson believed that people were by nature good.

It's the tension between order and liberty that today underlies the battle over Homeland Security, Church notes — "how much security at the expense of how much freedom."

"If there's a moral in the story," he says, "it's that we're at our best when we approximate the balance between order and liberty, and reach e pluribus unum, where both a moral center holds and individuals are given great freedom to follow their own conscience."

Church, the son of former Idaho Sen. Frank Church, has a divinity degree and a doctorate from Harvard. After serving almost 30 years as senior minister at All Souls Unitarian Universalist Church in New York, he is now the church's "minister of public theology."

The religious divide in America came close to tearing the country apart during the War of 1812, he says. "We could have easily had New England seceding from the union to establish a Christian Commonwealth, believing that the nation had become Godless."

The New England clergy opposed the war on moral and cultural grounds, viewing America's French ally as "an infidel, anti-Christian republic," he says, and did everything possible to subvert the American military effort.

When America won the war, the New England clergy were branded as traitors, which meant that they lost their political clout, and church-state separation "was finally codified as the American way." The separation lasted for the next 10 presidencies, until the Civil War — when the wall came down and "in God we trust" first appeared on the nation's money.

Wartime, Church notes, has always convinced the country to bring church and state closer. In peace time, the separation becomes stronger. It's a push-pull that continues today.

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