Last week, the House of Representatives approved GOP-initiated legislation that set additional “hurdles” for Syrian and Iraqi refugees trying to enter the United States. According to Associated Press dispatches:

Forty-seven Democrats joined all but two Republicans as the House passed the measure by a veto-proof 289-137 margin, a major setback to the lame duck president on an issue — what to do about the Islamic State and the refugees fleeing them — that shows no signs of settling down. The vote exceeded the two-thirds majority required to override a veto, and came despite a rushed, early morning visit to the Capitol by top administration officials in a futile attempt to limit Democratic defections for the measure.

I gather the so-called hurdles will entail a more extensive background check of a prospective immigrant. How does the FBI go about doing a background check on a displaced Syrian farmer? The House actions gained a lot of positive coverage from both the liberal and conservative media. The votes represent the mood of the American people, and it may be that these additional measures will filter out more potential or known threats.

I favor such measures, however marginally effective they might be. But my rationale is not based only on trapping terrorists. It is based on a more fundamental and complex subject: The separation of church and state.

In the AP dispatch and The Guardian newspaper release, Rep. Jerrold Nadler, D-NY, had this to say about the legislation: “Defeating terrorism should not mean slamming the door in the faces of those fleeing the terrorists. We might as well take down the Statue of Liberty.”

“Give me your tired, your poor…”

A plaque located near this statue contains part of a famous sonnet written by the poet Emma Lazarus. It proclaims:

Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!

These noble ideas — and I am not being sarcastic to say they are indeed noble — form the last part of this sonnet. The full sonnet is as follows:

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,

With conquering limbs astride from land to land;

Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand

A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame

Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name

Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand

Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command

The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.

“Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries she

With silent lips. “Give me your tired, your poor,

Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,

The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.

Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,

I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”

In hindsight, it is a near-tragedy that only the last parts of this sonnet have gained fame; so much fame that they are lodged in the overly simplistic ideas of Congressman Jerrold Nadler. I use the phrase near-tragedy because the current mass migrations into Europe (not to mention, migrations of the last couple of centuries) are probably going to result in turmoil.

Unfortunately, the most famous part of the sonnet, cited above, does not include the statement that precedes it. For the present situation in the Middle East, Europe, and America, it is important to bring it to the fore, as it forms the basis for America’s society.

“Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries she

With silent lips.

The Statue of Liberty and the foundations of America are based on those who come from abroad, from “ancient lands,” to leave their “storied pomp” behind. The essence of America is built on the rites of its melting pot. America’s foundations are dependent on gradual, tacit rituals that have led to a blended society. It is a society that continues to honor the history of our immigrants. After all, we are they, and they are we. But the poem advises us to leave the past behind.

The legends that our ancestors carried from their ancient lands have been an essential, positive ingredient in America’s melting pot. We continue to pass our history from generation to generation to help keep us prideful and grounded in who we are and why we came to America. The Irish. The Germans. The Chinese. The Polish. The Jews. The Mexicans. The South Americans. All have had difficult rites of passage, but in the long run, they have become part of America’s melting pot. They have blended into America.

The Melting Pot has Worked

How did such a heterogeneous assemblage of humans — a race genetically disposed to clash with differing cultures and their members — come to such harmony? Tracing back though human history, it is true that many of us lived amicably with others who were of different skin color, who spoke different languages, who practiced different rituals. But for the majority of humans, we have been inclined to change others to our way of thinking through various forms of persuasion, ranging from conversation to killing. It is a mode of behavior ingrained into our makeup. After all, if we are secure, if all is well around us, we can turn our backs while we tend to our fires.

Nonetheless, from the beginnings of our country, we citizens have lifted our lamp to those of differing colors and religious cloths who needed protection and succor. This grant of liberty and often life itself came with the understanding that these immigrants would embrace the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. After all, who could not? What better choice could other parts of the world offer?

The Flame Underneath the Melting Pot: Religious Freedom

The impetus for America’s first settlers to come to America was not just for garnering turf and looking for treasures, it was primarily for seeking a place to have the freedom to worship as one wished. During these early days and the times that carried into the era when our forefathers wrote the Federalist Papers, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights, there were two ideas that our forefathers held dear. They became the bedrock for how we Americans govern ourselves: The freedom to practice religion, and the separation of church and state.

The founding fathers of America knew well how the tyranny of either the church or state could lead to oppression and autocracy. Their solution to these dual dangers was simple and brilliant. For the state, they created restraining, somewhat competitive bodies of governance with the executive, legislative, and judicial branches acting as constraints on one another. For religion, it was to be separate from the state, with the state assuming a primary position of authority.

In hindsight, it is difficult to imagine Thomas Jefferson or James Madison thinking that the credo of a religion would seek to reverse this relationship; that religion would assume a primary position of authority over the nation’s government. Their concerns, and those of other founders, focused on having the freedom to practice a religion, as well as their fears that religion could serve to suppress societies.

Foundations of a Secular Society

Walt Whitman said, “There is no false religion — Each one is divine.” This statement obviously comes from someone who was taken with religion. Nonetheless, the vast majority of the leaders who formed the American republic were adamant in their stand about the separation of church and state. Below are several quotes from these leaders:

From the “The Rights of Man,” Thomas Paine wrote, “Persecution is not an original feature in any religion, but it is always the strongly marked feature of all religions established by law.”

From a letter to the Danbury Baptists, Jan. 1, 1802, Thomas Jefferson wrote, “...I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should ‘make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,’ thus building a wall of separation between Church and State.”

In a letter to Alexander von Humboldt, Dec. 6, 1813, Jefferson also wrote, “History, I believe, furnishes no example of a priest-ridden people maintaining a free civil government.”

In a letter to the members of The New Church in Baltimore (January 1793), George Washington wrote, “In this enlightened age, & in this land of equal liberty, it is our boast, that a man’s religious tenets will not forfeit the protection of the laws, nor deprive him of the right of attaining & holding the highest offices that are known in the United States.”

Earlier, Washington wrote in a letter to the United Baptist Chamber of Virginia (May 1789), “If I could conceive that the general government might ever be so administered as to render the liberty of conscience insecure, I beg you will be persuaded, that no one would be more zealous than myself to establish effectual barriers against the horrors of spiritual tyranny, and every species of religious persecution.”

Benjamin Franklin did not straddle the fence: “When a religion is good, I conceive it will support itself; and when it does not support itself so that its professors are obliged to call for the help of the civil power, ’tis a sign, I apprehend, of its being a bad one.”

Nor did James Madison equivocate about the subject. “The civil government ...functions with complete success ... by the total separation of the Church from the State.”

Are these ideas of our Founding Fathers still relevant? Have they been overcome by modern times? Have the past few years of massive migrations rendered them impotent? Tomorrow, we’ll address these questions.

Uyless Black is an award-winning author who has written 40 books on a variety of subjects. His latest book is titled “2084 and Beyond,” a work on the origins and consequences of human aggression. He resides in Coeur d’Alene.