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83 U. Det. Mercy L. Rev. 579 (2005-2006)
Religious Skepticism, Cambridge Platonism, and Disestablishment

handle is hein.journals/udetmr83 and id is 601 raw text is: ARTICLES Religious Skepticism, Cambridge Platonism, and Disestablishment DENIZ COSKUN* INTRODUCTION This article forms the first part of a larger project on the separation of church and state in America. It delves into a period of the intellectual history of the Establishment Clause that is usually only presumed or deemed less significant than the common reference to John Locke and his insistence of the freedom of conscience as the progenitor of the Establishment Clause.' I will work towards the thesis that, in America, the separation of church and state was not an anti-religious matter, but rather the culmination of centuries of religious skepticism and insights of enlightened republicanism. The thesis of this paper is that two causes of concern have proven to be determinative for the outcome reached by the Framers. First, the American colonists did not want a Hobbesian Leviathan, who was a fervent proponent of an established religion by the state in the face of the chaos produced by the religious strife he perceived. In addition, the Renaissance in England had taken a different form than it did in Italy. Whereas religion was regarded by the Florentine Academy as an impediment to moral and scientific progress, the Cambridge Platonists were more concerned about scholastic systems and barbaric forms of theological learning, i.e., they sought to improve or filter religion through the use of reason. Indeed, in the same spirit, Thomas More's supreme legislator in Utopia would not make any stipulation concerning religion because he was not sure whether God Himself does not intend manifold and diverse forms of worship, and hence give to some this and to others that form of religious interpretation.2 The influence of the Cambridge Platonists' religious skepticism upon the development of the separation of church and state in America remains a scarcely explored terrain. Their influence on the Great Awakening is usually uncontested, as is the latter's influence on the War of Independence and the Establishment Clause. * M.A., Leiden University, Faculty of Law (with honors); J.S.D., Radboud University of Nijmegen, Facutly of Law (cum laude); Graduate Fulbright Scholar, NYU School of Law. I would like to thank the Beinecke Rare Books and Manuscripts Library at Yale University for permission to cite from the Ernst Cassirer Papers. 1. G. Barbara A. Parry, Jefferson's Legacy to the Supreme Court: Freedom of Religion, 31 J. S. CT. HIST. 181 (July 2006). 2. ST. THOMAS MORE, UTOPIA (Edward Surtz ed., Yale Univ. Press 1984).

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