We got a lot wrong before we started to get things right and it really was as a result of many years of kind of botched experiments and horrible persecution

that we collectively started to learn another way.

And we should remember that up until 1962 we had state written prayers in schools, not moments of reflection or moments of silence,

a prayer written by the state read in school up until 1962.

So it really has taken all the way up until current day for the ideas of religious liberty that were hatched and articulated in the founding years to really fully take root.

As Americans celebrate the 4th of July, we take a long look at the real messy forgotten stories of American democracy.

Democracy as a work in progress from 1776 to today.

There was an official church in Massachusetts, no less, until a half century after the American Revolution.

The phrase separation of church and state is not in the Constitution and didn't enter constitutional law until 1947.

And there was sectarian discrimination and violence in American cities, Protestant on Catholic, as late as the 20th century.

We explore memories that can measure and deepen our response to new young democracies on their own tumultuous paths now.

I'm Christa Tippett and this is on Being.

This hour we recover two conversations from our archives that never aired in their entirety.

In 2003, I interviewed constitutional scholar Philip Hamburger, now a professor at Columbia University Law School.

On the surprising discoveries he made as he wrote his book, Separation of Church and State.

We begin with my 2008 conversation with journalist Stephen Waldman.

He had a front row seat on the origins of the contemporary American culture wars as a reporter for Newsweek and US News and World Report, and then as the founder of Beliefnet.

So what is it about the work you've been doing or your personal perspective on events of the moment or in these last couple years that led you to want to write a book on this subject right now?

Not a day would go by where I wouldn't get an email from some interest group or advocacy group on left or right claiming that the founding fathers agreed with them about something.

And it was always it was amusing because I'd have a liberal group one day saying the founding fathers agree with our position on parents school.

And the next day I would get an email from a conservative religious Christian group saying the founding fathers obviously agree with us on this.

So I got curious about that. And as I went deeper into it, what I came to realize is that the culture wars, the kind of hostile attacks, had so distorted our sense of history.

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