Here’s to the American way, by God!

It’s nearly Halloween, so here’s a suggestion for a costume that will frighten the bejeeezus out of a cast of thousands in Naples: James Madison.

It’s hard to believe, isn’t it? His wife, Dolly, invented ice cream, one of the great antidotes to fright. He came from Virginia, went to Princeton and earned a reputation as a framer of the Constitution and the father of the First Amendment, championing free speech and freedom of religion. From 1809 to 1817 he even served as president, our fourth.

Innocuous as all that sounds, Jimmy, like Freddy (Krueger, as in the Halloween horror story), strikes terror into the heart of God-fearing Christians up one side of Collier County and down the other. Not all of them, of course, and perhaps not even a majority of them. But many.

And why? Well, just take one look at him (you can Google his image) and you’ll know by the powder, the wig, the drawn cheeks — and the fact that he’s been dead for 177 years, which doesn’t enhance anybody’s appearance. Would you like to have a ghoul like him come knocking on your door? By the standards of Main Street Naples, Mr. Madison’s appearance is more than a little worrisome.

But that’s not what terrifies the mob, whether Christian or politician. It’s not likely what makes Mayor Bill Barnett and City Attorney Robert Pritt shudder; or most of the City Council; or the entire community services advisory board (members make recommendations to the council); or Pastor Gene Scott of the Celebration Community Beach Church, with his family members who keep the books and help with Sunday services in Cambier Park, where he preaches the gospel and collects the green; or the parishioners therein, estimated at 400-800 every Sunday in and around the Cambier Park band shell; or Gretchen Shelton, executive director of the Fellowship for Christian Athletes of Southwest Florida, who led a Fields of Faith gathering of good Christians at Naples High School recently and who believes in putting her proselytizing Christians squarely in the center of a public campus. Just to name a few.

What really gets their goats is what Mr. Madison said and wrote, which keeps echoing around Naples like a midnight howl from the mausoleum of the First Amendment.

For one thing, he wrote, “Religion is essentially distinct from civil government, and exempt from its cognizance; a connection between them is injurious to both; there are causes in the human breast which ensure the perpetuity of religion without the aid of law.”

And for another thing, “The number, the industry, and the morality of the priesthood, and the devotion of the people, have been manifestly increased by the total separation of the church from the state.”

Here’s what Mr. Madison did not mean by that thinking: He did not mean that politicians such as City Councilman John Sorrey, who belongs to the Celebration Church, cannot stand up and express their beliefs as individuals anywhere they choose, including at City Hall. He did not mean that Pastor Scott or Ms. Shelton cannot gather the faithful anytime they choose, “to encourage each other, and to encourage faith on campus,” as she put it about public schools.

And here’s what Mr. Madison did mean — and this, along with his wife’s ice cream (which goes perfectly with apple pie, just like a separation of church from state goes perfectly with freedom to worship), pretty much defines the American Way:

He meant that a government of elected officials and its hired representatives should stubbornly insist on showing no hint of favoritism, support, aid, promise or, for that matter, persecution to any one religion, or non-religion. And that includes letting churches or faith groups settle in to use public property, which suggests more than a hint of government favoritism.

Mr. Madison’s First Amendment remains the sentry that guards religious freedom. To it, two clauses were welded that give it some real endurance, like additional fuel tanks attached to the wings of long-range aircraft: the establishment clause and the free exercise clause. They’re not complicated. One says government should do nothing to establish any religion, and the other says government should do nothing to prevent the free exercise of any religion.

By insisting on those principles, Mr. Madison said, officials actually increase the vitality of religion, which he favored.

But he pointed out something else: “There remains in others a strong bias towards the old error, that without some sort of alliance or coalition between Government or Religion neither can be duly supported.”

On Wednesday, Nov. 4, we’ll see just how strong that old bias is. On that morning, Pastor Scott and his church will come before the Naples City Council, seeking an alliance by asking for another five-year lease on the Cambier Park band shell, good for the next 260 Sunday mornings.

The lease for this several-million-dollar investment by taxpayers requires payment of a nominal weekly fee (about $125), and it offers a pro-forma nod to Neapolitans: Pastor Scott can be asked to step aside should another group seek the use of the band shell.

In the last five years that happened only three times, city officials have said. So in this case, possession is 99 percent of the law.

For Pastor Scott, who can quote the naturalist John Muir and believes the nation’s park system was created so people could “find God, feel God and worship God” (he presented this opinion in a letter to the local daily newspaper), a denial of the lease would amount to unfair and unequal treatment of his church. He sees his church, apparently, as just another group, like the garden club or the Audubon Society or the Junior League.

That seems to be how many city officials see it, too.

A couple of weeks ago, the community services advisory board voted unanimously to recommend that the council approve the five-year church lease again.

Pastor Scott wrote, “on Nov. 4, the Naples City Council will decide the fate of Celebration Community Beach Church.”

In that claim he was certainly wrong. The beautiful strength of Americans is that we will let Pastor Scott decide his own fate. On Nov. 4, instead, council will decide not only the fate of the First Amendment locally applied, but the fate of the American Way itself. 