With the attempt to challenge the Bush Administration's Faith-Based Initiaitive before the Supreme Court, I continue some background on the relation of government to religion in the U.S. This topic often is referred to as Church and State.

In part 1, I briefly surveyed the situation from the founding of the United States into the 20th century. Summary: by the 1830s we had a de facto Protestant establishment that was supported by the courts. Things changed in the 20th century. In part 2 I highlighted the cultural shifts that form the background for these changes. Summary: religious diversification of the population, secularization of the elites, and the expansion of the role and power of the federal government, vis-a-vis state and local governments, gradually removed court support from the de facto Protestant Establishment. In part 3 I wish to summarize specific cases that brought us to the present situation. Part 3 will take multiple posts. (There are many helpful books on these things. For specific cases I recommend a good handbook such as The Oxford Companion to the Supreme Court of the United States.) (cont. below)




First, some text.

First Amendment: Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; . . .

Fourteenth Amendment: . . . No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; . . .

The Supreme Court case that began the modern period is Everson v. Board of Education of Ewing Township (1947). The State of New Jersey granted local school boards the ability to reimburse transportation money to parents sending their children to any school, including religious schools. Everson challenged that practice. The Court, by 5 to 4, upheld the New Jersey practice, stating that it did not support religion per se, and that government should not be adversarial to religion. The significance of this ruling comes from the argument in support of the decision: first, drawing on Jefferson and Madison's arguments in Virginia, the court held the First Amendment prohibited the favoring of religion over non-religion; second, there should be no tax support of religious institutions (which it decided the New Jersey practice did not do); third, that the Fourteenth Amendment made the religion clauses of the First Amendment apply to the states. Now local customs supporting the de facto Protestant Establishment could become federal constitutional issues, decided in federal courts guided by the reasoning that preference could not be given to religion over non-religion. Folliwng Everson courts held that government action should be secular in purpose and primarily secular in impact.