There’s something attractive in the party names in the Supreme Court’s decision on the relationship between government and religion: American Legion v. American Humanist Association. Both organizations, the veterans group formed after World War I and the secular humanist group founded the year this nation entered World War II, want to tell you how American they are. And they are locked in the longstanding debate over the meaning of the first clause of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution. "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion," it reads, "or prohibiting the free exercise thereof." Note that this is not, as many Americans think, a command that there be a solid wall between church and state. That metaphor was advanced by Thomas Jefferson, who neither attended the Constitutional Convention nor voted for the First Amendment. Rather, the amendment barred Congress from creating an established church supported by taxation, like the Church of England, and from messing with the established church in any state (those in Connecticut and Massachusetts continued to exist until 1818 and 1833, respectively). This made sense in a new nation uniting what had long been culturally and religiously diverse colonies. As Justice […]
