Photo Submitted FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. – Should Native Americans be allowed to sacramentally ingest peyote with no criminal penalties? Does a crèche belong on the courthouse lawn? And what about the 8-foot-tall bronze statue of the satanic goat monster Baphomet, briefly on view last year at the Arkansas Capitol building? Mark Killenbeck, the Wylie H. Davis Distinguished Professor of Law, will outline the increasingly contested relationship between religious practice and civic life in “Church and State,” a free public lecture at 5:15 p.m. on Wednesday, Sept. 11, in the Gearhart Hall Auditorium, room 26. All on campus and in the community are invited to attend. Tensions between church and state date back to the Pilgrims, who fled England to seek religious freedom in the new world. “It’s one of our founding myths, the evils of an ‘established’ church and the noble quest for religious freedom. And what did the Pilgrims do? They created a legal structure that mirrored the one they had in England – they replicated exactly what they decided to flee!” Killenbeck said. The First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, adopted in 1791, speaks of both “establishment” and “free exercise” of religion. And for more than 200 years […]
