American Legion v. American Humanist Association . There’s something attractive in the names of the parties in the Supreme Court’s recent decision on church and state. Both organizations, the veterans’ group formed after World War I and the secular humanists’ group founded decades later, 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 in a private letter. He neither attended the Constitutional Convention nor voted for the First Amendment. Rather, the First Amendment barred Congress from creating an established church, supported by taxation, like the Church of England. It also barred Congress from messing with the established church in any state. Connecticut and Massachusetts held on to established churches until 1818 and 1833, respectively. This made sense in a new nation uniting what had long been culturally and religiously diverse […]
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