The U.S. Supreme Court is expected to rule on a case in January that clearly reveals the strategy of evangelical Christian activists to gain legal approval to tax-fund primary and secondary religious education in America. St. Wenceslaus Church in Danvers, Montana, was built in 1916 and is now used occasionally as a Catholic chapel. Christian Right plaintiffs in Espinoza v. Montana Department of Revenue seek to overturn a Montana Supreme Court rule upholding church-state separation to prohibit the use of a state tax-credit program to pay for religious-school education. At issue is whether Montana must also fund religious schools when the benefit of state-funded education flows to secular schools. Why does this matter? “The case threatens the state’s ‘No Aid’ provision that bars public funds from being used for religious purposes either directly or indirectly, and it could upend efforts of any state to keep religious institutions from receiving public dollars,” the secular nonprofit Center for Inquiry (CFI) wrote in a recent newsletter about the case. CFI, the Freedom from Religion Foundation (FFRF) and other secular organizations have formally joined forces to encourage the court “to reject this unconstitutional attempt to wring money out of state coffers for the […]
