Religious Liberty: Essays on First Amendment Law. Edited by Daniel N. Robinson & Richard N. Williams

Abstract

We seem to be at a turning point with respect to religious liberty. Many talk about a “crisis of religious liberty.” This assessment is typically made by religious individuals and institutions who complain that their religiously informed views are increasingly marginalized. In the United States, at least, this is a bit surprising since the United States is associated with the idea of legal protection for religious liberty. In the 1960s and 1970s, however, the United States Supreme Court strongly emphasized the separation of church and state. In so doing, the Court seemed to be making an effort to privatize religion. The Court seemed uncomfortable with a public role for religion. This was particularly true in a series of cases dealing with government funding of religious schools. These religious schools had to be tolerated, of course, but they were confined almost entirely to the realm of private choice. There was, during this era, some constitutional protection for the free exercise of religion, but the actual results in the cases were more limited than the Court’s more sweeping rhetoric might have suggested.