Religious Symbols and the Establishment Clause

Abstract

On 5 March 1984, the United States Supreme Court upheld (five to four) as constitutional the city of Pawtucket, Rhode Island's Christmas display of the nativity scene. This decision, Lynch v. Donnelly,1 once again, points to the inherent problems of the government's attempting to recognize America's religious heritage without infringing on the Bill of Rights' mandate that church and state remain separate. Lynch raises a number of questions concerning the manner in which the government may constitutionally involve itself with the display of explicitly religious objects: Can it subsidize the display of such objects? Does it matter whether the object is part of some larger secular display? Should the prominence of the display or the proximity of the display to some religious holiday be considered legally relevant? Must the government indicate on the display that its motivation is nonreligious? Must the religious object be sufficiently connected to the secular culture as to make meaningless the display's religious significance? These questions are of constitutional significance because the First Amendment of the Constitution provides, in part, that Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion. This prohibition was made applicable to the actions of state governments through the Fourteenth Amendment in a 1940 Supreme Court decision, Cantwellv. Connecticut.2 Courts vary in their analysis of government efforts either to accommodate or to recognize specific religious beliefs. Although much of religion—particularly the Christmas holidays and reli gious symbols such as the dove—has become part of mainstream secular society, government efforts to make religious symbols