The Impact of Recent Supreme Court Decisions on Religion in the United States

Abstract

It would probably be too much to say that the religion clauses of the First Amendment ain't nothing until the United States Supreme Court calls them. Yet they are to a large extent a form to which the Court must supply the content, a skeleton on which the Court must put the flesh and blood. The Court has added most of the flesh and blood only since it decided in the 1940s that the free exercise of religion and the establishment of religion clauses apply to the states as well as to the federal government.1 American constitutional law on the relations be tween government and religion is largely a creature of the Court's fashioning in the last one-third of a century. The purpose of this paper is not to undertake a thorough review and analysis of the Court's jurisprudence on this subject, but only to summarize it briefly in order to assess its impact on religion in the United States. For reasons that will presently appear, some opinions of the Court other than those interpreting the religion clauses will be cited. The products of the Court's activity that appear to have the most significance for religion in America are the following. The Court has all but closed the door to substantial public aid to church-related schools at the elementary and secondary levels. At the same time it has insisted on the secularization of the