Why Americans won't stop debating the separation of church and state
President Donald Trump launched a new commission on religious liberty on Thursday with some polarizing comments about church-state separation.
Speaking at a Rose Garden ceremony, the president questioned whether a gap between the government and religious organizations is a good thing and praised the people of faith working with his administration.
'They say separation between church and state. ... I said, 'All right, let's forget about that for one time,'' he said near the beginning of his remarks.
He later added, 'Whether there's separation or not, you guys are in the White House where you should be, and you're representing our country, and we're bringing religion back to our country, and it's a big deal.'
Trump's remarks were celebrated by many more conservative religious leaders, who thanked the president for making more room for religion in the public square.
But more liberal people of faith criticized Trump's comments and the new commission, arguing that the president's skepticism about the separation of church and state will hurt religion in the long term.
'Make no mistake, this new commission will do more to increase bullying in schools, workplace conflict, and religious discrimination than it will protect our constitutional rights or our churches,' said the Rev. Shannon Fleck, executive director of Faithful America, in a statement.
The reactions to Trump's remarks should sound familiar if you follow faith-related legal debates.
Multiple times in recent years — and multiple times this week — religious freedom advocates in the United States have clashed over what the Constitution says about separating church and state and what role the concept should play in policy debates.
So what does the Constitution actually say?
It doesn't include the phrase 'separation of church and state,' according to the Freedom Forum.
The First Amendment does include the line 'Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion,' which bars the government from naming an official religion or otherwise privileging one faith group over another.
The First Amendment also protects people of faith with its free exercise clause, which prevents Congress from passing laws that interfere with religious expression.
Religious freedom experts generally agree the First Amendment's free exercise and establishment clauses work together to keep the government from disrupting religious people and organizations.
Thomas Jefferson said as much in a famous letter to a religious minority group in 1802.
'Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between Man and his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legitimate powers of government reach actions only, and not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should 'make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,' thus building a wall of separation between Church and State,' Jefferson wrote.
But religion experts don't agree if the government is supposed to steer clear of religion altogether — or if church-state separation is good for people of faith.
That disagreement fuels ongoing conflict over issues like Ten Commandments displays on government property, school vouchers and prayers during government meetings.
'This whole area of law is really a mess,' said an attorney to the Deseret News in 2019 before the Supreme Court heard an establishment clause case.
More conservative legal scholars and religious leaders say the establishment clause — and the phrase 'separation of church and state' by extension — only applies to a limited range of issues.
They believe government officials can't name a state religion and also can't mandate religious participation, by, for example, forcing Americans to send part of their paychecks to a church.
But these more conservative thinkers do not believe the establishment clause justifies other types of limits on church-state relationships, which is why they're typically more supportive than their more liberal colleagues of, among other things, church-state funding partnerships, Christmas displays at statehouses and Trump's approach to religious freedom.
More liberal legal scholars and religious leaders, on the other hand, apply the establishment clause more broadly. They typically believe government agencies and officials must avoid even passive endorsement of religious messages, whether it comes in the form of Ten Commandments posters or a state-funded scholarship used at a religious school.
The Supreme Court hasn't done much to resolve the tension between those two viewpoints over the years.
In the 1970s and 1980s, some justices raised concerns about excessive entanglement between church and state and about government endorsement of religion, lending support to a broader interpretation of the establishment clause. But the related rulings created new issues, since judges across the country disagreed on how to decide if a faith-related display or public prayer had a secular purpose and what a neutral observer would say.
More recently, the Supreme Court has embraced a more conservative interpretation of the establishment clause, although they've done so by putting a focus on the free exercise of religion.
In three cases in the past eight years, the court has cleared the way for more public money to go to religious schools, with rulings that described policies based on the establishment clause as violations of the free exercise clause, as the Deseret News recently reported.
This spring, the Supreme Court has another opportunity to clarify the relationship between church and state in a case focused on the nation's first religious charter school.
Oklahoma's Republican attorney general filed the lawsuit to stop the school, which is called St. Isidore of Seville Catholic Virtual School, from participating in his state's charter school program. He says such a partnership would violate Oklahoma law and the establishment clause.
St. Isidore is defending itself with the free exercise clause and the three recent funding rulings. It says Oklahoma's effort to block the formation of religious charter schools amounts to religious discrimination.
Religious groups have reacted to the case in much the same way they reacted to Trump's comments on Thursday. Some believe the school clearly violates the principle of church-state separation, while others say Oklahoma has erected a wall that doesn't need to exist.
The Trump administration intervened in the case to offer support to the religious charter school.
During oral arguments on Wednesday, the justices, for the most part, seemed to sort themselves along the familiar conservative-liberal divide. More liberal justices emphasized potential establishment clause problems, while more conservative justices raised free exercise concerns.
Chief Justice John Roberts appeared to be the closest to the middle among the eight justices who took part in the arguments. His decision in the case may ultimately determine where the debate over the separation of church and state goes from here.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Bloomberg
15 minutes ago
- Bloomberg
Trump Speaks "There Are Many Targets Left"
President Donald Trump gave a national address Saturday evening on the joint Israeli airstrike on Iran saying "Remember there are many targets left" and that this bombing would be the most difficult by far. (Source: Bloomberg)
Politico
15 minutes ago
- Politico
Trump threatens more strikes against Iran if it doesn't negotiate a deal
President Donald Trump declared the U.S. bombing of Iran's three major nuclear facilities to have been 'a spectacular military success' during a Saturday night address to the nation, and left the door open to engaging in more strikes. 'Iran's key nuclear enrichment facilities have been completely and totally obliterated,' Trump said, and warned that the U.S. could still attack other, less significant targets in Iran if its leaders don't stand down. 'Iran, the bully of the Middle East, must now make peace,' he said. 'If they do not, future attacks will be far greater and a lot easier.' Standing in the White House Cross Hall to deliver a speech that lasted less than four minutes, Trump stopped short of declaring the U.S. to be at war with Iran, but his words made clear that he was willing to enter a deeper, wider conflict. In fact, the president seemed intent on trying to further intimidate Iran, a dramatic shift from just a few weeks ago, when Trump sounded confident that he was close to a diplomatic agreement with Tehran to further constrain its nuclear program. Trump asserted Saturday that there are 'many targets left' in Iran for U.S. forces to attack and vowed to go after them in short order if Iran didn't relent. 'There will be either peace or there will be tragedy for Iran far greater than we have witnessed over the last eight days,' he said. The remarks came a couple hours after the president's TruthSocial post announcing that the U.S. had struck three nuclear sites inside Iran. For several days, Trump had been dangling the threat of the U.S. assisting Israel's military, which does not have the kind of 'bunker-buster' bombs that were deployed in the operation Saturday night, to take out Iran's nuclear facilities once and for all — a consequence, he suggested, for Tehran's failure to reach a deal to curb its nuclear program. But the news that U.S. forces had carried out the strikes still came as a surprise, given the White House's statement on Thursday that Trump might take as long as two weeks to decide whether to take military action. With Vice President JD Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth standing behind him, Trump offered his congratulations to the military generals who helped plan the attack, the warfighters who carried it out and to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, with whom he said he 'worked as a team.' Trump made no effort to justify his decision to a MAGA base that has largely opposed intervening in foreign wars. Nor did he address his decision to act without consulting Congress, a move, many Democrats on Capitol Hill have pointed out, that is unconstitutional. Rather, he announced that the Pentagon would hold a press conference at 8 a.m. on Sunday before ending his remarks with a word of appreciation. 'I want to just thank everybody. And in particular God, I want to just say, we love you, God, and we love our great military.'
San Francisco Chronicle
18 minutes ago
- San Francisco Chronicle
Transcript of Trump's speech on US strikes on Iran
WASHINGTON (AP) — A transcript of President Donald Trump's speech on U.S. airstrikes on Iran on Saturday as transcribed by The Associated Press: Thank you very much. A short time ago, the U.S. military carried out massive, precision strikes on the three key nuclear facilities in the Iranian regime. Fordo, Natanz and Esfahan. Everybody heard those names for years as they built this horribly destructive enterprise. Our objective was the destruction of Iran's nuclear enrichment capacity and a stop to the nuclear threat posed by the world's number one state sponsor of terror. Tonight, I can report to the world that the strikes were a spectacular military success. Iran's key nuclear enrichment facilities have been completely and totally obliterated. Iran, the bully of the Middle East, must now make peace. If they do not. Future attacks would be far greater and a lot easier. For 40 years, Iran has been saying. Death to America, death to Israel. They have been killing our people, blowing off their arms, blowing off their legs, with roadside bombs. That was their specialty. We lost over 1,000 people and hundreds of thousands throughout the Middle East, and around the world have died as a direct result of their hate in particular. So many were killed by their general, Qassim Soleimani. I decided a long time ago that I would not let this happen. It will not continue. I want to thank and congratulate Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu. We worked as a team like perhaps no team has ever worked before, and we've gone a long way to erasing this horrible threat to Israel. I want to thank the Israeli military for the wonderful job they've done. And most importantly, I want to congratulate the great American patriots who flew those magnificent machines tonight, and all of the United States military on an operation the likes of which the world has not seen in many, many decades. Hopefully, we will no longer need their services in this capacity. I hope that's so. I also want to congratulate the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Dan 'Razin' Caine, spectacular general, and all of the brilliant military minds involved in this attack. With all of that being said, this cannot continue. There will be either peace, or there will be tragedy for Iran, far greater than we have witnessed over the last eight days. Remember, there are many targets left. Tonight's was the most difficult of them all, by far, and perhaps the most lethal. But if peace does not come quickly, we will go after those other targets with precision, speed and skill. Most of them can be taken out in a matter of minutes. There's no military in the world that could have done what we did tonight. Not even close. There has never been a military that could do what took place just a little while ago. Tomorrow, General Caine, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth will have a press conference at 8 a.m. at the Pentagon. And I want to just thank everybody. And, in particular, God. I want to just say, we love you, God, and we love our great military. Protect them. God bless the Middle East. God bless Israel and God bless America. Thank you very much. Thank you.
