Install
Faith in Public Life blog
'Religious liberty is a license to discriminate,' answered with the law Religious-liberty law weighs the interests of third parties and has rejected many claims, so the slogan about a license to discriminate fails on the record. Massachusetts kept a state church until 1833, and the Constitution let it The First Amendment bound only Congress in 1791, so states kept established churches for decades, and that history frames every Establishment Clause fight. Rights Are Not Social Constructs, and Here Is the Answer to That Claim Bentham called natural rights nonsense on stilts. The positivist case at its best, then four answers: the Declaration, Nuremberg, the abolitionists, the stakes. A thought experiment where the IRS fact-checks every Sunday sermon A labelled satire of a federal sermon-review office, anchored in the real Johnson Amendment, to show why government must never police the pulpit. James Wilson Lectured on Natural Law While Washington Was President A signer of both founding documents and an original justice told America where law comes from, with the President reportedly in the room. He was right. The Pledge of Allegiance From 1892 to Under God, and the Fights Along the Way The Pledge began as a magazine's school celebration in 1892 and changed several times. Each change, from 1923 to 1954 to Newdow, tells a story. Sunday closing laws, Orthodox Jewish merchants and the 1961 Sabbath rulings In 1961 the Court held Sunday closing laws secular rest laws even as they burdened Sabbath-observant Jews, and the cases still teach how pluralism works. Self-Government Starts With Governing Yourself, the Founders Insisted The Founders held that a republic needs citizens who can restrain themselves, and that virtue was a political necessity. They were no secular rationalists. No Law Respecting an Establishment Meant Something Specific in 1791 In 1791 an establishment meant a state church with taxes, doctrine and privileges. The clause barred Congress from making one, not faith from public life. The Four Chaplains Gave Away Their Life Jackets When the Dorchester Went Down Four chaplains of four faiths gave their life jackets to frightened soldiers and went down praying together, and the country honored them with a medal. Whittaker Chambers Told Americans the Cold War Was a Contest of Faiths A former Soviet agent testified against Alger Hiss, then wrote Witness to argue that communism was a rival religion, man without God. Should pastors endorse candidates? The Johnson Amendment fight, argued fairly A 1954 floor amendment gagged churches on campaigns, and conservatives split over repeal; here is the free-speech case, the pulpit case, and a verdict. Reconstruction's Promise and the Freedmen Who Built Schools, Churches and Towns Freed people built schools, churches and self-governing towns at astonishing speed after 1865, and that promise deserves as much attention as its betrayal. When Ratifying Conventions Argued Over Article VI's Ban on Religious Tests In 1788 devout delegates feared a Constitution with no religious test. Other believers defended the ban as a shield for faith, and they won the argument. Pulpits, boycotts and the church roots of the civil rights movement The civil rights movement was organized in churches and argued in Scripture and the Declaration, and conservatives have good reason to honor that inheritance. The 1688 Germantown protest and the believers who started abolition Four Quakers wrote the first colonial protest against slavery in 1688, and the religious argument they began ran straight to the Thirteenth Amendment. Can a conservative who doesn't believe still defend the faith of the West? Non-believing conservatives have strong reasons to defend the Judeo-Christian inheritance, and believers should welcome them as allies. Why 'created equal' is a claim about God and not just about politics The Declaration grounds equality in a Creator, which puts rights beyond any government's power to revoke. The text, Aristotle, Lincoln and the objection. The Underground Railroad and the Quakers Who Broke an Unjust Law in the Open The conductors of the Underground Railroad show when conscience may defy a law and how to do it openly, accepting the cost. Six principles, one fair objection. What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July and Why Douglass Kept the Constitution Douglass's Rochester speech of July 5, 1852 indicts slavery without mercy, then calls the Constitution a glorious liberty document. Read it closely. Harriet Tubman Led Rescues, Spied for the Union and Raided the Combahee River She escaped slavery, went back for about seventy people, scouted for the Union and helped free more than 700 on the Combahee River. Thomas Paine, a deist, argued for independence from the Book of Samuel Common Sense made its case against monarchy from Gideon and Samuel, and the choice of sources shows how biblical the language of American liberty was. Why Washington's Farewell Address called religion and morality indispensable Washington's 1796 warning that free government cannot last without religion and morality, read passage by passage, and what it means now. From a Civil War coin to the Pledge, how 'under God' entered public life Two national mottoes arrived in two eras of danger, the Civil War and the Cold War, and the dates explain why they were added and why they still divide us. Seven Christmas claims about the public square, checked against the law Most of what people believe about Christmas being banned from or required in public life is wrong in both directions. Seven claims, tested. Self-Interest Rightly Understood Was Tocqueville's Answer to Selfishness Tocqueville found Americans who taught that serving neighbors serves oneself, a modest doctrine that built a remarkably public-spirited people. A town board, a guest chaplain and why opening prayers survived the Court Town of Greece v. Galloway (2014) upheld prayers before town meetings because legislative prayer is as old as the Republic. The history settles the case. Casinos open, churches capped, and the pandemic rulings that restored worship In 2020 and 2021 the Court went from deferring to worship caps to striking them, ending in a rule: no worse treatment than comparable secular activity. Ordered Liberty Is Not a Contradiction, It Is the Only Kind That Lasts Liberty without order collapses into license and then tyranny, so conservatives defend freedom and the habits and institutions that keep it alive. From Cicero to Aquinas to Jefferson, the Long Road of Natural Law The idea that a moral law binds rulers and can be known by reason runs unbroken from the Stoics to the Declaration and the Birmingham jail. A Santeria church, a Florida city and the unanimous ruling for minority faiths Lukumi (1993) shows that a law aimed at one faith fails even under Smith. Conservatives who value religious liberty should cheer it, and here is why. Sixteen words on religion in the First Amendment, read phrase by phrase Two guarantees, not one, and nearly every word was fought over in 1789. A close reading of the religion clauses and the myth that they are at war.