...with Liberty and Justice for ALL
On Religious Freedom
Guarantees for Freethinkers
The Constitution Speaks
United States
Constitution, Art. VI, par.3: "…no religious test
shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or
public trust under the United States."
First Amendment of the
Constitution: "Congress shall make no law respecting an
establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise
thereof…"
The U. S. Supreme Court Speaks
The clearest and most concise explication of the meaning of the
separation principle in the First Amendment was contained in Justice
Hugo Black’s majority opinion in Everson v. Board of Education, 330
U.S. 1, 1947.
The "establishment of religion" clause of the First
Amendment means at least this: Neither a state nor the Federal
Government can set up a church. Neither can pass laws that aid one
religion, aid all religions, or prefer one religion to another.
Neither can force nor influence a person to go to or to remain
away from church against his will or force him to profess a belief
or disbelief in any religion. No person can be punished for
entertaining or professing religious beliefs or disbeliefs, for
church attendance or non-attendance. In the words of Jefferson,
the clause against establishment of religion by law was intended
to erect "a wall of separation between Church and
State."
Justice Stewart stated even more strongly the protection of freedom
from religion in School District of Abington v. Schempp (374 U.S.
203, no. 142, 1963):
What our Constitution indispensably protects is the freedom of
each of us, be he Jew or Agnostic, Christian or Atheist, Buddhist
or Freethinker, to believe or disbelieve, to worship or not
worship, to pray or keep silent, according to his own conscience,
uncoerced and unrestrained by government.
In Torcaso v. Watkins (367 US 488, 1961) Justice Black in his
unanimous opinion said:
We repeat and again reaffirm that neither a State nor Federal
Government can constitutionally force a person ‘to profess a
belief or disbelief in any religion.’ Neither can
constitutionally pass laws or impose requirements which aid all
religions as against nonbelievers, and neither can aid those
religions based on a belief in the existence of God as against
those religions founded on different beliefs.
In Epperson v. Arkansas, (393 U.S. 97, 1968), Justice Fortas
in his unanimous opinion said:
Government in our democracy, state and national, must be
neutral in matters of religious theory, doctrine, and practice. It
may not be hostile to any religion or to the advocacy of
no-religion; and it may not aid, foster, or promote one religion
or religious theory against another or even against the militant
opposite. The First Amendment mandates governmental neutrality
between religion and religion, and between religion and
nonreligion.
In Wallace v. Jaffree, 472 U.S. 38, 1985
The individual’s freedom to choose his own creed is the
counterpart of his right to refrain from accepting the creed
established by the majority. Moreover, the individual freedom of
conscience protected by the First Amendment embraces the right to
select any religious faith or none at all.
Professor Joseph Tussman wrote in The Supreme Court on Church
and State (1962):
It is, I hope, hardly necessary to add, as we try to understand and
deal wisely with the problems of religious freedom, that the freedom and
dignity of the nonbeliever—the agnostic or the atheist—is as
precious and as much to be protected as that of the believer. Earlier,
we would have called ourselves a ‘Christian nation.’ More recently
the phrase is a ‘religious nation.’ Someday, we may come to think of
ourselves as a spiritual nation, deeply involved in the quest for truth
about the nature of the universe and man’s [and woman’s] place in
it.
State and Church
