Where the Rubber Hits the Road

 Fr. Richard Neuhaus' opening address at a public debate (sponsored by the Economist Magazine). The question was:  "Religion and politics should always be kept separate." I speak in favor of the separation of church and state, and therefore against the resolution that religion and politics should always be kept separate. Permit me to explain. To enforce the exclusion of religion from politics, or from public life more generally, violates the First Amendment guarantee of the "free exercise of religion." The free exercise of religion is the reason for the separation of church and state—a principle that aims not at protecting the state from religion but at protecting religion from the state. In the First Amendment, religious freedom is of a piece with, indeed is in the very same sentence with, free speech, free press, free assembly, and the right to challenge government policy. Hence the resolution put before this house flatly contradicts the guarantees of a f...

Meghan Duke recounts on the First Things webblog how it was that she was denied entry into the US National Museum of Art because she was wearing a pro-life lapel pin. It seems that security guards have been trained to ask all patrons of the museum to remove any item that might be interpreted as being "religious" on the grounds that expressions of faith cannot be demonstrated within publicly owned buildings. Aside from the fact that to be "prolife" does not require that one necessarily hold religious beliefs, this seems to be just another example of the enmity that is growing between the forces of the state and voices of faith, even within the borders of the country which holds to their "freedom of speech" so forcefully as to vitiate their own electoral campaign regulations to permit the voices of corporations and other groups the spend without limit to ensure that politicians will create legislation that will benefit their benefactors. It's one of...