The War On Faith - FF - Supreme Court

"Because the primary purpose of the Creationism Act is to endorse a particular religious
belief, the Act furthers religion in violation of the Establishment Clause. ...The pre-eminent
purpose of the Louisiana Legislature was clearly to advance the religious viewpoint that a
supernatural being created humankind. ...The Act violates the Establishment Clause
because it seeks to employ the symbolic and financial support of government to achieve a
religious purpose."
Edwards v. Aguillard, 1987

"The court decided, based on its reading of our precedents, that the effects test of Lemon is
violated whenever government action "creates an identification of the state with a religion,
or with religion in general," ...or when "the effect of the governmental action is to endorse
one religion over another, or to endorse religion in general."
Justice Kennedy, opinion of the court in Lee vs. Weisman

"The First Amendment's Religion Clauses mean that religious beliefs and religious
expression are too precious to be either proscribed or prescribed by the State. The design
of the Constitution is that preservation and transmission of religious beliefs and worship is
a responsibility and a choice committed to the private sphere, which itself is promised
freedom to pursue that mission. It must not be forgotten then, that while concern must be
given to define the protection granted to an objector or a dissenting non-believer, these
same Clauses exist to protect religion from government interference. James Madison, the
principal author of the Bill of Rights, did not rest his opposition to a religious establishment
on the sole ground of its effect on the minority. A principal ground for his view was:
"[E]perience witnesseth that ecclesiastical establishments, instead of main- taining the
purity and efficacy of Religion, have had a contrary operation."
Justice Kennedy, opinion of the court in Lee vs. Weisman

"In religious debate or expression the government is not a prime participant, for the
Framers deemed religious establishment antithetical to the freedom of all. The Free Exercise
Clause embraces a freedom of conscience and worship that has close parallels in the
speech provisions of the First Amendment, but the Establishment Clause is a specific
prohibition on forms of state intervention in religious affairs with no precise counterpart in
the speech provisions. Buckley v. Valeo, 424 U. S. 1, 92-93, and n. 127 (1976) (per curiam).
The explanation lies in the lesson of history that was and is the inspiration for the
Establishment Clause, the lesson that in the hands of government what might begin as a
tolerant expression of religious views may end in a policy to indoctrinate and coerce. A
state-created orthodoxy puts at grave risk that freedom of belief and conscience which are
the sole assurance that religious faith is real, not imposed."
Justice Kennedy, opinion of the court in Lee v. Weisman

"The lessons of the First Amendment are as urgent in the modern world as the 18th Century
when it was written. One timeless lession is that if citizens are subjected to state-sponsored
religious exercises, the State disavows its own duty to guard and respect that sphere of
inviolable conscience and belief which is the mark of a free people,"
Supreme Court Justice Kennedy for majority, Lee v. Weisman, 1992

"It is beyond dispute that, at a minimum, the Constitution guarantees that government may
not coerce anyone to support or participate in religion or its exercise..."
Justice Kennedy, lead opinion, Lee v. Weisman, 505US 577 (1992)

"First, the statute must have a secular legislative purpose; second, its principle or primary
effect must be one that neither advances nor inhibits religion (citation omitted); finally, the
statute must not foster "an excessive government entanglement with religion."
The "Lemon Test", from Lemon v. Kurtzman, 1971

"Madison observed in criticizing religious presidential proclamations, the practice of
sponsoring religious messages tends, over time, -to narrow the recommendation to the
standard of the predominant sect. Madison's -Detached Memoranda,- 3 Wm. & Mary Q.
534, 561 (E. Fleet ed. 1946)"
Justice Souter, concurring opinion in Lee Vs. Weisman

"The sweep [of the Establishment Clause]is broad enough that Madison himself
characterized congressional provisions for legislative and military chaplains as
unconstitutional -establishments.- Madison's Detached Memoranda- 558-559"
Justice Souter, concurring opinion in Lee Vs. Weisman

"Stating that 'The Constitution guarantess that government may not coerce anyone to
support or participate in religious exercises,' the court held the First Amendment is violated
by including clerical members who offer prayer as part of an official school graduation
ceremony, even though attendance was supposedly voluntary. The court concluding that
attendance was in a real sense obligatory with the students induced to conform."
Lee v. Weisman (1992, U S) 120 L Ed 2d 467, 112 S Ct 2649, from the 1996 pocket part
for the book "Modern Constitutional Law, Vol. I: The Individual And The Government", by
Chester J. Antieau

"...our constitutional tradition, from the Declaration of Independence and the first
inaugural address of Washington... down to the present day, has, with a few aberrations,
see Church of Holy Trinity v. United States, 143 U.S. 457, 12 S.Ct. 511, 36 L.Ed. 226 (1892),
ruled out of order government-sponsored endorsement of religion--even when no legal
coercion is present, and indeed even when no ersatz, "peer-pressure" psycho-coercion is
present--where the endorsement is sectarian, in the sense of specifying details upon which
men and women who believe in a benevolent, omnipotent Creator and Ruler of the world
are known to differ (for example, the divinity of Christ)."
Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, Lee v. Weisman, 505 U.S. 577, 641 (1992)

"We are asked to recognize the existence of a practice of nonsectarian prayer, prayer
within the embrace of what is known as the Judeo-Christian tradition, prayer which is
more acceptable than one which, for example, makes explicit references to the God of
Israel, or to Jesus Christ, or to a patron saint. There may be some support, as an empirical
observation, to the statement of the Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, picked up by
Judge Campbell's dissent in the Court of Appeals in this case, that there has emerged in this
country a civic religion, one which is tolerated when sectarian exercises are not. Stein, 822
F.2d at 1409; 908 F.2d 1090, 1098-1099 (CA1 1990) (Campbell, J., dissenting) (case
below); see also Note, Civil Religion and the Establishment Clause, 95 Yale L.J. 1237 (1986).
If common ground can be defined which permits once conflicting faiths to express the
shared conviction that there is an ethic and a morality which transcend human invention,
the sense of community and purpose sought by all decent societies might be advanced. But
though the First Amendment does not allow the government to stifle prayers which aspire
to these ends, neither does it permit the government to undertake that task for itself."
Supreme Court, Lee v. Weisman, 505 U.S. 577 (1992)

"The principle that government may accommodate the free exercise of religion does not
supersede the fundamental limitations imposed by the Establishment Clause, which
guarantees at a minimum that a government may not coerce anyone to support or
participate in religion or its exercise, or otherwise act in a way which "establishes a [state]
religion or religious faith, or tends to do so." Lynch v. Donnelly, 465 U.S. 668, 678. Pp.7-8.
(b)State officials here direct the performance of a formal religious exercise at secondary
schools' promotional and graduation ceremonies. Lee's decision that prayers should be
given and his selection of the religious participant are choices attributable to the State."
Lee vs. Weisman, 1992, Supreme Court decision regarding prayers at US high school
graduation ceremonies

"The Amendment's purpose was not to strike merely at the official establishent of a single
sect, creed, or religion, outlawing only a formal relation such as had prevailed in England
and some of the colonies...It was to create a complete and permanent separation of the
spheres of religious activity and civil authority by comprehensively forbidding every form
of public aid or support for religion."
Supreme court, Everson case

"The Establishment Clause, unlike the Free Exercise Clause, does not depend upon any
showing of direct governmental compulsion and is violated by the enactment of laws
which establish an official religion whether those laws operate directly to coerce
nonobserving individuals or not."
U.S. Supreme Court, Wallace v. Jaffree (1985)

"Neither the fact that the prayer is denominationally neutral nor the fact that its
observance on the part of the students is voluntary can serve to free it from the limitations
of the Establishment Clause."
U.S. Supreme Court, Engle v. Vitale (1962)

"We agree [that the State's use of the Regents' prayer in its public school system breaches
the constitutional wall of separation between Church and State]since we think that the
constitutional prohibition against laws respecting an establishment of religion must at least
mean that in this country it is no part of the business of government to compose official
prayers for any group of the American people to recite as a part of a religious program
carried on by government."
U.S. Supreme Court, Engel v. Vitale

"Lemon v. Kurtzman, is not only that government may not be overtly hostile to religion, but
also that it may not place its prestige, coercive authority, or resources behind a single
religious faith or behind religious belief in general, compelling nonadherents to support the
practices or proselytizing of favored religious organizations and conveying the message
that those who do not contribute gladly are less than full members of the community."
U.S. Supreme Court, Texas Monthly v. Bullock

"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 which aid one
religion, aid all religions, or prefer one religion over another. Neither can force nor
influence a person to go to or remain away from church against his will or force him to
profess a belief or disbelief in any religion."
U.S. Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black, Majority opinion Everson v. Board of Education
330 U.S. 1 (1947)

"No person can be punished for entertaining or professing religious beliefs or disbeliefs, for
church attendance or nonattendance."
U.S. Supreme Court justice Hugo Black, Majority opinion Everson v. Board of Education
330 U.S. 1 (1947)

"No tax in any amount, large or small, can be levied to support any religious activities or
institutions, whatever they may be called, or whatever form they may adopt to teach or
practice religion."
Hugo L. Black, U.S. Supreme Court Justice, majority opinion in Everson v. Board of
Education, 330 U.S. 1 (1947)

"Neither a state nor the Federal Government can, openly or secretly, participate in the
affairs of any religious organizations or groups and vice versa. 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.'"
Hugo L. Black, U.S. Supreme Court Justice, majority opinion in Everson v. Board of
Education, 330 U.S. 1 (1947)

"The First Amendment has erected a wall between church and state. That wall must be kept
high and impregnable. We could not approve the slightest breach."
Hugo L. Black, U.S. Supreme Court Justice, majority opinion in Everson v. Board of
Education, 330 U.S. 1 (1947),last words

"Its first and most immediate purpose rested on the belief that a union of government and
religion tends to destroy government and degrade religion."
Justice Black, on the Establishment Clause of the 1st Amendment

"[The First Amendment]requires the state to be a neutral in its relations with groups of
believers and non-believers."
Justice Black, lead opinion, Everson v. Board of Education, 330 US 1 (1947)

"The day that this country ceases to be free for irreligion, it will cease to be free for
religion--except for the sect that can win political power."
Supreme Court Justice Robert Houghwout Jackson, dissenting opinion in Zorach v. Clauson
(343 US 306 -- 1952)

"If we concede to the State power and wisdom to single out 'duly constituted religious'
bodies as exclusive alternatives for compulsory secular instruction, it would be logical to
also uphold the power and wisdom to choose the true faith among those 'duly constituted.'
We start down a rough road when we begin to mix compulsory public education with
compulsory godliness."
Supreme Court Justice Robert Houghwout Jackson, dissenting opinion in Zorach v. Clauson
(343 US 306 -- 1952)

"If there is any fixed star in our constitutional constellation, it is that no official, high or
petty, can prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other
matters of opinion, or force citizens to confess by word or act their faith therein."
Robert H. Jackson, Supreme Court opinion (West Virginia State Board of Education v
Barnette, 319 U.S. 624{1943})

"[I] our country are evangelists and zealots of many different political, economic and
religious persuasions whose fanatical conviction is that all thought is divinely classified
into two kinds -- that which is their own and that which is false and dangerous."
Justice Robert H. Jackson, American Communications Assn. v. Douds, 339 U.S. 382, 438; 70
S.Ct. 674, 704 (1950)

"The violence of some anti-abortionists was an ongoing problem. On October 10, 1985,
security was tightened at the Supreme Court after Justice Blackmun received a death
threat; the day before, an anti-abortion protester had disrupted court proceedings. Anyone
who has ever attended a Supreme Court hearing knows one doesn't even whisper, _much
less_ interrupt the Court. On December 4, the FBI released figures on terrorism, but these
did not include data on abortion clinic bombings, as they were supposedly not attributable
to organized groups. Abortion clinics were increasingly the targets of acts of vandalism,
death threats to employees, telephoned bomb threats, and other forms of harassment. On
Christmas Day, three clinics were bombed in Pensacola, Florida, and on New Year's Day,
1986, a Washington, D.C., clinic was bombed. The Christmas bomber, who was later
arrested, said his actions had been "a Christmas present for Jesus."
Sarah Weddington, attorney in Roe v. Wade, _A Question of Choice_, 1992, pp.206, 208

"At one time, it was thought that this right merely proscribed the preference of one
Christian sect over another, but would not require equal respect for the conscience of the
infidel, the atheist, or the adherent of a non-Christian faith such as Islam or Judaism. But
when the underlying principle has been examined in the crucible of litigation, the Court
has unambiguously concluded that the individual freedom of conscience protected by the
First Amendment embraces the right to select any religious faith or none at all."
Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens, lead opinion, Wallace v. Jaffree, 472 US 38
(1985)

"If the historic landmark on the hill in Boerne happened to be a museum or an art gallery
owned by an atheist, it would not be eligible for an exemption from the city ordinances
that forbid an enlargement of the structure. Because the landmark is owned by the
Catholic Church, it is claimed that RFRA gives its owner a federal statutory entitlement to
an exemption from a generally applicable, neutral civil law. Whether the Church would
actually prevail under the statute or not, the statute has provided the Church with a legal
weapon that no atheist or agnostic can obtain. This governmental preference for religion,
as opposed to irreligion, is forbidden by the First Amendment..."
Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens, in his opinion striking down the "Religious
Freedom Restoration Act", Boerne v. Flores, 1997

"The First Amendment commands government to have no interest in theology or ritual; it
admonishes the government to be interested in allowing religious freedom to flourish --
whether the result is to produce Catholics, Jews, or Protestants, or to turn the people
toward the path of Buddha, or to end in a predominantly Moslem nation, or to produce in
the long run atheists or agnostics. On matters of this kind, government must remain
neutral. This freedom plainly includes freedom from religion with the right to believe,
speak, write, publish and advocate antireligious programs."
Justice William O. Douglas, dissent in McGowan v. Maryland

"Christianity has sufficient inner strength to survive and flourish on its own. It does not
need state subsidies, nor state privileges, nor state prestige. The more it obtains state
support the greater it curtails human freedom."
Justice William O. Douglas, "The Bible and the Schools," 1966, p. 58, from Menendez and
Doerr, The Great Quotations on Religious Freedom

"The Free Exercise Clause protects the individual from any coercive measure that
encourages him toward one faith or creed, discourages him from another, or makes it
prudent or desirable for him to select one and embrace it."
Justice William O. Douglas, "The Bible and the Schools," 1966, p. 10, from Menendez and
Doerr, The Great Quotations on Religious Freedom

"The religious freedom which the First Amendment protects has many facets:
1. No sectarian authority shares in the power of government nor sits in its councils.

2. Government has no directive influence in any of the affairs of any church.

3. Citizens are not taxed for the support of any religious institution and no church has any
claim on any of the public revenues.

4. People can belong to any church they desire -- or to none at all; and no one is bound to
have a ceremony such as marriage performed by any sectarian authority.

5. In disputes between sects or factions of a church over the management of church affairs
the civil courts apply not the law applicable to secular affairs but the law that the
governing bodies of the church have provided to govern their internal affairs.

6. Public schools are not proper agencies for religious education, though there is no
constitutional reason why the state cannot adjust the schedules of the public schools to
allow time for the students to get religious instruction elsewhere.

7. Parents and children have the privilege of patronizing private religious schools, rather
than public ones, if they so desire.

8. An exercise or ritual may not be exacted by the state from an individual, if it runs
counter to his religious convictions.

9. Religious liberty includes not only the conventional methods of worship but the
unorthodox as well, such as distributing religious literature from door to door.

10. No license may be exacted by the state for the performance of any religious exercise
nor a tax imposed on it.

11. Although the matter has not been authoritatively decided, it would seem that religious
liberty extends to atheists as well as to theists, to those who find their religion in ethics and
morality, rather than in a Supreme Being.

12. What may be pagan exercises to one person may be a devotional to another. In general
it is no business of the government what rite or practice a person selects as a part of his
religious beliefs; and he may not be punished for practicing or avowing it."
Justice William O. Douglas, "The Right of the People," 1958, pp. 91-92, from Menendez and
Doerr, The Great Quotations on Religious Freedom

"Certainly the affirmative pursuit of one's convictions about the ultimate mystery of the
universe and man's relation to it is placed beyond the reach of law. Government may not
interfere with organized or individual expressions of belief or disbelief. Propagation of
belief -- or even of disbelief -- in the supernatural is protected, whether in church or
chapel, mosque or synagogue, tabernacle or meeting-house."
Felix Frankfurter, U.S. Supreme Court justice, majority decision, Minersville School District
v. Gobitis, 310 U.S. 586, 1940

Writers

"On the whole, I am on the side of the unregenerate who affirm the worth of life as an end
in itself, as against the saints who deny it."
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. (U.S. Supreme Court Justice), letter to Lady Pollock

"Science is a first-rate piece of furniture for a man's upper chamber, if he has common
sense on the ground floor."
Oliver Wendell Holmes

"I can't help an occasional semi-shudder as I remember that millions of intelligent men
think that I am barred from the face of God unless I change. But how can one pretend to
believe what seems to him childish and devoid alike of historical and rational foundations?"
Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., book review by Holmes for Time

"The Pope put his foot on the neck of kings, but Calvin and his cohorts crushed the whole
human race under their heels in the name of the Lord of Hosts."
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr., address to the Massachusetts Medical Society, May 30, 1860

"Rough work, iconoclasm, but the only way to get at truth."
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr., 1860

"The man who is always worrying whether or not his soul would be damned generally has
a soul that isn't worth a damn."
Oliver Wendell Holmes

"(But) in these torments endured by the faithful, Wendell Holmes had no part. To him it
mattered not that Darwin made the Garden of Eden a myth and Jonah's whale a monster to
frighten children... For Holmes the core had been taken out of Christian theology a
generation ago, when the Unitarians disavowed the doctrine of original sin. Man lost his
fear of hell-fire - and on that day gave back Christian doctrine to the preacher as
irrelevant to life. After that, disbelief in Genesis I was a small thing. Wendall Holmes had
achieved it without the least struggle. He was born to it."
Oliver Wendell Holmes, from "Yankee From Olympus - Justice Holmes and His Family,"
1945, by Catherine Drinker Bowen

"Men are idolaters, and want something to look at and kiss, or throw themselves down
before; they always did, they always will; and if you don't make it of wood, you must make
it of words."
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr., The Poet at the Breakfast Table (1872), from James A. Haught,
ed., 2000 Years of Disbelief

"The truth is that the whole system of beliefs which comes in with the story of the fall of
man ... is gently falling out of enlightened human intelligence."
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr., from Rufus K. Noyes, Views of Religion, also James A. Haught,
ed., 2000 Years of Disbelief

"The world presents enough problems if you believe it to be a world of law and order; do
not add to them by believing it to be a world of miracles."
U.S. Supreme Court Justice Louis D. Brandeis

"Religious conflict can be the bloodiest and cruelest conflicts that turn people into fanatics."
Supreme Court Justice William J. Brennan, Interview with National Public Radio, January
29, 1987, from Menendez and Doerr, The Great Quotations on Religious Freedom

"In the present day, religious phraseology [in politics] is less an expression of feeling than a
cloak to hide the absence of it."
Irving Brant, The Bill of Rights, 1965, p. 417, from Menendez and Doerr, The Great
Quotations on Religious Freedom

"On a full survey of the Supreme Court's decisions on religion and the criticisms of those
decisions, a clear pattern emerges. The Court is working to protect the country against a
breakdown of constitutional guarantees that would hurl the American people into a vortex
of sectarian bitterness and strife. To do so it is obliged to call a halt to practices that range
in effect from trivial harm to minor good. Popular dislike of these decisions is played upon
by those who desire to break the barriers between church and state."
Irving Brant, The Bill of Rights, 1965, p. 424, from Menendez and Doerr, The Great
Quotations on Religious Freedom

"In addition, the New York Supreme Court, in a well known case (Miami Military Institute
v Leff 129 Misc. 481, 220 N.Y.S. 799, 810) said of the principle of religious freedom that it,
'has always been regarded by the American people as the very heart of its national life.'
This would be difficult to maintain in a democracy without constitutional separation of
church and state.
Anson Phelps Stokes, Church And State In The United States Vol I, p. 34

"In recent discussions of religious freedom and Church-State separation in the United
States attention has been so much centered constitutionally on the Bill of Rights that the
importance of this Provision in the original Constitution as a bulwark of Church-State
separation has been largely overlooked. As a matter of fact it was and is important in
preventing religious tests for Federal office--a provision later extended to all the states. It
went far in thwarting any State Church in the United States; for it would be almost
impossible to establish such a Church, since no Church has more than a fifth of the
population. Congress as constituted with men and women from all the denominations could
never unite in selecting any one body for this privilege. This has heen so evident from the
time of the founding of the government that it is one reason why the First Amendment must
be interpreted more broadly than merely as preventing the state establishment of religion
which had already been made almost impossible."
"Church And State In The United States, Volume I, Anson Phelps Stokes, D.D., LL.D, Harper
& Brothers Publishers (1950) page 527

The State Courts

"There is no such source and cause of strife, quarrel, fights, malignant opposition,
persecution, and war, and all evil in the state, as religion."
Supreme Court of Wisconsin Weiss vs District Board March 18, 1890

"She manifested an entire want of instruction as to the nature and effect of an oath, of all
religious training, and utter ignorance of the existence of a Supreme Being, "the rewarder
of truth and avenger of falsehoods."
Supreme Court of Alabama, 1882, disqualifying an 11-year old girl's testimony at her rape
trial. The rapist went free.

"The man who has the hardihood to avow that he does not believe in a God, shows a
recklessness of moral character and utter want of moral responsibility, such as very little
entitles him to be heard or believed in a court of justice in a country designated as
Christian."
Supreme Court of Tennessee, 1871

"There is no such source and cause of strife, quarrel, fights, malignant opposition,
persecution, and war, and all evil in the state, as religion. Let it once enter into our civil
affairs, our government soon would be destroyed. Let it once enter our common schools,
they would be destroyed. Those who made our Constitution saw this, and used the most apt
and comprehensive language in it to prevent such a catastrophe."
Supreme Court of Wisconsin, Weiss v. District Board, March 18, 1890

"Faith is the antithesis of proof."
NY State Supreme Court Justice Edward J. Greenfield, 1995