Supreme Court Affirms Role of Religion in Public Life
Espinoza v. Montana Department of Revenue, decided on Tuesday, was about more than tax credits. It crystalized a debate about the role religion should play in public life. It is a debate both worth having and which we must have.
Of course, this debate did take place in response to tax credits. Montana offered them to those donating money for scholarships so that children could attend private schools. Since it included private religious schools, Montana’s supreme court struck down the program as violating the state constitution’s ban on government aid to any entity “controlled in whole or in part by any church, sect, or denomination.” By a 5-4 vote, the U.S. Supreme Court said this provision violated the First Amendment’s Free Exercise Clause. Together with the Establishment Clause, this section of the First Amendment states that, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.”
Among the seven written opinions accompanying the decision, we see expressed three distinct paths for religion’s status in the public sphere. First, the dissents pushed for a more, if not entirely, secular state. Our political community may contain religious adherents. But that adherence largely should be private, with little place for faith-based words or deeds in the public sphere.
Second, Chief Justice Roberts’ majority opinion argued for functional agnosticism. When passing and enforcing laws, we should offer the same benefits and impose the same restrictions on all regardless of religion or irreligion.
Third and finally, Justice Thomas’s concurring opinion argued that, at the state level, government actually can prefer religion if they so choose, so long as no coercion takes place. While respecting the Free Exercise Clause, states still could pass “laws even…influenced by such [moral and religious] standards.”
Choosing the proper path demands that we confront fundamental issues of human nature, the scope of political life, even the meaning of the cosmos. It also means understanding our own history. In our Founding, America firmly committed to two principles. First, it committed itself to religious liberty. Second, it affirmed the importance of religion for and in public life.
We can see both at work in the Northwest Ordinance. Passed originally in 1787, this legislation governed the territories controlled by the national government at the time, territories that later became the states of Ohio, Michigan, Indiana, Illinois, and Wisconsin.
Article I defined and secured religious liberty. “No person, demeaning himself in a peaceable and orderly manner, shall ever be molested on account of his mode of worship or religious sentiments.” God alone is lord of the conscience. Only He can dictate our internal beliefs. Moreover, these internal beliefs require outward action, a “mode of worship.” Laws may require one act “peaceably and orderly” in living out the tenants of faith. But they cannot coerce action beyond such limited necessities.
Article III spoke to the role religion played in civic life: “Religion, morality, and knowledge, being necessary to good government and the happiness of mankind, schools and the means of education shall forever be encouraged.”
Notice the ends as well as the means the Ordinance articulated. The American people seek two related goals, namely good government and human happiness. The latter is the higher, as good government exists to protect the “pursuit of happiness.” The Ordinance understood that neither well-functioning government nor human felicity comes about without means. It is hard work. The document articulated three necessary provisions: knowledge, morality, and religion. These three also provide mutual support in the pursuit of good governance and human happiness. Knowledge acquires the perception of truth and justice that government protects. Morality adds desire to pursue both as individuals and communities. Religion, finally, adds the voice of revelation to these matters, pointing man to God, the ultimate fount of justice and truth, the establisher of governments, and the highest object of man’s delight.
Here, the Northwest Ordinance added one more means touching upon our current debate. Garnering the great benefits of religion, morality, and knowledge requires education. In other words, it demands the cultivation of minds and hearts to see and hopefully savor these three aids. A system of learning, therefore, must exist to encourage good government and facilitate human happiness.
So the Court affirmed in Espinoza, in practice if not in principle. As we continue to debate the role of religion in public life, we must ask whether we still affirm the twin commitments of the Northwest Ordinance. We must determine our own obligation to religious liberty and to the importance of religion in defining who we are and who we ought to be.
Adam Carrington is associate professor of politics at Hillsdale College.
