America and Religion

Questions of the day:

Is America a secular nation that tolerates religion or  a religious nation that tolerates nonbelief?

Or is America best understood as a pluralistic nation that reflects and celebrates the religious and ethnic diversity of the various subgroups that have settled here?

What is the difference in terms of the First Amendment and church-state issues?

Now consider this:

In his dissenting opinion in McCreary County v. American Civil Liberties Union of Kentucky, Justice Scalia told a story about where he was on September 11, 2011. His story dramatically explained the difference between the European ideal of freedom from religion and the American ideal of freedom of religion:

   On September 11, 2001, I was attending in Rome, Italy

an international conference of judges and lawyers,

principally from Europe and the United States. That night and

the next morning virtually all of the participants watched,

in their hotel rooms, the address to the Nation by the

President of the United States concerning the murderous

attacks upon the Twin Towers and the Pentagon, in which

thousands of Americans had been killed. The address

ended, as Presidential addresses often do, with the prayer

“God bless America.” The next afternoon I was approached

by one of the judges from a European country,

who, after extending his profound condolences for my

country’s loss, sadly observed “How I wish that the Head

of State of my country, at a similar time of national tragedy

and distress, could conclude his address ‘God bless

[our country]’ It is of course absolutely forbidden.”

   That is one model of the relationship between church

and state—a model spread across Europe by the armies of

Napoleon, and reflected in the Constitution of France,

which begins “France is [a] . . . secular . . . Republic.”

France Const., Art. 1, in 7 Constitutions of the Countries

of the World, p. 1 (G. Flanz ed. 2000). Religion is to be

strictly excluded from the public forum. This is not, and

never was, the model adopted by America.

   Justice Scalia went on to describe the long and unbroken history in America of official prayer and recognition and acknowledgement of God and the many tender mercies He has bestowed upon our Nation.  Indeed, Scalia’s examples dated back to President Washington’s  decision, on April 30, 1789, to add the words “so help me God” to the Presidential Oath, and to the decision of the First Congress to enact “legislation providing for paid chaplains in the House and Senate.” His conclusion was that these decisions are part of the fabric of the constitutional culture of America and reflect the clear understanding of “[t]hose who wrote the Constitution…that morality was essential to the well-being of society and that encouragement of religion was the best way to foster morality.”