Church and State: Free Exercise and Establishment

Assignment: John Inazu, Confident Pluralism (Chapter 1)

This class introduces two central ideas in the First Amendment’s treatment of religion: free exercise and establishment. The Free Exercise Clause protects the ability of individuals and communities to practice their religion without unnecessary government interference. The Establishment Clause limits the government’s ability to promote, endorse, control, or become entangled with religion. At a basic level, free exercise is about protecting religious liberty from government restriction, while establishment is about preventing government from taking sides in religious matters. But these two commitments are not always easy to hold together. Sometimes protecting religious exercise requires the government to accommodate religious people or institutions. Sometimes avoiding establishment requires the government to remain distant from religion. The hard cases often arise when these principles seem to point in different directions. These questions about religion are part of a broader challenge: How can a society marked by deep religious, moral, and cultural differences make room for people and groups who live according to different convictions?

One way to approach free exercise and establishment is to think about three recurring questions. First, when should religious people or institutions receive exemptions from laws that apply to everyone? Second, when does government support for religious people or institutions become improper favoritism toward religion? Third, how should public institutions treat religion in a society where some people see religious faith as central to their identity and moral obligations, while others see religion as private, divisive, harmful, or irrelevant? These questions arise repeatedly in conflicts over schools, workplaces, prisons, zoning laws, public funding, religious symbols, holidays, health care, and anti-discrimination law.

The goal of this class is not to master every detail of church-state doctrine but to understand why these disputes are so persistent and why reasonable people often disagree about them. Some people worry most about government hostility toward religion; others worry most about government favoritism toward religion. Some emphasize conscience and accommodation; others emphasize equality and non-establishment. Some think religion should be welcomed into public life; others think religion becomes dangerous when it is too closely linked to state power. We will use these tensions to ask a larger question at the heart of the course: How should we live together when our deepest commitments differ, and when the law must sometimes draw lines that leave some people dissatisfied?