We shouldn’t confuse religious tolerance with religious neutrality. The former can be helpful, the latter is a fantasy. After all, religious tolerance is a religious idea based on a Christian understanding of what it means to be created in the image of God.

A string of legal victories for religious freedom at the Supreme Court seems poised to reframe how Americans understand the so-called separation of church and state. In 1971, in the case Lemon v. Kurtzman, the Supreme Court established the “Lemon test” to prohibit “excessive entanglement” between church and state.

Over subsequent decades, this test was used to conclude, among other things, that Pennsylvania couldn’t provide instruction materials and equipment to religious schools (Meek v. Pittenger), Alabama public schools couldn’t authorize a moment of silence for “meditation or voluntary prayer” (Wallace v. Jaffree), and Kentucky couldn’t have a Ten Commandment display in Kentucky courthouses (McCreary County v. ACLU of Kentucky). Essentially, the Lemon test segregated public spaces and public dollars from anything religious or religion adjacent.

But that was then.

Read More