Amid the tumult engulfing the White House and Congress, one easily loses sight of ominous developments emanating from the third branch of government. But the judiciary has been busy, and civil rights and civil liberties are under assault on many fronts. One of those fronts is the separation of church and state.

At the end of June, the Supreme Court concluded its term with a major decision mandating direct government financial support of churches. And on the same day it issued that ruling, the court accepted for review a dispute—over a wedding cake—that concerns the extent to which businesses have a religion-based constitutional right to refuse to cater to same-sex couples, raising the prospect of reigniting the conflicts of the 1950s and 1960s over the integration of restaurants, hotels, clubs, and other public accommodations.

Funding Religion

Separating government from religion was a central theme in the founding of the United States. As the Supreme Court explained in Everson v. Board of Education of Ewing Township, 330 U.S. 1 (1947), a seminal case addressing government funding and religious activity:

A large proportion of the early settlers of this country came here from Europe to escape the bondage of laws which compelled them to support and attend government-favored churches … . With the power of government supporting them, at various times and places, Catholics had persecuted Protestants, Protestants had persecuted Catholics, Protestant sects had persecuted other Protestant sects, Catholics of one shade of belief had persecuted Catholics of another shade of belief, and all of these had from time to time persecuted Jews. In efforts to force loyalty to whatever religious group happened to be on top and in league with the government of a particular time and place, men and women had been fined, cast in jail, cruelly tortured, and killed.