{"id":81,"date":"2014-07-29T16:04:26","date_gmt":"2014-07-29T21:04:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/hedgerow\/?p=81"},"modified":"2020-01-15T10:19:04","modified_gmt":"2020-01-15T15:19:04","slug":"the-u-s-supreme-court-has-never-defined-religion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/hedgerow\/2014\/07\/the-u-s-supreme-court-has-never-defined-religion\/","title":{"rendered":"The U.S. Supreme Court Has Never Defined \u201cReligion\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

Debate about religion in American public life existed well before independence from the British government. Many talk about religious freedom, the First Amendment, and mistakenly argue<\/a> that the U.S. Constitution delineates a \u201cseparation of church and state.\u201d<\/p>\n

Yet the highest court of the land, the U.S. Supreme Court has never formally defined what actually constitutes \u201creligion.\u201d Nor has the court ever defined \u201cGod.\u201d In fact, its standards for referring to \u201creligion\u201d evolve, change, and remain inconsistent.<\/p>\n

For example, in 1890, the court referred to religion in traditional theistic terms, referring to a \u201cCreator.\u201d<\/p>\n

By the 1960s, when interpreting the Establishment Clause<\/a> of the First Amendment, the court referred to religion as it relates to both a person\u2019s belief in the existence of a particular God and another\u2019s disbelief in a particular God or belief in no God at all. When ruling on conscientious objector status, the court expanded the concept of religion from believing in a \u201csupreme being\u201d to include \u201cdeeply held moral and ethical beliefs.\u201d<\/p>\n

But by the early 1980s, the court moved away from relating moral and ethical beliefs to religion, ruling that the Free-Exercise Clause<\/a> of the First Amendment only applied to a \u201creligious\u201d belief or practice and that only beliefs \u201crooted in religion are given special protection to the exercise of religion.\u201d<\/p>\n

Many of the court\u2019s definitions of religion actually use the word \u201creligion\u201d to describe religion itself. To date, the court has provided little to no guidance on the matter.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s specious that the Supreme Court, which has not defined religion, can adequately rule on it. And yet, the U.S. Constitution, the law the court is tasked to interpret, also leaves room for what constitutes \u201creligion.\u201d<\/p>\n

While the Free-Exercise Clause prevents the government from making a law \u201cprohibiting the free exercise of religion,\u201d the clause does not mean that \u201cno law\u201d actually means \u201cno law.\u201d The Equal Protection Clause<\/a> of the Fourteenth Amendment allows both federal and state government to legally restrict, in certain circumstances, how a religious belief is practiced, while still allowing freedom to believe in whatever religion one chooses. For example, courts have made illegal religious practices like polygamy, human sacrifice, or incest.<\/p>\n

Yet there are limits to these limits. And the Supreme Court has long been divided over determining them, especially when considering various standards, including ones it created like the \u201cLemon<\/a>\u201d or \u201cSherbert<\/a>\u201d tests. Many state constitutions enable the applicability of the \u201ccompelling-interest\u201d test, however, other states have less protection for free-exercise claims.<\/p>\n

It remains unclear as to whether or not the nebulous description of \u201creligion\u201d will satisfy the U.S. legal system or prove beneficial to First Amendment Religion Clause cases.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Debate about religion in American public life existed well before independence from the British government. Many talk about religious freedom, the First Amendment, and mistakenly argue that the U.S. Constitution delineates a \u201cseparation of church and state.\u201d Yet the highest court of the land, the U.S. Supreme Court has never formally defined what actually constitutes […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1910,"featured_media":3066,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[972,970],"tags":[55,61,12,73,71,4,74,53,54],"class_list":["post-81","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-christianity","category-politics","tag-first-amendment","tag-free-exercise-clause","tag-god","tag-lemon-test","tag-religion","tag-separation-of-church-and-state","tag-sherbert-test","tag-u-s-constitution","tag-u-s-supreme-court"],"yoast_head":"\nThe U.S. Supreme Court Has Never Defined \u201cReligion\u201d<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Debate about religion in American public life existed well before independence from the British government. 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