July 15, 2008, on this blog: Lemon-aid
The state of Delaware has decided, I think rightly, that providing this kind of funding to support renewable energy is good policy. It doesn’t cease to be good policy just because this particular roof belongs to a church. The standard for this distinction is called the Lemon Test, which takes its name from the 1971 Supreme Court decision in Lemon v. Kurtzman. Wikipedia provides a nice summary of the three-part Lemon Test:
1. The government’s action must have a secular legislative purpose;
2. The government’s action must not have the primary effect of either advancing or inhibiting religion;
3. The government’s action must not result in an “excessive government entanglement” with religion.
The application of that test can be complicated, and in recent decades Lemon has been strengthened and weakened by numerous cases involving Santeria, peyote and, of course, school prayers. But the basic wisdom of this three-pronged test, I believe, still holds. The solar-energy rebate for Limestone Presbyterian Church, it seems to me, easily passes all three parts of this test. The rebate serves a secular/non-sectarian purpose; it does not have the primary effect of advancing or inhibiting religion; and it does not result in an excessive entanglement of church and state.
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