Some excerpts:
“Over the last fifty years, the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment has been inverted from its original purpose and used as a lever to push religion out of the public square altogether. But in the most curious counterpoint to this trend, the Supreme Court has sustained the tradition of legislative chaplains and prayers in legislatures. As Justice Kennedy noted, the First Congress moved to appoint chaplains only days after approving the language for the First Amendment.”
“Some of us felt an obligation then to contribute to the briefs in the case, and we were both relieved and astonished by the outcome. On the one hand, relieved, that the Court did not overthrow the tradition of prayers in legislatures, and even better than that, immensely pleased that the Court was willing to sustain prayers with a definite character. Christian prayers could still be Christian prayers, invoking the Holy Trinity. They did not have to be submerged in vague ‘non-sectarian’ prayers offered merely to the ‘divine.’ On the other hand, we could be astonished and sobered by the fact that the outcome hung by a thread: four justices of the Court were willing to throw out legislative prayers if the search for clergymen were not more ecumenical, seeking out a fuller diversity of religious persuasions or near-persuasions.”
“And so what exactly has been won here? The Supreme Court ‘vindicated’ the place of ‘religion’ in the republic only by sustaining a policy that incorporated, in the understanding of religion, a-theism, or the notion of being ‘without God or gods.’ But this incoherence has become one of the defining features of jurisprudence in our lifetimes. The conservatives on the Court have been willing to sustain religion in legislative assemblies solely on the ground that the chaplains and prayers have been accepted from the beginning. The conservatives invoke history or ‘tradition.’ But the flaw in that stance is that the judges divert themselves from the task of explaining, even to themselves, what makes ‘religion’ a good to be preserved and defended in our public life.”
Read the whole piece here.