Religious Expression in American Public Life: A Joint Statement of Current Law

Before we can talk intelligently about how things should be, we need to agree on how things are.

A new document called ¨Religious Expression in American Public Life: A Joint Statement of Current Law¨ sets down exactly what the current law is regarding religious expression in America. You can read it in pdf form here:
http://www.adl.org/religious_freedom/WFU-Divinity-Joint-Statement.pdf

Some excerpts:

"The drafters of this document often disagree about how the law should address issues regarding the intersection of religion and government. For example, some of us are actively urging the Supreme Court of the United States to reverse certain decisions in this area, while others of us are vigorously opposing such efforts.

"Nevertheless, we have come together to provide a summary of how the law currently answers some basic questions regarding religious expression and practice in public life. However much we differ about what the law should be, we agree in many cases on what the law is today...

"Many of the questions concerning religious expression in public life could be better addressed if Americans kept in mind the First Amendment’s crucial distinction between “government speech endorsing religion, which the Establishment Clause forbids, and private speech endorsing religion, which the Free Speech and Free Exercise Clauses protect.” Of course, this reference to “private speech” is not limited to speech occurring “in private,” but describes religious expression attributable to nongovernmental organizations and individuals rather than to the state. This means that individuals and groups have the right to practice and promote their faith, not only within their homes and houses of worship, but also publicly in places such as parks, street corners, the airwaves, open meetings and many other places subject to the same time, place and manner limits that apply to other nongovernmental speech. This statement is a brief summary of some of the ways in which the law applies to various forms of religious speech, expression and
practice..."

(Thanks to Bill Tammeus and his blog, where we found out about this document: http://www.typepad.com/services/trackback/6a00d834515f9b69e20120a7f34e24970b )