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Establishment Clause
Overview
In American law, the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution, together with that Amendment's Free Exercise Clause, form the constitutional right of freedom of religion. The Establishment Clause and the Free Exercise Clause together read:
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof...
The Establishment Clause acts as a double security, prohibiting both control of the government by religion and political control of religion by the government. By it, the federal government of the United States and, by later extension, the governments of all U.S. states and U.S. territories, are prohibited from establishing or sponsoring religion.
The clause was based on a number of precedents, including the Constitutions of Clarendon, the Bill of Rights 1689, and the first constitutions of Pennsylvania and New Jersey. An initial draft by John Dickinson was prepared in conjunction with his drafting the Articles of Confederation. In 1789, then-congressman James Madison prepared another draft which, after discussion and debate in the First Congress, would become part of the text of the First Amendment of the Bill of Rights. The Establishment Clause is complemented by the Free Exercise Clause, which prohibits government interference with religious belief and, within limits, religious practice.
The Establishment Clause is a limitation placed upon the United States Congress preventing it from passing legislation establishing an official religion and, by interpretation, makes it illegal for the government to promote theocracy or promote a specific religion with taxes. The Free Exercise Clause prohibits the government from preventing the free exercise of religion. While the Establishment Clause prohibits Congress from preferring one religion over another, it does not prohibit the government's involvement with religion to make accommodations for religious observances and practices in order to achieve the purposes of the Free Exercise Clause.
Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).
Possible passages
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Hence it comes that both sides—the “Friends of Order,” who abolished all those freedoms, as well as the democrats, who had demanded them all—appeal with full right to the Constitution: Each paragraph of the Constitution contains its own antithesis, its own Upper and Lower House—freedom as a generalization, the abolition of freedom as a specification. Accordingly, so long as the _name_ of freedom was respected, and…
Karl Marx, The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte
States what Establishment Clause is.
These shocking extremes provoking to extremes of another kind, speculations are let loose as destructive to all authority, as the former are to all freedom; and every government is called tyranny and usurpation which is not formed on their fancies. In this manner the stirrers-up of this contention, not satisfied with distracting our dependencies and filling them with blood and slaughter, are corrupting our…
Edmund Burke, Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke
States what Establishment Clause is.
But *cf. United Christian Scientists v. Christian Science Board of Directors, First Church of Christ, Scientist*, 829 F.2d 1152, 4 USPQ2d 1177 (D.C. Cir. 1987) (holding Priv. L. 92-60, 85 Stat. 857, to be unconstitutional because it violates the Establishment Clause). 2 The Berne Convention Implementation Act of 1988 amended section 301 by adding at the end thereof subsection (e). Pub. L. No. 100-568, 102 Stat…
United States, Copyright Law of the United States of America and Related Laws Contained in Title 17 of the United States Code, Circular 92
Names Establishment Clause.
Related ideas
- James Madison
- Massachusetts
- Latin
- Angel
- Pennsylvania
- United States Senate
- Ten Commandments
- Religion
- Protestantism
- Secularism
- Los Angeles Times
- State religion
- Thomas Jefferson
- Theocracy
- First Amendment to the United States Constitution
- United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit
- Bible
- Alexander Hamilton
- Freedom of religion
- The Federalist Papers
- Church of England
- Connecticut
- Articles of Confederation
- New York (state)
Place in the tradition
Part of Secular humanism.