The Founders Debated the Church/State Relationship

Walter Berns

Walter Berns is the John M. Olin professor emeritus at Georgetown University and a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative public policy research organization. He has been a delegate at the UN Commission on Human Rights and has written several books, including In Defense of Liberal Democracy and Making Patriots.

In the following excerpt Berns describes the creation of the religion clauses of the First Amendment by the first Congress. The Congress agreed that there should be no restrictions on the free exercise of religion and that the federal government should not be allowed to establish a national religion. However, there was some disagreement over whether states should be allowed to establish a religion and whether either states or the federal government should be allowed to aid religions. In the end, according to Berns, the wording of the amendment reflects a compromise between these various factions, an outcome that has resulted in continued debate about the meaning of the establishment clause up to the present.

Source

Walter Berns, The First Amendment and the Future of American Democracy. New York: Basic Books, Inc., Publishers, 1976. Copyright © 1976 by Basic Books. Reproduced by permission of Basic Books, conveyed through Copyright Clearance Center, Inc.

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