The Supreme Court Wants to End the Separation of Church and State

Justice Alito doesn’t think society is Christian enough. Recent court decisions show how he intends to remedy that.

Part two of a separation of church and state series

The separation of church and state is at risk.

Considered alongside two First Amendment rulings last term, the Dobbs decision marks a serious step in an emerging legal campaign by religious conservatives on the Supreme Court to undermine the bedrock concept of separation of church and state and to promote Christianity as an intrinsic component of democratic government.

The energy behind this idea was apparent in Justice Samuel Alito’s speech in July for Notre Dame Law School’s Religious Liberty Initiative in Rome.

Calling it an “honor” to have penned the 6-3 majority opinion in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, and mocking international leaders for “lambast[ing]” the ruling, Alito spent the bulk of his remarks lamenting “the turn away from religion” in Western society. In his mind, the “significant increase in the percentage of the population that rejects religion” warrants a full-on “fight against secularism” — which Alito likened to staving off totalitarianism itself. Ignoring the vast historical record of human rights abuses in the name of religion (such as the Taliban in Afghanistan and even his own Catholic church’s role in perpetuating slavery in America), Alito identified the communist regimes of China and the Soviet Union as examples of what happens when freedom to worship publicly is curtailed.

Protection for private worship, he argued, is not enough. Because “any judge who wants to shrink religious liberty” can just do it by interpreting the law, Alito insisted that there “must be limits” on that power.

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The New York Times wrote in July 2022 about the Christian right’s influence in politics and some political candidates’ call for the end of separation of church and state.

“The Christian Right has been influential in American politics for decades, especially on issues like abortion, prayer in schools, opposition to gay marriage. They talk about themselves as the quote, ‘traditional family values’ party. As a politically active voting bloc, they want to see their moral and political ideas represented in American life more broadly.”

- Elizabeth Dias

Although polls show that declaring the United States a conservative Christian nation is a minority view, the same was said about the reversal of Roe. This Supreme Court clearly doesn’t care.

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