Document Type
Article
Publication Date
2005
Publication Information
6 Engage 144 (2005).
Abstract
In McCreary County v. ACLU, a bare majority of the Supreme Court affirmed that secularism is still the overriding principle of church-state law. Their “touchstone” was the “principle” which “mandates governmental neutrality between...religion and nonreligion.” But that’s actually not quite it. “Neutrality” between something and its absence— such as “religion” and “nonreligion”—would be (if it is imaginable at all) at least some of the thing. “Neutrality” between, say, a desert climate and a tropical climate would be someplace like Northern Indiana: rains here quite a bit but nothing like it does in the Amazon.
If “neutrality” means anything here it would seem to mean: middle, or compromise, half-way. But that is definitely not the Court’s deal on religion. It is still Richard Neuhaus’s infamous Naked Public Square—secularism or the absence of religion. The Court’s principle is really “nonreligion” as “neutrality between religion and irreligion.”
Recommended Citation
Gerard V. Bradley,
"And What Do You Say I Am?": The Meaning of the Kentucky Display,
6 Engage 144 (2005)..
Available at:
https://scholarship.law.nd.edu/law_faculty_scholarship/1749