The U.S. Supreme Court is poised to decide between two competing visions of the First Amendment this term in a pair of cases out of Oklahoma. Under one theory, the religion clauses (“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof”) are complementary, both aiming to facilitate religious liberty. Under a second theory, those clauses are on a collision course — with the establishment clause (the first half) authorizing the government to restrict religious liberty even when doing so would violate the free exercise clause (the second half).
The Supreme Court should find that the collision theory of the religion clauses is irreconcilable with history and tradition. In fact, the federal government’s funding of religious education from the Founding through the turn of the 19th century is a prime historical example disproving the collision theory.
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