Defending Religion as a Public Good

The Supreme Court's ruling in American Legion v. American Humanists Association prevented a wrong, but missed an opportunity to do some good.

The high court was right to thwart the aggressive iconoclasm of the Humanists, who sought to have the Bladensburg Memorial Cross removed, demolished, or maimed, claiming that its presence on public property violated the Establishment Clause of the Constitution. Yet the justices should also have probed more deeply and reconsidered a flawed understanding of the Establishment Clause that has distorted our thinking about the role of religion in politics for decades.