The Decline of Church-State Separation

In his new book, Separating Church and State: A History, legal scholar Steven K. Green provides a comprehensive backstory to the fraught and turbulent historical relationship between religion and government in the United States. A concept important to many of the founders and firmly enshrined by past justices of the Supreme Court, the separation of church from state has stood upon increasingly shaky ground since its heyday in the 1940s and 50s. By the 1990s, Green writes, "A principle that had been at the heart of an important area of constitutional law was now openly reviled by opponents and all but abandoned by supporters." In the early 2020s, its future appears terribly uncertain.