Resources & Links
- Engel v. Vitale (1962)Prayer in School, Freedom of Religion, Separation of Church and State.
- Engel v. Vitale, 370 U.S. 421 (1962)The state cannot hold prayers in public schools, even if it is not required and not tied to a particular religion.
- Engel v. Vitale: BritannicaEngel v. Vitale, legal case in which the U.S. Supreme Court ruled on June 25, 1962, that voluntary prayer in public schools violated the U.S. Constitution’s First Amendment prohibition of a state establishment of religion.
- Facts and Case Summary - Engel v. VitaleA New York State law required public schools to open each day with the Pledge of Allegiance and a nondenominational prayer in which the students recognized their dependence upon God. The law allowed students to absent themselves from this activity if they found it objectionable. A parent sued on behalf of his child, arguing that the law violated the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment, as made applicable to the states through the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.
Archives, Research & Reference
- Separation of Church and State: Credo ReferenceA Credo Reference landing page on the separation of church and state. This page includes links to reference works, journal articles, and a mind map.
- U.S. Reports: Engel v. Vitale, 370 U.S. 421 (1962).U.S. Reports Volume 370; October Term, 1961; Engel et al. v. Vitale et al.
Freedom of Religion: Crash Course Government and Politics #24
Today, Craig is going to take a look at the First Amendment and your right to freedom of religion. We’ll examine some significant Supreme Court decisions and talk about how they’ve affected our interpretations of the law with respect to stuff like animal sacrifice and prayer in schools. As you’ll see, there aren’t always clearly defined, or bright-line, rules in approaching legal questions. Sometimes tests have to be developed to account for the ever-changing nature of the law and it’s applications - so we’re talk about some of those too.
Perspectives
Religion on Trial
From colonial times to the present, an insightful examination of how courts have determined the extent to which religion is accommodated in American public life. From the internationally renowned Scopes "Monkey Trial" of 1925, which pitted a public school teacher arrested for teaching evolution against the state of Tennessee, Religion on Trial chronicles key court cases that have shaped the tumultuous relationship between church and state throughout U.S. history. This volume chronicles such groundbreaking cases as the 1991 decision ordering blood transfusions for children of Christian Scientists in Norwood Hospital v. Munoz and the infamous case, Engel v. Vitale, that banned prayer in schools and ignited calls for Chief Justice Earl Warren's impeachment. The work addresses such inflammatory contemporary disputes as prayer in schools, allegiance to the flag, and the display of religious symbols on public property, and the impact they have had on American society. A-Z entries cover people, laws, events, and concepts that have shaped the legal debate over religion in the United States A chronology begins in colonial times and extends through the present, with a special focus on important court cases of the 20th century
Democratic Authority and the Separation of Church and State
Democratic states must protect the liberty of citizens and must accommodate both religious liberty and cultural diversity. This democratic imperative is one reason for the increasing secularity of most modern democracies. Religious citizens, however, commonly see a secular state as unfriendly toward religion. This book articulates principles that enable secular governments to protect liberty in a way that judiciously separates church and state and fully respects religious citizens.After presenting a brief account of the relation between religion and ethics, the book shows how ethics can be independent of religion-evidentially autonomous in a way that makes moral knowledge possible for secular citizens--without denying religious sources a moral authority of their own. With this account in view, it portrays a church-state separation that requires governments not only to avoid religious establishment but also to maintain religious neutrality. The book shows how religious neutrality is related to such issues as teaching evolutionary biology in public schools, the legitimacy of vouchers to fund private schooling, and governmental support of "faith-based initiatives." The final chapter shows how the proposed theory of religion and politics incorporates toleration and forgiveness as elements in flourishing democracies. Tolerance and forgiveness are described; their role in democratic citizenship is clarified; and in this light a conception of civic virtue is proposed.Overall, the book advances the theory of liberal democracy, clarifies the relation between religion and ethics, provides distinctive principles governing religion in politics, and provides a theory of toleration for pluralistic societies. It frames institutional principles to guide governmental policy toward religion; it articulates citizenship standards for political conduct by individuals; it examines the case for affirming these two kinds of standards on the basis of what, historically, has been called natural reason; and it defends an account of toleration that enhances the practical application of the ethical framework both in individual nations and in the international realm.
The Religious Roots of the First Amendment
Traditional understandings of the genesis of the separation of church and state rest on assumptions about "Enlightenment" and the republican ethos of citizenship. Nicholas Miller does not seek to dislodge that interpretation but to augment and enrich it by recovering its cultural anddiscursive religious contexts - specifically the discourse of Protestant dissent. He argues that commitments by certain dissenting Protestants to the right of private judgment in matters of Biblical interpretation, an outgrowth of the doctrine of the priesthood of all believers, helped promotereligious disestablishment in the early modern West. This movement climaxed in the disestablishment of religion in the early American colonies and nation.Miller identifies a continuous strand of this religious thought from the Protestant Reformation, across Europe, through the English Reformation, Civil War, and Restoration, into the American colonies. He examines seven key thinkers who played a major role in the development of this religioustrajectory as it came to fruition in American political and legal history: William Penn, John Locke, Elisha Williams, Isaac Backus, William Livingston, John Witherspoon, and James Madison.Miller shows that the separation of church and state can be read, most persuasively, as the triumph of a particular strand of Protestant nonconformity - that which stretched back to the Puritan separatist and the Restoration sects, rather than to those, like Presbyterians, who sought to replace the'wrong' church establishment with their own, "right" one. The Religious Roots of the First Amendment contributes powerfully to the current trend among some historians to rescue the eighteenth-century clergymen and religious controversialists from the enormous condescension of posterity.