The Supreme Court, red states, and Trump
Unlike the court’s older important religious freedom rulings that protected members of minority religions from discrimination, the recent cases have protected practitioners of mainstream Christianity.
It is not just the court. All over America, the wall separating church and state is getting hit with a Republican battering ram.
A few weeks ago, Oklahoma Republicans approved the nation’s first religious charter school — St. Isidore — offering Catholic religious instruction and financed by taxpayers. They claimed that excluding religious schools from charter funding would violate the First Amendment’s protection of religious freedom.
Texas lawmakers have pushed bills requiring the Ten Commandments be posted in every classroom in the state, allowing chaplains to replace counselors in schools, and letting school districts set time for staff and students to pray and read religious texts.
Republican state lawmakers are falling over themselves to pass book bans, abortion prohibitions, and anti-trans laws — and justify them with scripture.
“Put on the full armor of God. Stand firm against the left’s schemes,” Florida governor and Republican presidential candidate Ron DeSantis proclaimed at the Christian Hillsdale College (substituting “left’s schemes” for the “devil’s schemes” of Ephesians 6:11).