Free Exercise clause

The Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution states that:

"Congress shall make no law ... prohibiting the free exercise" of religion.

This provision has been applied against the states also, thereby prohibiting some types of government interference with the exercise of Christianity. However, government interference is permitted under some circumstances. For example, In Employment Division v. Smith (1990), the Supreme Court ruled that using illegal drugs in a religious ceremony is illegal.

In recent years conservative majorities on the Supreme Court have used Free Exercise to permit Christian activities in public places, such as schools, that liberals want to ban using the Establishment clause. The line is that Christian activities sponsored by the government or public schools are not allowed, but Christian activities sponsored by private citizens using public facilities are allowed. Furthermore the government is not allowed to discriminate against Christian activities because of their Christian content when such activities would otherwise be allowed. That is a student group with Christian goals cannot be banned if an identical group with non-Christian goals is not banned.

Further reading

• Cookson, Catharine. Encyclopedia of religious freedom‎ (2003) 553pp; excerpts and text search
• Witte, John. Religion and the American constitutional experiment‎ (2004) 322 pages excerpt and text search

see also

• Separation of Church and State
• Establishment clause
• Lemon test
• Lemon v. Kurtzman