More than 200 years after Thomas Jefferson and James Madison launched the freedom of religion v. freedom from religion debate, Monday’s U.S. Supreme Court decision allowing prayer at government meetings suggests the Jeffersonians and Madisonians remain in a dead heat, observers said.
The court’s 5-4 decision in Greece v. Galloway, 12-696, could have a significant impact on church-state jurisprudence, as the majority found nothing constitutionally askew about an upstate town’s decision to open its meetings with what turned out to be, on many occasions, prayer that expressed Christian beliefs. But the decision did not go as far as religious rights groups wanted, nor as far as “wall of separation” absolutists feared.
