At a time when we see around the world the violent consequences of the assumption of religious authority by government, Americans may count themselves fortunate: Our regard for constitutional boundaries has protected us from similar travails, while allowing private religious exercise to flourish...Americans attend their places of worship more often than do citizens of other developed nations, and describe religion as playing an especially important role in their lives. Those who would renegotiate the boundaries between church andstate must therefore answer a difficult question: Why would we trade a system that has served us so well for one that has served others so poorly?

Sandra Day O'conner in McCreary County vs. American Civil Liberties Union of Kentucky. In an editorial in The Forward, a weekly Jewish newspaper, Leonard Fein strongly suggests that congress ask Supreme Court nominee, John Roberts, how he sees the Supreme Court's tradition on church-state separation, how he sees the necessary balance between the Free Exercise Clause and the Establishment Clause. Fein correctly warns that the omission of questions relating to the separation of church and state represents an "ominous" sign.

But the fact is that neither the court itself nor public opinion can be viewed as settled. School prayer, charitable choice, the proselytizing activities at the U.S. Air Force Academy, even the idea of a wall of separation are matters of intense debate, spurred on by the manifest Christianization of America. And religious views then insidiously spill over into the debates about evolution, stem-cell research, gay rights and more; all these are affected, and many infected, by inappropriate religious argument and by a radical misunderstanding of the First Amendment.