he meaning of religious freedom remains one of the more contested areas of our constitutional politics. The progressive left tends to emphasize freedom from religion, especially freedom from the influence of traditional religious sexual morality. Social conservatives, by contrast, emphasize the right to be religious, especially the freedom to live and act in the public square according to one’s religious convictions. With President Joe Biden’s recent tweet that transgender equality is the “civil rights issue of our time,” the conflict between these competing views of religious liberty will only be amplified.
Both sides in our current church-state debates claim the Founding Fathers as supporters. Progressives say the Founders gave us a secular constitution that does not acknowledge God or the Bible. The First Amendment, moreover, prohibits the establishment of religion, which Thomas Jefferson said erects a “wall of separation” between church and state.
Conservatives counter that the Founders embraced religion in their deeds. Consider George Washington’s first inaugural, most of which was a prayer. “It would be peculiarly improper to omit in this first official Act,” President Washington declared, my fervent supplications to that Almighty Being who rules over the Universe, who presides in the Councils of Nations, and whose providential aids can supply every human defect, that his benediction may consecrate to the liberties and happiness of the People of the United States . . . .
