You are right to note that government officials retain their freedom of speech and their freedom to exercise their religion. The Amendment constrains only the government not to promote or otherwise take steps toward establishment of religion. The difficulty, of course, is distinguishing individual from government actions. As government can only act through the individuals comprising its ranks, when those individuals are performing their official duties (e.g., public school teachers instructing students in class), they effectively are the government and thus should conduct themselves in accordance with the First Amendment’s constraints on government. When acting in their individual capacities, they are free to exercise their religions as they please. While figuring out whether someone is speaking for the government may sometimes be difficult, making the distinction is critical.

The WFU paper describes how the courts have dealt with this inherent tension between the freedom of individuals and the constraint on government.

Whatever the case is, the real argument in question is what defines the “promotion” of a religion. I take it to mean the government not mandating this or that religion. I do not take it to mean that government officials cannot speak openly about their religions, which would be in direct contradiction with the idea of freedom of religion in the first place.

They also interpret the 14th Amendment’s guarantee of privileges and immunities of citizenship, due process, and equal protection of the laws to effectively extend the First Amendment’s guarantees vis a vis the federal government to the states and their subdivisions–hence the law does reach the city councils and public school teachers. (While the founders drafted the First Amendment to constrain the federal government, they certainly understood that later amendments, e.g., the 14th, could extend the First Amendment’s constraints to state and local governments.)

Thanks for the informative, well thought and articulate comment. I agree that the separation of church and state is an important principle that ought to be defended. I also agree that the first amendment was purposed for that. However, I do not believe that people today have a correct understanding of what the separation of church and state principle (as declared by the 1st amendment) directly allows and disallows.

The amendment applies creates a prohibition of legislative action by Congress forbidding or endorsing a particular religion. That is why the first clause reads “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion,” and all of the preceding clauses are dependent. I know that in our time people do not tend to use “or,” to connect multiple dependent clauses to an independent clause (they tend to break it up into different sentences) but, in this case, an “or” was used.

That said, the first amendment which creates a wall of separation between church and state applies EXCLUSIVELY to legislation by congress. This does not mean an elementary school teacher cannot volitionally read the story of Jonah to her students or that prayer should be taken out of public schools. Unfortunately we now have entire organizations dedicated to seeking out and eliminating practices like these which are in no way forbidden by the constitution.

Some try to pass off the Supreme Court’s decision in Everson v. Board of Education as simply a misreading of Jefferson’s letter to the Danbury Baptists. Instructive as that letter is, it played but a small part in the Court’s decision. Indeed, it was only after reaching its conclusion based on a detailed discussion of the historical events leading to the First Amendment that the Court mentioned the letter. The metaphor “separation of church and state” was but a handy catch phrase to describe the upshot of its conclusion. The Court’s reading of the First Amendment in this regard was unanimous; all nine Justices agreed on that much, but split 5-4 on whether the Amendment precludes states from paying for transportation of students to religious schools.

Perhaps even more than Thomas Jefferson, James Madison influenced the Court’s view. Madison, who had a central role in drafting the Constitution and the First Amendment, confirmed that he understood them to “[s]trongly guard[] . . . the separation between Religion and Government.” Madison, Detached Memoranda (~1820). He made plain, too, that they guarded against more than just laws creating state sponsored churches or imposing a state religion. Mindful that even as new principles are proclaimed, old habits die hard and citizens and politicians could tend to entangle government and religion (e.g., “the appointment of chaplains to the two houses of Congress” and “for the army and navy” and “[r]eligious proclamations by the Executive recommending thanksgivings and fasts”), he considered the question whether these actions were “consistent with the Constitution, and with the pure principle of religious freedom” and responded: “In strictness the answer on both points must be in the negative. The Constitution of the United States forbids everything like an establishment of a national religion.”

The First Amendment embodies the simple, just idea that each of us should be free to exercise his or her religious views without expecting that the government will endorse or promote those views and without fearing that the government will endorse or promote the religious views of others. By keeping government and religion separate, the establishment clause serves to protect the freedom of all to exercise their religion. Reasonable people may differ, of course, on how these principles should be applied in particular situations, but the principles are hardly to be doubted. Moreover, they are good, sound principles that should be nurtured and defended, not attacked. Efforts to undercut our secular government by somehow merging or infusing it with religion should be resisted by every patriot.

Wake Forest University recently published a short, objective Q&A primer on the current law of separation of church and state. I commend it to you. http://www.adl.org/religious_freedom/WFU-Divinity-Joint-Statement.pdf