Using the First Amendment to Establish Religion and Destroy It.

In the modern era public funding is a poison that destroys religion, even as it makes religion toxic to society at large. So let’s review how recent Supreme Court decisions related to religion and pubic funding will play out over the long term. 

1. The first amendment of the US Constitution does not mention whether  “The free exercise of religion“ is public or private. For the last 70 years or so the Supreme Court has assumed that the founding fathers meant the private exercise of religion was to be free, and that the public exercise of religion could not receive any public support. That is probably what the founding fathers meant. 
2. “No law respecting an establishment of religion,” has also been understood by previous courts to mean that providing any public funding, or a public venue, for religious use was “an establishment of religion” and thus forbidden.
3. The current Supreme Court has taken a much different attitude toward the meaning of the first amendment. It has maintained that so long as access to public venues is open to privately organized groups and activities, then religious activities and groups must have equal access to those venues. 
4. The same is true with regard to equal access for public funds for specific activities, such as education. In other words the right to the free exercise of religion includes equal access to funds and venues that are open to other private groups. The Court believes that restriction of access amounts to a restriction of the free exercise of religion. In short religious groups must be treated on an equal footing with all groups whether religious or not. Which on the face of it just seems fair. No discrimination against religion.
5. But note: the Supreme Court referred to below has interpreted the First Amendment, which has always been referred to with the term "separation of church and state" to actually mean that church and state can be joined in common endeavors so long as the state treats the church like any other private institution. 
6. And this opens the door wide for the establishment of religion via the back door. All a government (usually city or state) needs to do is gradually choke off funding to public schools and put that funding into scholarship funds and grants for private schools. According to recent Supreme Court decisions this funding instantly becomes available to religious private schools.  
7. All the state hast to do is choke off all funding to public adoption agencies and make funding available to private adoption agencies and instantly religious adoption agencies have access to state funding and can impose their particular religious agendas on their work. And so on. The Supreme Court has allowed the empowering of religion through strangling the public sector and funding the private sector, which now includes for all practical purposes all religious institutions. 
8. And this is exactly what is happening in the State of Texas, whose dominant political party just called for an end to all property taxes, which is to say all funding for public education.  
9. Arguably, of cours,e this empowers all religions equally. It doesn’t establish a particular religion. It just establishes religion. Leaving aside whether this is what the founding fathers wanted, it is easily to see that it is not really true. In a country where there is a single highly dominant religion, empowering that religion simply diminishes other religions and eventually pushes them out of the public space. 
10. Let’s take the state of Maine, which the Supreme Court ruled must give public funding to private religious schools. https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/21pdf/20-1088_dbfi.pdf. It isn’t difficult to see that in small rural towns the only religious school, and possibly the only school at all, is going to be Christian. So what if one is Muslim? Or Hindu? Or Buddhist? These groups are too tiny to build their own schools, even collectively. Not all religious groups have the ability to participate in this newly available largesse. 
11. Or, and this has already arisen in the Maine case, the religious school may discriminate both with regard to staff and students when it comes to sexuality. Then what choice do people have if they aren’t allowed access to the religious school? Just as Muslims in Maine are unlikely to have a large enough community to support a Muslim school, so it is unlikely that LGBTQ students and teachers will be able to start a school and therefore receive public funding. 
12. (It should be noted that since the decision in this case Maine’s attorney general has said that the Christian schools involved still won’t receive funding because they refuse to give up discriminatory policies with regard to students and staff.    https://www.edweek.org/leadership/despite-supreme-court-ruling-maines-religious-schools-face-hurdle-to-state-tuition/2022/06. But it must also be noted that in earlier cases Justice Alito clearly signaled that he believes that a requirement of non-discrimination cannot be sustained any more than a requirement to be non-sectarian. https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/20pdf/19-123_g3bi.pdf. )
13. I lived for 20 years in countries in which the state supported religious institutions even though it maintained that all religions enjoyed freedom of religion. In Austria, for example, the state funded religious education in the schools - employing large numbers of pastors, priests, and other religious educators. However, here were so few Methodist students, or even Protestant students, and they were so widely spread, that it was impossible for them to receive religious education in their local school. Muslims, Jews, Hindus, and Buddhists were only slightly better off. Yet it was easy for Catholics that made up 90% of the population. Saying that all religions had equal access to public funds for religious education was a joke. (In a particular case in 1979 I testified before Congress on this lack of religious freedom through effective state establishment of religion.)
14. In Austria one might have thought that all this access to public funds, which extended to the preservation of “historic” Roman Catholic institutions, would be good for the Roman Catholic Church. It wasn’t. In fact the insistence of the Roman Catholic Church on its privileged place in education simply made the Austrian public cynical of all religions. In the time I lived there most religious affiliation was rapidly declining, Roman Catholic most of all. Because when you empower religion with state funding and you inevitably destroy its credibility. Methodism in Austria might have been small, but absent government support and its children receiving religious education in the home and at church, where it belongs, it was growing.
15. Back in the United States religious people, particularly Christians who are most privileged with our widespread private schools, tens of thousands of churches, and manifold service institutions, need to think hard about whether we really benefit from equal access to government funding. History suggests that public funding is a poison that destroys us, even as it makes us toxic to society at large.