Sponsoring Religion as History

[Brooks Fudenberg]

On Wed, 10 Dec 1997, Doug Laycock wrote:

>         Today's governmental agency can sponsor religion because some
> earlier government agency sponsored religion, which provides the legitimate
> secular purpose of displaying authentic history, is a proposition I have
> wondered about for a long time.  At some level, it must be right, if the
> historic purpose is great enough.  But it is plainly subject to pretextual
> abuse.
>
>         It bears a family resemblance to questions discussed earlier about
> religious art and religious music.

It is also the flip side of a point I made some months ago, re:  the
governmental interest in "preserving" historic churches under historic
preservation law--e.g., the church in Charleston, SC whose steeple the
Union used as the target while shelling the city.  If the government may
properly require the preservation of churches-as-part-of-history (and I
think it may), it should also be able to sponsor the preservation of
religious-themes-on-government-property-as-part-of-history.


Brooks R. Fudenberg
University of Miami School of Law

P.S.  I seem to be commenting on Doug Laycock's posts with some regularity
today, so I promise, after this, a moratorium.