In June the U.S. Supreme Court struck down a key provision in the Defense of Marriage Act and dismissed, on technical grounds, a case challenging same-sex marriage in California. The rulings were considered victories for... Read More

The name Alton Lemon may not ring any bells for you, but it should. Lemon, who died on May 4 at age eighty-four, was the lead plaintiff in an important 1971 Supreme Court case dealing... Read More

On June 17, 1963, the U.S. Supreme Court handed down one of its most important rulings dealing with the role of religion in public education, a decision whose effects are still felt today. In Abington... Read More

My first job in Washington, DC, was editing a trade magazine for the men and women who worked in the corrections industry. This was the mid-1980s, and I recall that back then some in the... Read More

Pundits spent a lot of time chewing over the results of the November election, but most seemed to agree on one thing: the religious right lost big. Religious right groups had managed to put aside... Read More

Polls indicate that some interesting shifts are under way in religious life in the United States. The number of people identifying their religion as “none” has crept upward again, now hovering at around 20 percent.... Read More

I’ve written in these pages before about David Barton, a Texas man who poses as a historian and is a hero to the religious right because of his work “proving” that separation of church and... Read More