The Path Not Taken: Reinhold Niebuhr, John Courtney Murray, and the American Proposition of Church–State Separation

The years 2017 and 2018 marked the 70th anniversary of the two most significant church–state decisions in Supreme Court history: Everson v Board of Education and McCollum v Board of Education. In those decisions, the justices announced a jurisprudential doctrine that would govern church–state controversies for approximately 50 years: separation of church and state. The justices’ unanimous embrace of church–state separation as the operative principle gave that choice an aura of inevitability, and the widespread public acceptance of church–state separation has confirmed it as a core American value. The Court’s choice of separationism was not inevitable, however; nor was it the only constitutional option. Two of the nation’s leading religious figures, Reinhold Niebuhr and John Courtney Murray, offered the justices a viable alternative approach to separationism: church–state cooperation operating under a modified understanding of separation. It was a path that if taken, would have significantly altered the modern development of church–state relations in the USA.