A Growing Cloud of Confusion--The Supreme Court on Religion
Albert Mohler
Author, Speaker, President of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary
Friday, October 28, 2005

Over the past half century, the U. S. Supreme Court has accomplished a feat America's founders would surely have found to be inconceivable--they have created a perverse cloud of confusion over the question of religious liberty and the place of religious language and symbols in the public square.

Indeed, the confusion is now so pervasive that a consistent understanding of the Court's directives is practically impossible. In just a few short decades, the Court has decided that organized prayer must be removed from the public school classrooms, that religious symbolism must be removed from official seals and emblems, and that all references to a deity must be reduced to a merely ceremonial meaning if they are to be allowed. On the other hand, the federal courts have allowed for the military to pay chaplains, for the words "under God" to remain in the Pledge of Allegiance (at least so far), and for both houses of Congress to employ chaplains and to begin each session with prayer. The rest