Recognizing that the Illinois program is barred by the First and Fourteenth Amendments if we adhere to the views expressed both by the majority and the minority in the Everson case, counsel for the respondents challenge those views as dicta and urge that we reconsider and repudiate them. They argue that historically the First Amendment was intended to forbid only government preference of one religion over another, not an impartial governmental assistance of all religions. In addition they ask that we distinguish or overrule our holding in the Everson case that the Fourteenth Amendment made the "establishment of religion" clause of the First Amendment applicable as a prohibition against the States. After giving full consideration . . . we are unable to accept either of these contentions.
To hold that a state cannot consistently with the First and Fourteenth Amendments utilize its public school system to aid any or all religious faiths or sects in the dissemination of their doctrines and ideals does not, as counsel urge, manifest a governmental hostility to religion or religious teachings. A manifestation of such hostility would be at war with our national tradition as embodied in the First Amendment's guaranty of the free exercise of religion. For the First Amendment rests upon the premise that both religion and government can best work to achieve their lofty aims if each is left free from the other within its respective sphere. Or, as we said in the Everson case, the First Amendment has erected a wall between Church and State which must be kept high and impregnable.
Here not only are the state's tax-supported public school buildings used for the dissemination of religious doctrines. The State also affords sectarian groups an invaluable aid in that it helps to provide pupils for their religious classes through use of the State's compulsory public school machinery. This is not separation of Church and State.
Source: People of State of Illinois ex rel. McCollum v. Board of Education of School Dist. No. 71, Champaign County, Ill., et al., 333 U.S. 203.
R. F. Cushman, "Public Support of Religious Education in American Constitutional Law," Illinois Law Review, Vol. XLV, No. 3 ( July-August 1950), pp. 333-356.
A. W. Johnson and F. H. Yost, Separation of Church and State in the United States ( Minneapolis, 1948), pp. 74-99.
D. W. Kucera, Church-State Relationships in Education in Illinois ( Washington, D.C., 1955).
J. M. Lassiter, "The McCollum Decision and the Public School", Kentucky Law Review, Vol. XXXVII, No. 4 ( May 1949), pp. 402-411.
L. Pfeffer, Church, State, and Freedom ( Boston, 1953), pp. 313-351.
A. P. Stokes, Church and State in the United States ( New York, 1950), 11, 488-641. See especially 11, 495-522.
References for Document 154.
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