Numbers, Facts and Trends Shaping Your World
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Few Palestinian families have deeper roots in Jerusalem than Sari Nusseibeh’s. In the 7th century, immediately after the Muslim conquest of Jerusalem, the caliph Omar the Great entrusted one of Nusseibeh’s ancestors with the key to the Church of the Holy Sepulcher. From childhood onward, Nusseibeh, who was educated as a philosopher at Oxford and […]
When the top stories of the quarter are put into the larger category of general topics, even broader patterns emerge. The war in Iraq becomes part of a larger grouping of coverage of U.S. foreign affairs. The campaign becomes part of a broader topic of politics. Anna Nicole becomes part of a grouping that includes […]
In a new series of occasional reports, “Religion and the Courts: The Pillars of Church-State Law,” the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life explores the complex, fluid relationship between government and religion. Among the issues to be examined are religion in public schools, displays of religious symbols on public property, conflicts concerning the free […]
Given the important role religion plays in the lives of many Americans, it is all but certain that communities will continue to put up religious displays in public places. As a result, courts will continue to wrestle with the same two seemingly conflicting principles that have arisen in past displays cases. On the one hand, […]
The Lynch Decision A Christmas nativity scene in downtown Pawtucket, R.I., brought the issue of holiday displays to the Supreme Court for the first time. The case, Lynch v. Donnelly (1984), involved the city’s sponsorship of an annual display of holiday decorations, which included a crèche (a manger scene portraying the birth of Jesus) as well as a Santa […]
A second category of Supreme Court decisions focuses on permanent, rather than seasonal, religious displays that involve some form of government sponsorship. Most of these cases involve displays of the Ten Commandments. The Stone Decision The court’s first such decision came in Stone v. Graham (1980), a case that focused on a Kentucky statute requiring […]
For most of the nation’s history, public religious displays were not controversial. But in recent decades, a growing number of citizens and civil liberties groups have sued towns, cities and states over religious symbols in the public square, arguing that these displays should be removed because they violate the First Amendment’s prohibition on government establishment […]