Civic religion

From RationalWiki

Civic religion is the use of religion and expressions of faith in the public sphere, such as a prayer in Congress or public fora, such as currency.

[edit] The Middle Approach

Between those who would see religion purged from all public environs, and those who embrace it in all its forms, and more, judicial and political moderates favor some form of compromise under which certain religious expressions, by virtue of their distance from any particular sect, and continuous use over time, are seen as areligious cultural and historical landmarks, rather than sectarian expressions.

This approach has been embraced by Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor. During her tenure on the high Court, she evaluated first amendment challenges to public religious displays by examining the totality of the circumstances, and asking whether, in this context, the religious display appeared to have been placed with an exclusionary message. O'Connor, for example, distinguished between a Ten Commandments display placed on a courthouse lawn in recent memory by a fundamentalist politician (invalid; excessive entanglement of church and state) and one placed one hundred years ago and only recently challenged (permissive use of religious imagery, as a historical landmark).^{[citation needed]}