Justice John Paul Stevens recently announced his retirement from the U.S. Supreme Court after serving on the Court for 34 years. Stevens, who turned 90 in April, is a World War II veteran—the only veteran currently on the Court—and by all accounts is a truly warm and gracious man. Appointed by President Ford in 1975, Justice Stevens is known for his collegial nature and his respectful demeanor from the bench, along with his preference for bow ties (it’s hard to picture him without one) and his love for the game of tennis (even at 90, he still reportedly plays on a routine basis).

But, above all else, he will be remembered as the intellectual leader of the Court’s left wing. And in that role, he was consistently a staunch advocate for erecting a “high and impregnable wall between church and state” and has issued numerous opinions that have diminished our religious freedoms.

He repeatedly voted against any public recognition of religion. He wrote dissenting opinions in Van Orden v. Perry and County of Allegheny v. American Civil Liberties Union Greater Pittsburgh Chapter, which upheld the constitutionality of certain religious displays on public property. Van Orden considered a Ten Commandments display, while County of Allegheny considered a display that included a nativity scene and a menorah. In Justice Stevens’ view, the First Amendment creates “a strong presumption against the display of religious symbols on public property.” He also dissented in Marsh v. Chambers, which upheld the 200 year old practice of opening sessions of Congress in prayer.

His views were particularly strong in the area of religion and schools. Justice Stevens was the lone dissenter in Westside Community Schools v. Mergens, which upheld the constitutionality of a federal statute that protected the right of public secondary students to form religious student groups on campus.  He wrote the decision in Santa Fe Independent School District v. Doe, striking down the practice of student-led, student-initiated prayer before football games at a Texas high school. And he wrote the decision in Wallace v. Jaffee, striking down an Alabama law that authorized a daily period of silence in public schools for meditation or voluntary prayer. And in Zelman v. Simmons-Harris, he voted to strike down an Ohio school voucher program that parents could use to send their children to private schools, including religious ones.

Perhaps most significantly, however, was Justice Stevens’ deciding vote in Employment Division v. Smith, which concluded that the Free Exercise Clause does not protect against government regulations that are neutral toward religion and are generally applicable—even if the regulations substantially burden religious exercise. Commentators have described this case as a “constitutional bombshell that blew apart the Free Exercise Clause and gutted it of any meaningful protections.”

The last religious freedom case that Justice Stevens will help decide is Christian Legal Society v. Martinez. In that case, ADF attorneys represent a Christian student group that is challenging a public law school’s refusal to recognize simply because it requires its leaders and voting members to share its Christian beliefs. As I discussed in a previous post, this case could have significant ramifications for Christian student groups and churches around the country.

These cases reveal how crucially important Supreme Court nominees are. Please be praying that President Obama will select a replacement for Justice Stevens who will be a strong advocate for our first liberty—religious freedom.

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AOL News published an on-line debate on ADF’s Pulpit Initiative between myself and Barry Lynn from Americans United for Separation of Church and State. My article makes the point that ADF has been making since we launched the Pulpit Initiative in 2008, namely that the IRS has no business being the orthodoxy police and censoring what a pastor says in the pulpit.

Barry Lynn makes the same tired argument that he has made before; that churches voluntarily give up their right to speak out on candidates and elections when they take the gift of tax exemption from the government. The argument is so wrong that it borders on laughable.

Churches cannot be forced to give up their most basic freedoms simply because they obtain a tax exemption – something the government is constitutionally required to give anyway. Church tax exemption is the best way to preserve the proper role between church and state as I have previously argued.

It is ironic and telling that Americans United, an organization that claims to want to protect the “separation of church and state” should be arguing so strenuously for continued government entanglement and monitoring of churches. The current IRS regime of investigating and censoring pastors entangles the government in the internal affairs and workings of the church at its most basic level. Understanding this can only lead us to conclude that AU doesn’t want true separation of church and state as they claim. Rather, AU wants churches to be prevented by the power of the government from influencing government in any way. AU doesn’t want the state to be separate from the church. Instead, it wants the state to control the church.

Not only is AU’s view out of step and inconsistent with a basic understanding of the role of the church in American society, but it ignores hundreds of years of church history in America. Churches have been at the forefront of virtually every great and necessary social movement in our history including ending slavery, ending child labor, promoting women’s suffrage, and the civil rights movement just to name a few. And it was churches and pastors who led the charge for independence during the colonial era. What would have happened if AU’s view of state control of churches was followed in the colonial era? It certainly would have been doubtful whether America would have achieved her independence had pastors kept silent. It was pastors who provided the communication to the people of the moral and Biblical basis for independence and many pastors led the way into battle to gain America’s independence.

AU’s view of the role of church in American society is a view of the state controlling churches and it is just flat wrong and harmful. Pastors must be free to preach from their pulpit without any fear of government censorship or control. Pastor, sign up today for the Pulpit Initiative and stand together with ADF to protect the constitutional rights of pastors and churches to preach freely from their pulpits.

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Government shouldn’t try to tell private Christian educators how to teach Christianity.

                In a decidedly unconstitutional turn of events in April of 2009, the state of Wyoming threatened to shut down a small but well-established Bible school because the school’s Bible classes weren’t state approved.  That the First Amendment prohibits government attempts to control religious education wasn’t enough to stop the state’s actions—at least not initially.  

                The school, Frontier School of the Bible, is a purely religious non-profit technical school that was founded over 40 years ago in LaGrange, Wyoming.  The school’s curriculum is solely aimed at preparing its students for Christian ministry, and the few non-Bible classes taught at the school—like English—are provided only because they aid effective teaching and interpretation of the Bible.  The school has over 1,600 alumni, most serving as missionaries, pastors, and youth ministers throughout the world.  Frontier exists for one purpose: preparing Christian leaders to teach others about God.

                But the state of Wyoming believed that the quality of Frontier’s Christian education might not be good enough for government work, so its education department sent the school a letter last April demanding that it either become approved by the state or close its doors.  And approval by the state didn’t present an attractive choice.  One way to become state-approved would have accreditation.  But for a school that didn’t pay salaries to its faculty or staff (instead, they all have to obtain voluntary financial support, much like missionaries do) in order to keep costs low so ministry-oriented students weren’t crushed by debt at graduation, the sky-high costs of accreditation wasn’t feasible.  Plus, other similar non-accredited Bible schools that have sought accreditation report that it often requires jettisoning the purely Bible-based teaching that was the sole reason for Frontier’s existence.

                The school’s second route to state approval was even worse: getting a state license.  But this would require ceasing to discriminate based on religion both in admitting students to the school and in hiring teachers for its Bible classes.  Nothing could be more destructive to school’s Christian identity and purpose than having its Christian curriculum taught by non-Christians to non-Christians.

                Thankfully, after being challenged on the many constitutional infirmities of demand to the school, the state made the right decisions to protect religious liberty, granting Frontier an interim exemption from the state’s regulations while legislators crafted a fix to the statute.  That fix was signed into law just this month.

                But what if Wyoming hadn’t made the right decision?  It would have set the State up as in authority over the Church to determine the content of theological instruction.  And “setting standards for a religious education is a religious exercise for which the State lacks not only authority but also competence.”  HEB Ministries v. Texas Higher Educ. Coordinating Board, 235 S.W.3d 627, 643 (Tex. 2007).  That is, having a bureaucrat determine the content of a quality Christian curriculum is like having your single neighbor tell you how to raise your children: not only does he not have any right to tell you what to do, he doesn’t know what he’s talking about. 

Christian education is too important to be left in the hands of government.