View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by Northwestern University Illinois, School of Law: Scholarly Commons Northwestern University School of Law Northwestern University School of Law Scholarly Commons Faculty Working Papers 2008 Corruption of Religion and the Establishment Clause Andrew Koppelman Northwestern University School of Law,
[email protected] Repository Citation Koppelman, Andrew, "Corruption of Religion and the Establishment Clause" (2008). Faculty Working Papers. Paper 165. http://scholarlycommons.law.northwestern.edu/facultyworkingpapers/165 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by Northwestern University School of Law Scholarly Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Faculty Working Papers by an authorized administrator of Northwestern University School of Law Scholarly Commons. Forthcoming, 50 Wm. & Mary L. Rev. (2009). Draft: Sept. 12, 2008 Corruption of Religion and the Establishment Clause Andrew Koppelman* Government neutrality toward religion is based on familiar considerations: the importance of avoiding religious conflict, alienation of religious minorities, and the danger that religious considerations will introduce a dangerous irrational dogmatism into politics and make democratic compromise more difficult. This paper explores one consideration, prominent at the time of the framing, that is often overlooked: the idea that religion can be corrupted by state involvement with it. This idea is friendly to religion but, precisely for that reason, is determined to keep the state away from religion. If the religion-protective argument for disestablishment is to be useful today, it cannot be adopted in the form in which it was understood in the 17th and 18th centuries, because in that form it is loaded with assumptions rooted in a particular variety of Protestant Christianity.