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Politics, Religion, And The First Amendment, Mark W. Cordes

Faculty Peer-Reviewed Publications

This article examines some of the lesser-studied constitutional issues surrounding the religion-in-politics debate. Part I of the article examines the perceived relation of religion and politics at the nation's founding, focusing on two issues: 1) the role religion played in America's political vision at the time, and 2) the nature of church-state separation anticipated by the First Amendment. Part I does not attempt to resolve the numerous questions revolving around both of these issues, but rather simply examines the issue of religion and politics. On such a basis, this article argues that religion, though not the dominant vision, was certainly …