Law Commons^™

The Congressional Chaplaincies, Christopher C. Lund

Christopher C Lund

Twenty five years ago, in Marsh v. Chambers, the Supreme Court considered the congressional chaplaincies, and concluded that they were not “an ‘establishment’ of religion or a step toward establishment,” but instead were “simply a tolerable acknowledgment of beliefs widely held among the people of this country.” That latter phrase has been repeated hundreds of times in cases and law review articles; it suggests that the chaplaincies are uninteresting and uncontroversial and that they have been so throughout our history.

The Court in Marsh looked only briefly at the history of the chaplaincies. But a deeper look at that history …