The Christian Roots of Church-State Separation

Many secularists argue that the First Amendment prohibition on the establishment of religion is a guarantee of a purely secular public square, requiring the exclusion of religious voices and institutions. Some religious people respond in kind, by opposing the separation between church and state. Professor McConnell will argue that both are wrong. Church-state separation originated in Protestant Christian teaching, was promoted by the most evangelical sects in America at the founding, and rests on Christian theological principles. Michael W. McConnell is the Richard and Frances Mallery Professor and Director of the Constitutional Law Center at Stanford Law School, and a Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution. From 2002 to the summer of 2009, he served as a Circuit Judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit. McConnell has held chaired professorships at the University of Chicago and the University of Utah, and visiting professorships at Harvard and NYU. He has published widely in the fields of constitutional law and theory, especially church and state, equal protection, and the founding. In the past decade, his work has been cited in opinions of the Supreme Court second most often of any legal scholar. He is co-editor of three books: Religion and the Law, Christian Perspectives on Legal Thought, and The Constitution of the United States. McConnell has argued fifteen cases in the Supreme Court. He served as law clerk to Supreme Court Justice William J. Brennan, Jr. and is Of Counsel to the appellate practice of Kirkland & Ellis.