"…And a very important reason we have the Establishment Clause is to keep one religious church, or sect or cult from seizing state power and then violating everybody else's religious freedom. And so many of the cases we've seen in American history, like Engel v. Vitale or Stone v. Graham, about the Ten Commandments resolutions, or about prayer in the schools, they're about one group seizing governmental power and then imposing religious orthodoxy on everybody else.
That's why we say the Establishment Clause and the Free Exercise Clause stand best when they stand together. They stand for the same principle, which is the right of each person, every man, every woman, every child, to make their own decisions and not to be imposed upon and coerced by an establishment church.
The value of religious freedom is one that's critical to the First Amendment and a free society. In this free society, the American founders were rebelling against millennia of established churches, religious warfare between the Catholics and the Protestants, Holy Crusades, inquisitions, witchcraft trials, you name it. They wanted to break from the nightmare of theocratic rule and the imposition of religious orthodoxy and doctrine on free citizens…"
https://thehumanist.com/magazine//features/we-look-forward-to-continuing-our-work-we-have-a-lot-more-work-to-do/
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