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Comparisons to Other Democracies

The great number and vitality of American religious organizations and the religiosity of the
American people are all unusual among industrialized Western nations. America is highly
religious even compared to Western European nations, such as the United Kingdom and
Norway, that have maintained state churches for generations; these churches, either
despite or because of their governmental support, have only weakened over time.42
But it is not simply the absence of an established church that appears to have served
religious Americans so well. The American system has eschewed the extreme church-state
separation of some of its European counterparts, in part because its simultaneous
commitments to free speech and free exercise require toleration of even unpopular
religious speech in the public square. The laïcité laws in France, for example, prohibit even
private religious expression on government property, such as the wearing of religious garb
(hijab, turbans, and prominent crosses) by students in public schools.
In short, the twin policies of non-establishment and the special deregulation of religion
have helped to flourish not only religious Americans and their institutions, but American
government and society more broadly as well.

Notes
1 See, e.g., Edward A. Tiryakian, “American Religious Exceptionalism: A Reconsideration,”
Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 527 (May 1993): 40, 43–
45 (describing this “exceptionalism” and collecting sources).
2 See, e.g., Md. Const. Art. XXXIII (1776); Va. Const. § 16 (1776); N.J. Const. Art. XIX
(1776); N.Y. Const. Art. XXVIII (1777).
3 John Witte, Religion and the American Constitutional Experiment, 2nd ed. (Boulder:
Westview Press, 2005), 80–89.
4 At the time, the United States had no standing army, so all able-bodied men were
expected to serve in their local militia. Militias could be called up in a time of war to create
a national army. See Kevin Seamus Hasson, The Right to Be Wrong (San Francisco:
Encounter Books, 2005), 49–52 (discussing history of conscientious objection in the
colonies).
5 The degree to which conduct (as opposed to pure belief) is protected has varied over
time. See, e.g., Reynolds v. United States, 98 U.S. 145, 166 (1878) (“Laws are made for
the government of actions, and while they cannot interfere with mere religious belief and
opinions, they may with practices.”)
6 In the 1960s, the Supreme Court enlarged conscientious objection (CO) status to cover
nonreligious objectors who demonstrated a deeply held moral view that all war is wrong.
The court refused to extend CO status to those who opposed only a particular war, or
opposed the war on political or pragmatic grounds.
7 Murdock v. Pennsylvania, 319 U.S. 105, 108–09 (1943) (listing “hand distribution of
religious tracts,” “worship in the churches and preaching from the pulpits” as religious
activities enjoying Free Speech and Free Exercise protections).
8 Capitol Square Rev. Bd. v. Pinette, 515 U.S. 753, 760 (1995) (declining to exclude
religious speech from free speech protections, noting that “in Anglo-American history, at
least, government suppression of speech has so commonly been directed precisely at
religious speech that a free-speech clause without religion would be Hamlet without the

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