AN UNSTEADY ‘WALL OF SEPARATION’: A FEW CONSIDERATIONS

This is a polemical essay concerning the "wall of separation" between church and state in the United States of America. The author observes that there is a political struggle between defenders of religion, primarily Christians, on the one hand, and secularists on the other. Typical reasons given by secularists for a hard and fast division between church and state, and/or religion and politics, are historical, constitutional, and cultural. Underlying all of these reasons perhaps is the idea that faith is cognitively inferior to knowledge and therefore has no place in the public square. The author vigorously contests each aspect of the secularists' position and explores in further detail the epistemological distinctions between faith and knowledge.