In his 1984 book The Naked Public Square, Richard John Neuhaus explained how a strict separationist reading of the First Amendment which forbids all religious speech leaves the public square “naked.” Neuhaus described the “naked public square” as “the result of political doctrine and practice that would exclude religion and religiously grounded values from the conduct of public business.”
In a recent law review article, Ronald J. Colombo, a law professor at Hofstra University, describes a similar phenomena: the naked private square.
In the latter half of the twentieth century, America witnessed the construction of a “wall of separation” between religion and the public square. What had once been commonplace (such as prayer in public schools, and religious symbols on public property) had suddenly become verboten. This phenomenon is well known and has been well studied.
Less well known (and less well studied) has been the parallel phenomenon of religion’s expulsion from the private square. Employment law, corporate law, and constitutional law have worked to impede the ability of business enterprises to adopt, pursue, and maintain distinctively religious personae. This is undesirable because religious freedom does not truly and fully exist if religion expression and practice is restricted to the private quarters of one’s home or temple.
Fortunately, a corrective to this situation exists: recognition of the right to free exercise of religion on the part of business corporations. Such a right has been long in the making, and the jurisprudential trajectory of the courts (especially the U.S. Supreme Court), combined with the increased assertion of this right against certain elements of the current regulatory onslaught, suggests that its recognition is imminent.
(Via: Mirror of Justice)
