First Things RSS Feed - Phillip H. Harris https://www.firstthings.com/author/phillip-h-harris en-us Copyright 2025 First Things. All Rights Reserved. ft@firstthings.com (The Editors) ft@firstthings.com (The Editors) Mon, 20 Jan 2025 16:57:21 -0500 https://d2201k5v4hmrsv.cloudfront.net/img/favicon-196.png First Things RSS Feed Image https://www.firstthings.com/rss/author/phillip-h-harris 60 Leaping Headfirst Into the Smith Trap https://www.firstthings.com/article/1991/02/leaping-headfirst-into-the-smith-trap https://www.firstthings.com/article/1991/02/leaping-headfirst-into-the-smith-trap Fri, 01 Feb 1991 00:00:00 -0500 Richard John Neuhaus has joined the chorus of those singing a lament to the death of religious liberty ( “Polygamy, Peyote, and the Public Peace,” October 1990). The cause of the choir’s mournful tune is the Supreme Court’s decision in the so-called peyote case,  Employment Division v. Smith. In that case, Justice Antonin Scalia, writing for himself and four other members of the Court, knocked religious liberty off its rightful pedestal as the “first freedom” and relegated it to the position of a dependent afterthought. As a proponent of the importance of religion in public life, Neuhaus is right to be concerned, even outraged.

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