Plainly, the government may not fund sectarian worship, proselytization or religious instruction. However, it isn t so clear as to whether the government may buy books for a religious school or fund a church soup kitchen for the poor. Religion and government have cooperated since colonial times to provide faith-based services, and this partnership has existed almost without question. A recent study by Stephen Monsma found that many church-affiliated, nonprofit organizations rely on the government for a significant portion of their funding to this day. Although this cooperation seems to contravene directly the previous exhortations of the Supreme Court and the opinions of America s social elite to maintain the high wall of separation, the Court has not held as firm on this point as the metaphor would suggest.
Some scholars claim that even one drop of religion poisons the program s entire well.
They believe that the Constitution requires religion to remain entirely in the private sphere. For example, adherents of this interpretation oppose the use of public dollars to pay for instructional materials in religious schools. If the very purpose of the school is to provide an integrated secular and religious education, then the school, so the theory goes, will undoubtedly use these materials to inculcate religious doctrine. As the government has expanded its regulatory and spending power into almost every area of our lives, this approach marginalizes religion by leaving it little room to operate. Another approach urges government programs to treat religious organizations and secular entities alike.