Guest Editorial: Issues That Divide: The Triumph of Secular Humanism

LEO PFEFFER (B.S.S., City College of New York; J.D., New York University) is Professor of Constitutional Law and Chairman of the Department of Political Sci ence, Long Island University, Brooklyn, New York, and Special Counsel, American Jewish Congress. He is the author of Church, State and Freedom (1953; rev. ed., 1967) ; The Liberties of an American (1956; rev. ed., 1963) ; Creeds in Competition: A Creative Force in American Culture (1958) ; (with Anson Phelps Stokes) Church and State in the United States (1964) ; This Honorable Court: A History of the United States Supreme Court (1965) ; God, Caesar and the Constitution: The Court as Referee of Church-State Confrontation (1975), and Religious Liberty (1977). Pro fessor Pfeffer has contributed portions to Religion in the State University, ed. Henry E. Allen (1950) ; Cultural Pluralism and the American Idea, ed. Horace M. Kallen (1956); Religion in America, ed. John Cogley (1958); Church-State Relations in Ecumenical Perspective, ed. Elwyn A. Smith (1966) ; The Religious Situation (1968) ; The Politics of Confrontation, ed. Samuel Hendel (1971) ; The Rights of Americans, ed. Norman Dorsen (1971) ; Freedom and Responsibility, ed. Mereld D. Keys (1974) ; and Religious Movements in Contemporary America, ed. Irving I. Zaretsky and Mark P. Leone (1974). His articles have appeared in the law reviews of Boston, Buffalo, Chicago, Georgetown, Michigan, Notre Dame, Stanford, and Western Reserve universities and in such periodicals as Catholic World, Chiristian Century, Churchman, Commonweal, Current History, Journal of Intergroup Relations, Journal of Social Issues, Nation, Princeton Seminary Bulletin, Saturday Review, and Today's Education. JCS has published Pfeffer's "Freedom and Separation : America's Contribution to Civilization" (November 1960), "An Analysis of Federal Aid to Parochial Schools" (November 1961), "The New York Regents' Prayer Case" (November 1962), "The Schempp-Murray Decision on School Prayers and Bible Reading" (November 1963), "A Momentous Year in Church and State: 1963" (Winter 1964), "The Becker Amend ment" (Autumn 1964), and "What Hath God Wrought to Caesar: The Church as a Self-interest Interest Group" (Winter 1971). Mr. Pfeffer has argued the following cases before the United States Supreme Court: Torcaso v. Watkins (1961) ; Lanza v. New York (1962) ; Flast v. Cohen (1968) ; Earley v. DiCenso (1971) ; Tilton v. Richardson (1971) ; Diffenderfer v. Central Baptist Church of Miami (1972) ; Levitt v. Committee for Public Education and Religious Liberty (1973) ; Nyquist v. Com mittee for Public Education and Religious Liberty (1973) ; Committee for Public Education and Religious Liberty v. Nyquist (1973) ; Wheeler v. Barrera (1974) ; and Meek v. Pittenger (1975). He has filed twenty-seven amicus curiae briefs in the U.S. Supreme Court. Mr. Pfeffer has been the recipient of awards from Americans United for Separation of Church and State, the Minnesota Jewish Community Council, the New York Unitarian-Universalist Church, the Brooklyn Civil Liberties Union, the Horace Mann League, and the Committee for Public Education and Religious Liberty. This guest editorial was in its original form presented as a paper to the annual meeting of the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion in Philadelphia 29 October 1976. 1. Leo Pfeffer, "Issues That Divide," Journal of Social Issues 7 (19S6) : 21.