Editor’s Note: This month, “The Wall of Separation” blog will feature Q&A-style interviews with the first-place winners of the 2025 AU Student Contest, which asked high school and college students to reflect on this two-part prompt: How and why do religious and/or nonreligious groups, on their own or together, advocate for the separation of church and state? How have they been successful, and what does their example mean for present and future advocacy for the separation of church and state? You can find all of the winning essays and videos here. Submissions do not necessarily reflect the views of Americans United.
Today’s conversation is with Alannah Estvander, a student at Thiel College in Pennsylvania. She created the first-place college video.
Estvander: I first became aware of church-state separation due to my mother. She taught social studies, so I always knew it was [facing] a problem within our country, but I did not know the extent of it until my junior year of high school, taking AP government. All the stories I learned about piqued my interest, and I started doing my own research on cases and how they still affect those communities today.
Estvander: In my opinion, there is not really an effective way to communicate church-state separation. Our country and communities are so divided now that it is almost impossible to rally everyone together and talk about a topic without involving personal bias.
However, pushing it in schools is still one of the most effective ways, as well as bringing in different faith communities to make it clear that faith and politics are two separate ideas and that you can be of your faith, but be associated with separate political parties.
Estvander: Even though my future career plans do not align with anything closely related to this issue, I can still do my part as a citizen. Such as continuing to speak up when [it’s] in question, and participating in politics on all levels, especially by voting. All of our voices deserve to be heard.
You can watch Alannah’s AU Student Contest video here.
