Editor’s Note: This week, “The Wall of Separation” blog is featuring the essays and videos submitted by the winners of Americans United’s 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.
In February 2025, the White House Faith Office was established with the express intent to “honor and enforce the Constitution’s guarantee of religious liberty and to ending any form of religious discrimination by the Federal Government.” This action appears prudent, as nearly a quarter of all hate crimes in the United States are religiously motivated, with both antisemitism and Islamophobia on the rise.
However, the two government officials placed in charge of this office, Paula White and Jennifer S. Korn, are evangelical Protestants. In an interview with the Christian Broadcasting Network, White noted that part of her goal with this office is “to make our nation what God established it to be.” This statement indicates a clear leaning towards Protestantism – and Christianity in general – within the federal government, whose concern with “Eradicating Anti-Christian Bias” seems misguided. Christians, who account for roughly 62% of the U.S. population, make up only 8.7% of all religious hate crime victims, according to Pew Research Center and the FBI’s Hate Crime Statistics.
Although it is important to prevent hate crimes against any demographic, overblowing the amount of discrimination Christians face enables the government to justify measures that ignore separation of church and state for the sake of protecting Christians from imagined persecution. This is no secret, with the president himself remarking, “Let’s forget about that for one time,” in reference to questions about the separation of church and state.These efforts impact both religious and non-religious groups negatively, reminding us why it is key to maintain separation of church and state for both secular and religious reasons. LQBTQ+ people have had their rights restricted by policymakers motivated by Christian beliefs and values, while Jews, Muslims, Sikhs, Buddhists, Hindus, and many others in our great nation are largely ignored in efforts to end religious discrimination, despite accounting for over 88% of all religiously motivated hate crime victims.
As a Jewish teen attending a large public school, I have experienced countless instances of antisemitism: simple Holocaust and Nazi jokes, along with the occasional push or shove, and as such, I believe in separation of church and state to promote religious equality. As an American who enjoys history and values the freedoms given to us through our Constitution, I believe in separation of church and state out of principle and patriotism. As the brother of a trans man who is having to face the over 120 new pieces of anti-trans legislation on the books in our nation, I believe in the separation of church and state to prevent those I care about from being oppressed by lawmakers motivated by faith, not by the Constitution they are bound to.
Throughout my time in high school, I have continually stood up for the rights of students to maintain religious freedom within public school. When an English teacher of mine offered students extra credit if they helped decorate his classroom for Christmas – an opportunity not available to Muslim and Jewish students, whose beliefs prevent them from participating in holiday ceremonies or activities of other faiths – I and other disgruntled students brought our concerns to the administration, who helped rectify the issue. As a member of San Diego Unified School District’s Ethnic Studies Advisory Committee, I have worked my hardest to ensure all faiths are represented fairly and accurately in San Diego classrooms.
I am certainly not the first American to be concerned with religion infiltrating our politics. In fact, Roger Williams, a devout minister and British colonist, founded the Rhode Island colony with complete religious freedom in 1636, marking the beginning of secular government in what would later become the United States. Later on, the representatives at the Constitutional Convention of 1787, who consisted of Deists, Presbyterians, Quakers, and many various Christian denominations, enshrined the separation of church and state into our nation’s Constitution. These men, a plurality of faiths, agreed on something important: Religions that emphasize free will and the importance of choosing to turn to God should support a secular government so people can gain an earnest – not coerced or state-sponsored – faith.
Additionally, their devotion to enlightenment ideals and recent escape from Britain’s tyranny inclined them to provide U.S. citizens with as many freedoms as possible. The separation of church and state, as enforced under our Constitution (and more specifically the Establishment Clause) prevents Congress and all lower legislative bodies from passing any law towards an “establishment of religion.” This wording not only prevents the government from systemically attacking single religions, but also stops them from elevating or endorsing others. Ensuring both sides of the freedoms given through the Establishment Clause is critical: Much effort is placed into ensuring religious minorities are not oppressed by our government, yet equal attention must be given to ensuring certain faiths are not protected and supported unduly.
More recently (in a historical sense, at least), numerous groups have popped up to combat rises in Christian Nationalism over the past several decades. Two of these groups, the Interfaith Alliance and Americans United (AU), have worked through coalition-building and legal measures to keep America free for decades. Earlier this year, both groups signed an agreement to protect the Johnson Amendment, a key piece of U.S. Tax Code that prevents nonprofit organizations from endorsing or opposing any political campaigns. In the 2025 Supreme Court case Chiles v. Salazar, Americans United affirmed the efficacy of diverse coalitions by uniting 26 religious organizations – from Baptists and Reform Jews to Hindus and progressive Muslims – to defend a law protecting LGBTQ+ youth. The work of the Interfaith Alliance and AU demonstrate how crucial continued legislation and collaboration are to protecting our religious liberties.
