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.
Religious and non-religious groups alike individually advocate for the separation of church and state through orchestration of movements and specific causes where the groups utilize their following and influence for advocacy. The groups do this primarily to uphold the integrity and original will of the United States Constitution. Groups such as the American Humanist Association and the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism are both successful groups with the intention of upholding the legal clause of the separation of church and state in America. Their success and examples give students, such as I, who are interested in social justice and making a change, motivation and a sense of hope that their advocacy isn’t futile.
The American Humanist Association isn’t a religious group, but still places a lot of significance on the separation of religion and our government. The group has a multitude of efforts to uphold the separation, but one of the most important and most intriguing is their legal efforts. This branch of the American Humanist Association is its own smaller team of attorneys that “provide the zealous advocacy that humanists and others need to defend constitutional rights” called the Appignani Humanist Legal Center.
The AHA works with this center to not only directly influence and uphold the clause of American separation of church and state, but does so by filing specific lawsuits where the outcomes will have an impact on American laws. The center’s staff is made up of volunteer lawyers who use their free time for advocacy. The lawyers’ motivations come from nothing more than a desire to exercise the civil duty as a lawyer to protect the U.S. Constitution; their work is active and persistent, even though it means working, outside of an already established and busy work schedule, for free.
The Appignani Humanist Legal Center has had impacts on cases such as American Humanist Association v. Elementary School District No. 22 of Adair County, Oklahoma, where an Oklahoma school was bringing Christian missionaries into elementary schools to force religious education on children. The center won a victory in this case, and as of April 2023, the district acknowledged the breaking of the constitutional clause of the separation of church and state and issued an apology to the public.
Cases such as these that the center has fought for not only impact the specific districts, but also impact individuals emotionally. I’ve been concerned recently regarding the separation of public schools and religion due to the fact that I am a student in Texas, where it could become illegal not to display the Ten Commandments in every public school classroom, or even for any other religious text to be displayed as well. [Editor’s note: AU and allies are fighting this law in court.] I view this as forcing non-secular beliefs on children from the ages of 4 to 18, especially when the younger children in Texas are extremely impressionable to these beliefs, and as the public school system is funded by the government, these beliefs are mandatory to be promoted by schools.
On the other hand, yet still in the same category of advocacy, the group Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism (RAC) is a branch of the organizations called Union for Reform Judaism and the Central Conference of American Rabbis, which work toward maintaining the constitutional barrier between church and state whilst the organizations themselves are non-secular. The RAC uses the past of Jewish persecution and discrimination to clarify why they advocate, stating on their website that “American Jews have enjoyed the constitutionally-protected freedom to exercise religion and to organize communal lives under equal protection of the law. As members of a religious minority whose history is so dominated by oppression, we are especially sensitive to any effort to weaken the safeguards of pluralism and minority expression.”
The group is led by Rabbi Jonah Dov Pesner, who has a strong history of advocating for social justice in all regards, and was even “named one of the most influential rabbis in America by Newsweek magazine,” demonstrating the impact he has made on America through activism. The other leaders of the organization include various members of the Jewish community throughout the Northeast and the Southern United States, all of whom come from diverse backgrounds with their own personal connections to social justice and why they fight for the separation of church and state, which can be read more about on the RAC’s website.
In 2024, the group worked with similar interfaith organizations to push back against the creation of school chaplain programs in Texas public schools. A chaplain in a public school serves as a sort of religious counselor who specifically deals with religious support and counsels using non-secular teachings. The RAC, in tandem with other interfaith organizations, was extremely successful in preventing these programs from being implemented in Texas schools. In fact, they were so successful that I, a Texas student, had never even heard of this when it was occurring because the RAC was so efficient and effective in getting this program shut down. Organizations such as the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism provide hope to people, religious and non-religious alike, that as Americans, no matter what we believe in, we can all advocate for constitutional rights such as the right to maintain the separation of church and state.
Furthermore, there are numerous advocacy groups, both secular and non-secular, who make large impacts in the fight to uphold the constitutional right given to all Americans of the separation of church and state. No matter how small, such as a small win in a school district, or large, such as an entire court case won, these institutions manage to make an impact on individual people and students who may become the next great leaders of advocacy in the future.
