Abstract

From the start, Americans were wrestling with the proper connections between "private and public felicity." On its face, the first line of the First Amendment to the Constitution seems to settle the issue: "Congress shall make no law respecting the establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof." Thomas Jefferson declared that this provision "buil[t] a wall of separation between church and state." While the proscription against meddling with religion originally applied only to the national government, the Fourteenth Amendment extended the Constitution—and, in theory, Jefferson's wall—to the state governments. But the Constitution is just the start of the story. America's boisterous, protean religious life sends waves of fervor breaking against Jefferson's wall. Religious fervor provokes moralistic attitudes that filter through American politics. This paper examines the reach of this moralizing effect with a glance at two very unlikely—that is, apparently secular—policy domains: health care and jails.