09/22/2006: Storzer & Greene files amicus curiae Brief in Prison Fellowship Ministries appeal
On September 22, 2006, Storzer and Greene, together with of counsel Richard W. Garnett, Lilly Endowment Associate Professor of Law at the University of Notre Dame, filed a brief on behalf of the Catholic League for Civil and Religious Rights arguing that a federal court erred in engaging in a theological discussion about the relationship between evangelical Christianity and Catholicism:
We agree entirely with the court’s observation that it lacks “theological expertise” and, like the court below, we endorse without reservation James Madison’s statement that religion is, “for the honor of America, perfectly free and unshackled. The government has no jurisdiction over it.” Under the Constitution of the United States, the institutions of religion and government are separate, not to constrain religion, and not because the Framers feared faith, but in order to protect religion, and to check the ambitions and powers of government. Nothing in this Brief is intended to suggest that the courts of the United States ought not to protect religious freedom by protecting the freedom of believers and of the Church from government interference. But this Court’s consideration of the work of InnerChange and Prison Fellowship Ministries should be undertaken without the taint of the district court’s homebrewed theological analysis of that work as narrow, prejudiced, or anti-Catholic, when in fact its is quite the opposite: open-minded, generous, and ecumenically cooperative.
Americans United for Separation of Church and State v. Prison Fellowship Ministries, App. No. 06-2741 (8th Cir.). Read the district court's decision here