1946 - Religion

Religion

The U.S. Supreme Court's 5-to-4 decision February 10 in Everson v. Board of Education upholds a New Jersey court's ruling that providing state funds to reimburse parents for having their children bused to parochial schools does not violate the "establishment clause" in the First Amendment, but Justice Hugo Black says in his majority opinion that the term "no establishment" means that neither the federal government nor any state "can pass laws which aid one religion, aid all religions, or prefer one religion over another," nor can a tax in any amount be "levied to support any religious activities or institutions." The wall between church and state stated by Thomas Jefferson in 1802 "must be kept high and impregnable," Black says, but while he concludes that New Jersey did not breach that wall Justices Harold Burton, Felix Frankfurter, Robert Jackson, and Wiley Rutledge hold that it did. Fundamentalist leaders will go on exercising their political clout to have elected officials use taxpayers' money to fund "faith-based" schools and charities (see Engel v. Vitale, 1962).

The Revised Version of the New Testament is published after 17 years of work, revising the American Standard Version of 1901. Forty-four Protestant denominations have appointed a committee of 22 biblical scholars headed by Yale University Divinity School dean Luther A. Weigle, 65. Its Revised Standard Version of the Old Testament will appear in 1952 (both are based on the King James version of 1611).

"Mother Cabrini" is canonized at Rome July 7 and becomes America's first saint (see 1889; 1917).