The two religion clauses: no established church, and free exercise (Engel v. Vitale)

Example 1

1. Remember the two halves of the religion part of the First Amendment. The establishment clause: Congress shall make no law “respecting an establishment of religion.” The free exercise clause: or “prohibiting the free exercise thereof.”
2. Ask which way the government is moving. Is it helping or favoring a religion, or is it stopping people from practicing one?
3. Here the government is helping one church with public money, and not the others. Nobody is being stopped from worshipping.
4. Favoring one religion over others is what the establishment clause forbids. So the clause at stake is the establishment clause.

Answer: The establishment clause

Example 2

1. Start with who wrote the prayer: state officials. That means the government wrote it.
2. Then ask where it was said: in public schools. A public school is part of the government, too.
3. So the government was writing a prayer and putting it into its own schools. That is the government promoting religion, and the establishment clause forbids it.
4. Letting students stay silent did not change that, because the problem was not that anyone was forced to pray. The problem was that the government wrote the prayer, and the government’s own schools used it.
5. Students may still pray on their own at school. Engel stopped a prayer written by the government.

Answer: Because the government had written the prayer and was using it in public schools, which violates the establishment clause.