Fourteenth International Conference on Religion & Spirituality in Society

Abstract

This project re-evaluates the 1985 Katcoff v Marsh U.S. court case to consider the constitutionality of the chaplaincy and issues of separation of church and state. Although the U.S. Department of Defense won this lower court case, as I will show, this legal challenge to the chaplaincy compelled the military to radically reframe the role of the chaplaincy. According to this ruling, chaplains were to ensure the free exercise of religion by American soldiers wherever they might be deployed. As I argue, this marked the beginning of a radical revision of how the First Amendment and its Free Exercise Clause had been understood. By placing this ruling in the context of the history of the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment and some key free exercise cases from the 19th-21st centuries, I make clear the significance of this case. I demonstrate that what changed with the Katcoff decision include: (1) a shifting emphasis in first amendment jurisprudence to emphasize free exercise over strict separation, (2) that Katcoff provided an innovative reading of the First Amendment religion clauses, and (3) the impact of Katcoff on the role of the military chaplaincy and broader cultural understandings of religious freedom. In so doing, I demonstrate how the Katcoff case is part of a legal legacy that has produced a form of religious freedom that now privileges, contrary to its stated goal, a limited expression of religiosity while enabling the right to religion to trump other civil rights in the U.S.