GUEST OPINION: Religion vs. government battles ahead

By CHARLES C. HAYNES
First Amendment Center
Let’s start the New Year with a conundrum as old as the Republic: When religious convictions clash with secular laws, how far should government go to accommodate religious claims of conscience?

From Colonial conflicts over the refusal of Quakers to take up arms to the more recent refusal of Jehovah’s Witnesses to salute the flag, American history is replete with robust arguments over the limits of “free exercise of religion” as guaranteed by the First Amendment.

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