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The Managerial Priesthood that long enforced Everson's wall has suffered successive defeats. Trinity Lutheran granted a church playground equal access to state resurfacing funds. Espinoza opened tax credits to religious schools on the same terms offered secular ones. Carson v. Makin struck down Maine's refusal to fund religious instruction where secular private options were subsidized.
Each ruling rests on the Free Exercise Clause rather than mere tolerance. The Court recognized that excluding religious entities from generally available benefits constitutes targeted discrimination. The Dispossessor's strategy of financial strangulation now collides with constitutional text and precedent.
This reversal does not invent new rights. It recovers the original understanding that the First Amendment protects religious exercise from hostile exclusion. The American founding inherited this principle from the Protestant resistance to established churches that nevertheless refused to disarm believers in the public square.
The governing law remains simple. When the state elects to fund education or playgrounds, it may not condition participation on the surrender of religious identity. To do so substitutes the preferences of the administrative class for the plain command of the Constitution.
Scripture and the historic creeds affirm that parents and churches hold primary authority over the formation of children. The City of Man cannot lawfully confiscate that authority by denying the material means it freely grants to rivals. Every such denial repeats the ancient pattern of Pharaoh and Nebuchadnezzar: control the next generation by controlling the treasury.
The faithful remnant must therefore treat these decisions as bridgeheads rather than endpoints. Religious schools must apply for every available program. Parents must litigate any residual discrimination. State legislatures must align statutes with the new constitutional floor.
Parallel institutions require capital. Neutral funding streams, once secured, reduce dependence on hostile foundations and federal grants. The household and the congregation that reclaim their educational mandate simultaneously reclaim the next generation from the managerial priesthood.
The war continues. The recent line of cases has only removed one weapon from the arsenal of separationism. The remnant must now press the advantage until every sphere of common life again acknowledges that religious exercise is not a private hobby but the ordering principle of a free people.
