Kagan appointment: How separate are church and state in the United States?

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Jul 212010
 

Should we view the following astonishing statistics as separation of “church and state” in the United States, or rather “government without representation”?

The current makeup of the United States Supreme Court includes 6 Catholics and 2 Jews. If Kagan’s nomination goes through, there will be 6 Catholics and 3 Jews on the Supreme Court.  The make-up of the court would be 66.6% Catholic justices and 33.3% Jewish justices.

As of 2008 the U.S. population professed to be 76% Christian with 25.1% of the population specifying Catholicism. This means that slightly over 50% of the American population professes to be Protestant. The Jewish faith makes up 1.2% of the 2008 population and 15% of the population stated that it had no religious affiliation. Here is a graph with a more detailed break out.

This is a list of the current supreme court justices with their religious affiliations.

John Roberts – Catholic

Stephen G. Breyer – Jewish

Ruth Bader Ginsburg – Jewish

Anthony M. Kennedy –  Catholic

Antonin Scalia – Catholic

Sonia Maria Sotomayor – Catholic

Clarence Thomas – Catholic

Samuel Alito – Catholic

John Paul Stevens  – Protestant (retired June 29, 2010)

Elena Kagan – Jewish (Her nomination passed the Senate Judiciary Committee on July 20, 2010.)

If you’d like a more detailed look at the history of the Supreme Court and religious affiliation in our country, scroll through this interesting page.

At this point, I’m beginning to feel a little, no a lot, like Marvin, the robot in Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy….