Contributor: America's best idea is under fierce attack

The 1st Amendment, and the separation of church and state, America’s best idea, is at risk as never before.

The notion that church and state should be discrete entities was unprecedented when the founders decided to embark on what one historian has called the “lively experiment” of disestablishment. The founders were well aware of the Wars of Religion and the English Revolution, conflicts largely over religious differences.

In addition, as the founders surveyed the religious diversity in the colonies — from Puritans and Baptists in New England to Quakers, Jews, Dutch Reformed Protestants and Presbyterians in the Middle Colonies to more Baptists in the South and Anglicans, Catholics and even Muslims throughout — they realized that designating any one faith or denomination as the American