I'm Jeffrey Rosen, president and CEO of the National Constitution Center, and welcome to We the People, a weekly show of constitutional debate.

The National Constitution Center is the only institution in America chartered by Congress to disseminate

information about the US Constitution on a non-partisan basis. And today it's

We The People Holiday Edition in a season of many religious celebrations,

complete with public expressions of faith,

we explore the history and contemporary applications

of the First Amendment's Establishment Clause,

which says that Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion.

Joining me to discuss this fascinating question are two of the nation's leading constitutional scholars on the establishment clause.

And as icing on the cake, both of them wrote about the establishment clause for the National

Constitution Center's wonderful new

Constitution, which I want you to check out online

at Constitution Center.org.

Michael McConnell is the Richard and Francis Mallory

professor and director of the Constitutional Law Center at Stanford Law School. and Coyle Chair in Public Law at the Benjamin N Cardozo School of Law,

and Senior Fellow at the University of Pennsylvania

in the Fox Program for Research on Religion and Urban Civil Society.

Michael, Marcy, thank you so much for being here.

It's a pleasure.

Thanks for having me.

Michael, let's begin with your and Marcy wonderful contribution to the interactive Constitution, you wrote a common statement about

what you both agreed that it was originally intended to achieve, and you talked about what virtually all jurists agree that would violate the

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