Washington, USA - Despite new Supreme Court actions on prayers, the Pledge of Allegiance, and the Ten Commandments, the longtime legal battle over where religion ends and government begins shows no sign of stopping.
The Supreme Court's latest rulings failed to offer much clarity on the issue, leaving many sticky church-state disputes to be sorted out in lower courts.
Among them: whether ''under God" should be included in the Pledge of Allegiance recited by schoolchildren, under precisely what conditions the Ten Commandments may be displayed on public land, and whether religious words and symbols can be included in school murals.
The Supreme Court's pair of 5-to-4 rulings Monday amounted to a split verdict on the permissibility of Ten Commandments displays, striking down framed copies in two Kentucky courthouses but upholding a 6-foot granite monument on a 22-acre lot surrounding the Texas Capitol.
''The lesson to people wanting to promote religious symbols is to conceal what their purpose is," said Douglas Laycock, a church-state specialist at the University of Texas law school. ''For the other side . . . it limits how aggressively a state can endorse Christianity."
Justices said Ten Commandments exhibits would be upheld if their main purpose was to honor the nation's legal, rather than religious, traditions, and if they didn't promote one religious sect over another. How long an exhibit has stood -- as well as its location -- also will determine its constitutionality, and locations open to everyone are more acceptable settings than schoolhouses filled with young students, the court held.
''It is very encouraging that the Supreme Court understands the historical and legal significance of displaying the Ten Commandments," said Jay Sekulow, chief counsel of the American Center for Law and Justice, which supports greater public acknowledgment of religion.
Several religious activists are taking steps to move ahead on the issue, despite the confusion on the constitutional issues.
The Rev. Patrick Mahoney, director of the Christian Defense Coalition in Washington, announced plans to try to place displays similar to the monument at the Texas Capitol in 100 cities and towns across the country within the next year. He made the announcement Monday in Boise, Idaho, where an interfaith community network's efforts to get a monument returned to public property have been boosted by the ruling.
Mahoney hopes to work with Christian lawyers to draft a resolution that can be used nationwide by local residents to request the return or the placement of monuments on public land.
''The public display of Ten Commandments unites communities," he said.
Annie Laurie Gaylor, co-president of the Freedom from Religion Foundation in Wisconsin and an opponent of religious monuments, will work with local groups to seek permission to erect a monument in honor of freethinkers on the same Texas Capitol grounds where the Commandments are displayed. ''We can stick our anti-Bible passage up," she said. ''We will plan to fight fire with fire."
Legal analysts said the rulings offer general principles that could guide some pending church-state cases. Thousands of monuments donated by the Fraternal Order of the Eagles in the 1960s that proclaim ''I am the Lord thy God" have a stronger chance in court because they all have the same text as the Texas monument. But courthouse displays are questionable if lawmakers ever mentioned a religious purpose in erecting them.
The court appeared to underscore some of the lines it drew Monday, letting stand yesterday four lower court rulings that struck down Ten Commandments displays in schools and courtrooms in Kentucky and Ohio because they were overly religious. A fifth appeal, of a ruling that barred South Carolina town council from opening its meetings with a prayer invoking Jesus Christ, also was rejected. The US Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit had found that it improperly favored one denomination.