"In defense of clergy, the court strikes blow for religious liberty"

In 1977, in McDaniel v. Paty, the U.S. Supreme Court delivered a landmark ruling that held unconstitutional one of the last anticlerical remnants of the founding era, a 1796 Tennessee law that prohibited ministers and priests from holding public office.

The statute, drafted at the dawn of the republic in the name of separation of church and state, reflected a widespread legal policy among the earl...