Oh Horrors! Religious Imagery!

This decision by the U.S. Supreme Court involves the question of whether individual taxpayers may sue for violations of the religious establishment clause. As the Court's decision explains:

It has long been established,however,that the payment of taxes is generally not enough to establish standing to challenge an action taken by the Federal Government. In light of the size of the federal budget,it is a complete fiction to argue that an unconstitutional federal expenditure causes an individual federal taxpayer any measurable economic harm. And if every federal taxpayer could sue to challenge any Government expenditure, the federal courts would cease to function as courts of law and would be cast in the role of general complaint bureaus.

What was the specific complaint here? Did the government give special favored status to a particular church? Did they provide funding to a church to propagate the Gospel? No:

This is a lawsuit in which it was claimed that conferences held as part of the President ’s Faith-Based and Community Initiatives program violated the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment because, among other things, President Bush and former Secretary of Education Paige gave speeches that used “religious imagery” and praised the efficacy of faith-based programs in delivering social services.

Oh yes, clearly, the Framers would have strongly objected to the use of "religious imagery." To quote from the Second Contintental Congress:

The Congress, therefore, considering the warlike preparations of the British Ministry to subvert our invaluable rights and priviledges, and to reduce us by fire and sword, by the savages of the wilderness, and our own domestics, to the most abject and ignominious bondage: Desirous, at the same time, to have people of all ranks and degrees duly impressed with a solemn sense of God's superintending providence, and of their duty, devoutly to rely, in all their lawful enterprizes, on his aid and direction, Do earnestly recommend, that Friday, the Seventeenth day of May next, be observed by the said colonies as a day of humiliation, fasting, and prayer; that we may, with united hearts, confess and bewail our manifold sins and transgressions, and, by a sincere repentance and amendment of life, appease his righteous displeasure, and, through the merits and mediation of Jesus Christ, obtain his pardon and forgiveness; humbly imploring his assistance to frustrate the cruel purposes of our unnatural enemies; and by inclining their hearts to justice and benevolence, prevent the further effusion of kindred blood. [Journals of the Continental Congress, 1774-1789, Saturday, March 16, 1776, pp. 208-209]

Unsurprisingly, the left end of the Court, Justices Souter, Stevens, Ginsburg, and Breyer, disagreed, and managed to demonstrate their inability to read what they wrote:

We held in Flast, and repeated just last Term, that the “‘injury’ alleged in Establishment Clause challenges to federal spending ” is “the very ‘extract[ion] and spen[ding]’ of ‘tax money’ in aid of religion..” ... As the Court said in Flast, the importance of that type of injury has deep historical roots going back to the ideal of religious liberty in James Madison’s Memorial and Remonstrance Against Religious Assessments,that the government in a free society may not “force a citizen to contribute three pence only of his property for the support of any one establishment” of religion.

They seem to have missed something: Madison was writing against tax funding of establishments of religion:

Who does not see that the same authority which can establish Christianity, in exclusion of all other Religions, may establish with the same ease any particular sect of Christians, in exclusion of all other Sects? that the same authority which can force a citizen to contribute three pence only of his property for the support of any one establishment, may force him to conform to any other establishment in all cases whatsoever?

The use of religions imagery and praise for religiously based social programs is hardly funding of establishments of religion.

Even worse--even if the claim that this support of faith-based social programs (which liberals love if these programs are operated by say, the Urban League or the NAACP) is funding religion in some way were true, the dissenting opinion is historically wrong:

Here, there is no dispute that taxpayer money in identifiable amounts is funding conferences, and these are alleged to have the purpose of promoting religion. Cf. Doremus v. Board of Ed. of Hawthorne, 342 U.S.429, 434 (1952). The taxpayers therefore seek not to “extend” Flast, ante ,at 24 (plurality opinion), but merely to apply it. When executive agencies spend identifiable sums of tax money for religious purposes, no less than when Congress authorizes the same thing, taxpayers suffer injury.

As I point out here, early Congressional actions demonstrate that they didn't see the First Amendment as a barrier to direct federal support of religion--even funding religious establishments on a township by township level. Congress reserved section 29 of each township in Ohio for the support of religion. See American State Papers, House of Representatives, 11th Congress, 3rd Session, Public Lands: Volume 2, p. 220, document 187:

It appears to the committee, by the statement of the petitioners, that the third township of the eighth range in the Ohio Company's purchase is a fractional township, being intersected near the centre by the boundary line that separates the track purchased from the donation tract conveyed to the said company; that the said fractional township does not contain the section No. 29, set apart for the support of religion in the several townships in the said purchase, whereby the inhabitants are deprived of the benefit of the ministerial lands.

As late as 1833, you find Congressional bills that make reference to this, such as HR 653, 22nd Cong., 2nd sess.

To authorize the Legislature of the State of Ohio to sell the land reserved for the support of religion in the Ohio Company....

This seems to be the bill that created this, from Journal of the Senate of the United States of America, 1789-1873, December 30, 1801:

Mr. Tracy gave notice that he should, to-morrow, ask leave to bring in a bill to carry into effect the appropriations of lands in the purchase of the Ohio company, in the northwestern territory, for the support of schools and religion, and for other purposes.

From what I have read, each township would vote on which denomination was to receive the benefits of sales of land from section 29, so majority will, within the township, effectively created an establishment of religion.