870
Souter, J., dissenting
prompted challenges to programs ranging from construction subsidies to hearing aids to textbook loans. Any criteria, moreover, must not only define the margins of the establishment prohibition, but must respect the succeeding Clause of the First Amendment guaranteeing religion's free exercise. Ibid. It is no wonder that the complementary constitutional provisions and the inexhaustably various circumstances of their applicability have defied any simple test and have instead produced a combination of general rules often in tension at their edges. If coherence is to be had, the Court has to keep in mind the principal objectives served by the Establishment Clause, and its application to school aid, and their recollection may help to explain the misunderstandings that underlie the majority's result in this case.
A
At least three concerns have been expressed since the founding and run throughout our First Amendment jurisprudence. First, compelling an individual to support religion violates the fundamental principle of freedom of conscience. Madison's and Jefferson's now familiar words establish clearly that liberty of personal conviction requires freedom from coercion to support religion,1 and this means that the government can compel no aid to fund it. Madison put it simply: "[T]he same authority which can force a citizen to
1 Jefferson's Virginia Bill for Establishing Religious Freedom provided "[t]hat no man shall be compelled to frequent or support any religious worship, place, or ministry whatsoever . . . ." Jefferson, A Bill for Establishing Religious Freedom, in 5 The Founder's Constitution 84 (P. Kur-land & R. Lerner eds. 1987); see also Rosenberger v. Rector and Visitors of Univ. of Va., 515 U. S. 819, 870-872 (1995) (Souter, J., dissenting). We have "previously recognized that the provisions of the First Amendment, in the drafting and adoption of which Madison and Jefferson played such leading roles, had the same objective and were intended to provide the same protection against governmental intrusion on religious liberty as the Virginia statute." Everson v. Board of Ed. of Ewing, 330 U. S. 1, 13 (1947).
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