Justice John Welch wrote that “Legal Christianity is a solecism, a contradiction of terms” since if “Christianity is the law of the State, like every other law, it must have a sanction.” The state would have to provide adequate penalties “to enforce obedience to all its requirements and precepts. No one seriously contends for any such doctrine in this country, or, I might almost say, in this age of the world.” In other cities across the country, school boards also moved toward secular rather than nonsectarian schools.
