Separation of church and state is enshrined in the United States Constitution. The country’s founders knew well the history of power struggles between church and state—struggles that date back to antiquity. The framers of the Constitution wanted to avoid establishing a state religion, such as that laid down by Henry VIII in England, and they also wanted to ensure religious freedom—the freedom to practice any faith a citizen wished, or not to practice any faith. A reliquary casket (below) in the collection of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco represents the conflict between a king and an archbishop who ruled England—state and church respectively—in the twelfth century, and tells the story of a bloody murder that shook the medieval world.
