legal definition of religion edgar pearlstein asks fri may whether the supreme court or any other government authority has attempted a legal definition of religion the universal military training and service act of exempted from the draft those whose religious training and belief was opposed to participation in war in any form it defined r t b as an individual s belief in a relation to a supreme being involving duties superior to those arising from any human relation but not including essentially political sociological or philosophical views or a merely personal moral code in the case of united states v seeger the supreme court broadened the definition so as not to restrict it to explicit theists justice tom clark delivering the court s opinion said we have concluded that congress in using the expression supreme being rather than the designation god the test of belief in a relation to a superme being is whether a given belief that is sincere and meaningful occupies a place in the life of its possessor parallel to that filled by the orthodox belief in god of one who clearly qualifies for the exemption where such beliefs have parallel positions in the lives of their respective holders we cannot say that one is in a relation to a supreme being and the other is not my immediate reference is the first freedom by nat hentoff delacorte dell yours james kiefer
