The debate over church/state separation is fundamentally a debate about the meaning of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. Briefly, one side in the debate believes that the Constitution gives government the power to regulate some aspects of religion, and that the First Amendment bars only the establishment of a national church. The other side in the debate believes that the Constitution gives government no power over religion, and that the First Amendment should be broadly read to ban all types of interference with religion. In this section we identify what parts of the Constitution are at issue in the debate, and lay out the positions of both sides in greater detail.