The Rev. Dean Kelley; Expert on Religious Freedom

The Rev. Dean Kelley, 70, an expert on freedom of religion. Kelley was a United Methodist minister who became the executive in charge of religious liberty issues for the National Council of Churches. He frequently testified before Congress, filed friend of the court briefs with the U.S. Supreme Court and spoke widely across the country on church-state issues. Over the years he championed the religious rights of groups as diverse as the Unification Church, Scientologists, Amish, Christian Scientists, Roman Catholics, Jews and Muslims. He organized successful opposition to efforts to amend the 1st Amendment to permit prayer in public schools and was a key force in the passage of the Equal Access Act to enable students in public schools to form religious clubs. Born in Cheyenne, Wyo., he earned a master’s degree from Denver’s Iliff School of Theology and spent 13 years as a minister in Colorado before going to the National Council of Churches. For the last 20 years, he had been working on an as yet unpublished five-volume treatise titled “The Law of Church and State in America.” On Sunday in Swanzey, N.H., of cancer.