Church autonomy gathering

I'm back from a fascinating, two-day roundtable conference of scholars and practitioners on "church autonomy."  The conversations were fascinating; what a treat to hear so many stories from folks who are "in the trenches" of church-autonomy cases.  Some of the questions we kicked around -- and I'd welcome MOJ-ers' thoughts -- included:  What is the constitutional source of the church-autonomy doctrine(s)?  What is its content / reach?  How can lawyers, judges, and our fellow citizens be educated about the doctrine and its importance, particularly in a post-clergy-sex-abuse-scandal context, and particularly when -- as Alan Wolfe has reported -- Americans generally regard religion as spirituality, and churches as little more than overlapping personal experiences?  How can the doctrine be framed (can it be framed?) in a way that is both true to the relevant constitutional text, history, and structure, *and* to our various ecclesiologies?  And so on.

This is, I think, the religious-freedom issue of our time.