Think of it as one of the defining mantras of America’s church-state orthodoxy: state officials are supposed to avoid getting entangled in deciding what is good doctrine and what is bad doctrine. They are, of course, allowed to worry about matters of profit, fraud and clear threat to life and health.

However, the legal powers that be have also had wrestle with other questions tied to the stunningly liberal (in the old sense of that word) framework created by the First Amendment: Who gets to decide what is a “religion” and what is not? How does the state decide who is sincere and who is, well, sleazy?

You can see all of these issues rumbling about in an important New York Times piece that I have been trying to sort out for some time now. This topic has been covered before (click here for earlier GetReligion posts), but this story — in my opinion — probes deeper. Here is the sweeping double-decker headline:

Inside the War for California’s Cannabis Churches

Illegal marijuana dispensaries outnumber legal ones more than three to one in California. What’s the role of the cannabis church?

Now, church-state experts have — at the U.S. Supreme Court and in Congress — wrestled with issues related to religious rights that involve drugs that are or have been illegal. It’s natural to ask if these religious organizations are offering rites incarnating centuries of religious traditions and doctrines (think Native Americans and peyote) or are they modern innovations to help people avoid laws they do not accept?

At first, I thought that money questions were going to completely dominate this Times piece — which is understandable. Is the Jah Healing flock a church or a cannabis storefront? I was glad when broader church-state issues entered the discussion.