Two thoughts on apolitical, pragmatic grounds: This is a good ruling regardless of the importance of religious beliefs one might have. Churches are still subject to baseline rules like building codes, food safety (if they have a kitchen), have to pay their phone bill or else lose phone services,and the like. This represents an appropriate segregation of responsibility and allows parishioners to participate without ha…
> The justices, though they don’t face elections, sometimes describe themselves as politicians Could you cite examples of them saying that? Generally, the justices go out of the way to insist that they are not political. See, for instance: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-court-chiefjustice/u-...
In that he's talking about a perception that the court is not impartial and that the justices are seen as taking positions, and even (by implication) instruction from political parties. This concern, by the way, has existed for a long time, at least to the era of Dredd Scott if not earlier; presidents from Lincoln to FDR and, to a lesser extent to recent times have made the same charge.
And that is the sense in which I have heard various justices (since the 1970s -- I'm an old fart -- through a speech Roberts gave a few years ago which I couldn't find by searching -- in which they need to manage the perception of partiality because the Court is a participant in public life, and indeed in political public life. The sense in which I was quoting is that they are political actors though the entity they are working to protect is the credibility of their institution.
I have no illusion that any judge is superhuman and able to be impartial. But it's interesting to see how Justices' voting tends to shift as they are on the court for a while. It implies a certain independence of mind, though perhaps not from each other.