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(OPINION) Before putting his neck on the chopping block, King Charles I turned to his chaplain seeking personal peace after the chaos of the English Civil War.

The king was, on that infamous 1649 day, pondering heaven, hell and forgiveness.

“To show you that I am a good Christian,” the king said, pointing to London Bishop William Juxon, “I hope there is a good man that will bear me witness that I have forgiven all the world, and even those in particular that have been the chief causers of my death. Who they are, God knows. I do not desire to know. God forgive them.”

This isn’t the kind of theology that ordinarily shapes U.S. Supreme Court decisions. Nevertheless, it was part of a litany of historical references during debates preceding a recent decision requiring Texas to grant a convicted murderer his Baptist pastor’s audible prayers and comforting touch during his execution.

This was a rare moment in which activists on both sides of America’s culture wars cheered for “religious liberty” — a freedom that until recently didn’t require cynical “scare quotes” that suggest uncertainty. This trend in First Amendment discourse has, for me, become the most important story I have covered during the third of a century — as of this week — in which I have written this national “On Religion” column.

The big question: Why did appeals to centuries of tradition work this time?

The condemned prisoner, John Ramirez, told the court he believed his pastor’s “laying on of hands on him as he dies, and the vocalization of prayers and scripture, will assist his passing from life to death and will guide his path to the afterlife.”

In his decision, Chief Justice John Roberts saluted the “rich history” of evidence supporting this prisoner’s request “to have his pastor lay hands on him and pray over him during the execution. Both are traditional forms of religious exercise.”

Obviously, “history and tradition really matter when it comes to civil rights,” noted Eric Rassbach, senior counsel at Becket, a firm focusing on religious liberty cases. For starters, Texas officials were arguing with George Washington, Rassbach told reporters in an online forum.

The Becket brief — by professor Michael McConnell of Stanford Law School and Josh McDaniel of the Harvard Law School Religious Freedom Clinic — argued, “Our Nation has an unbroken history of allowing these very practices before, during and after the Founding. Indeed, if an ounce of history is worth a pound of doctrine, here there are pounds of history on offer — from the executions of deserters during the Revolutionary War ... to the Army executions of Nazi war criminals after the Nuremberg Trials.”

A large conservative coalition filed similar arguments, including the Christian Legal Society, the National Association of Evangelicals, the Anglican Church in North America, the Rutherford Institute, the Southern Baptist Convention, the General Conference of Seventh-day Adventists and others.

However, American Civil Liberties Union religious freedom expert Daniel Mach also released a celebratory statement: “Texas has given no good reason for denying Mr. Ramirez’s reasonable request for basic religious accommodations during the execution. This welcome decision will help him find spiritual comfort in his final moments.”

Unity of this kind was common as recently as the 1990s and the landmark 97-3 U.S. Senate vote backing the Religious Freedom Restoration Act. But church-state activists now find it much easier to agree when affirming the First Amendment claims of prisoners than those of religious believers — think bakers, photographers and florists — hesitant to affirm, with words and deeds, the doctrines of the sexual revolution.

The Ramirez case celebrations “involved what the case was NOT about,” said philosopher Francis Beckwith. “It didn’t focus on any of the culture-war issues that have dominated American politics” in recent decades.

“Pastoral prayers with a prisoner facing death are the perfect example of what most people think of as religious acts. This case is about a man facing the end of his life, a moment when he is most vulnerable,” said Beckwith, who also teaches church-state studies at Baylor University. 

However, he added, church-state battles about weddings “have become so important and symbolic because this is where secularism has started to make claims on matters that for centuries have been intensely religious. ... At this point, some religious traditions and doctrines are more popular than others.”

Terry Mattingly leads GetReligion.org and lives in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. He is a senior fellow at the Overby Center at the University of Mississippi.