She writes:
"The latest salvo in America's war over prayer in public schools was fired in Illinois last week when atheist activist Rob Sherman sued his daughter's suburban Chicago district to protest a new state law that mandates a daily moment of silence. Sherman and his 14-year-old daughter, Dawn, said the 15-second silent period observed in her high school is interrupting her education.
The Shermans have a habit of sweating the small stuff. Dawn successfully campaigned to scratch "God Bless America" from her school's homecoming song list this fall. Her father has battled to remove religious symbols from city seals, sever the link between the Boy Scouts and a local police department and stop student recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance".
"Through a series of rulings on largely symbolic matters, judges have sent a powerful message that religious faith is something citizens should keep to themselves".
"That message does not match the vision of America's founding fathers. Contrary to claims by revisionist historians, the founders did not see the First Amendment as a way to purge religion from the public square. They saw it as a way to prevent the establishment of a state church that threatened to stifle authentic religious expression and make religion subordinate to the state".
"The founders considered religion essential to America's character and crucial to the endurance of a vibrant, virtuous democracy. George Washington said "religion and morality are indispensable supports" to political prosperity. John Adams warned that our Constitution was designed "only for a religious and moral people" and is "wholly inadequate to the government of any other."
My response:
Ms. Carroll Campbell
I think that your St. Louis Post-Dispatch column is right on the money that the Shermans are extending their views of the establishment of religion in the public sphere too far. Your column also does a pretty good job of portraying the double-edged sword of the religious clauses of the first amendment- the establishment clause and the free exercise clause.
Most laws treating religion deal with the lines of the balance between the two. On the one hand, law protecting against the establishment of religion can impinge on the free exercise of it. Laws over-allowing the free exercise, where free exercise becomes promotion, step into the realm of the public establishment of religion.
I agree with your assessment that religion had a prominent place in the minds of the founders, and in the founding of the United States. James Morone's book, 'Hellfire Nation', does a pretty good job detailing one side of the role of religion in the public life of U.S. History, where the evangelistic aspects of righteous moralizing intruded upon and damaged the secular freedom of Americans.
The history you cite from the other side of this argument, I think is persuasive concerning the limits drawn by your argument. The founders obviously did not think that religion could be eliminated completely from public life. I agree with your assessment- the Shermans are going too far in their interpretation of the establishment clause and are pushing their own levels of the tolerance and free exercise of religion in the public sphere on others. Your short paragraph deals nicely with the reasonable common-sense need for balance.
"Surveys find that the public resents such extreme secularization efforts. Proselytizing and force-fed Bible verses have no place in public schools, but most Americans can distinguish between catechism classes and 15-second silent periods".
Ms. Carroll Campbell is right. It is fine if the Shermans don't want to be forced to pray- they can do anything with their 15 seconds of silence they want. But to want to eliminate the 15 seconds altogether because others are praying is ridiculous, and infringes on the freedom of others to do with the 15 seconds what they want- including pray.
An argument of the role of religion in American life, from the moral perspective, I would say in line with your sensibility, is Pope John Paul II's (The Great) encyclical letter 'Evangelium Vitae' (the Gospel of Life), which magnificently decries the over-secularization of everyday life, that has developed so far into a 'culture of death'. As the great Pope stated:
"Even in the midst of difficulties and uncertainties, every person sincerely open to truth and goodness can, by the light of reason and the hidden action of grace, come to recognize in the natural law written in the heart (cf. Rom 2:14-15) the sacred value of human life from its very beginning until its end, and can affirm the right of every human being to have this primary good respected to the highest degree. Upon the recognition of this right, every human community and the political community itself are founded".
and then later...
"In fact, while the climate of widespread moral uncertainty can in some way be explained by the multiplicity and gravity of today's social problems, and these can sometimes mitigate the subjective responsibility of individuals, it is no less true that we are confronted by an even larger reality, which can be described as a
This culture is actively fostered by powerful cultural, economic and political currents which encourage an idea of society excessively concerned with efficiency. Looking at the situation from this point of view, it is possible to speak in a certain sense of a war of the powerful against the weak: a life which would require greater acceptance, love and care is considered useless, or held to be an intolerable burden, and is therefore rejected in one way or another".
So to extend the public sphere legal argument of the role of religion in public life, to the moral argument, the balance between first amendment religious clauses deal indirectly with the moral balance of freedom of the individual where that freedom becomes freedom of the powerful to do evil to others.
I would say that the battle for where the balance is drawn between free exercise and establishment, directly affects the moral balance between individual freedom, and evil done to others.
Our Constitutional law must balance between freedom to exercise religion and the establishment of religion, to preserve freedom, to preserve a sense of public obligation and morality, and to protect the individual in the war of the powerful against the weak.
Sincerely,
Richard J. Luczak II
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