Public Dollars Belong in Public Schools Only

Next week is the Winter Solstice, the longest night of the year, unfortunately I’m feeling a truly long night lasting many years in terms of our government and political trends. Last week the radical right majority of the Supreme Court of the United States showed signs of once again reversing long held precedent to satisfy the demands of the most vocal Republican activists without regard to the consequences. This time the Court heard arguments in the case of Carson v. Makin; the question to be decided is whether the state of Maine is required to subsidize religious education. Based on the questions asked or not asked by the Republican appointed justices the consensus among Court watchers is that they’ll render a decision in favor of your tax dollars being funneled to religious schools.

While some readers may not see a problem with that as they send their children to religious schools and would like the extra funding or the lower tuition that might be available there are sound constitutional reasons for not changing the current state of affairs. The first amendment specifically states that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion” which given that later amendments made it clear that the constitution applies to state and local laws in addition to those passed by congress means that neither the state of Texas nor a county can favor a particular religion over another. Government funding religious activities or organizations has generally been viewed as a step toward establishing a state religion. Funding religious educational institutions with tax dollars comes under that heading.

Should the Supreme Court, as seems likely, decide that it’s fine for government to subsidize religious education realize that it can’t apply to just Christian schools. This is a case of “be careful what you wish for as you might get it”. Expect schools associated with any and all religions to demand their fair share, so look to Islamic schools asking for and getting the same subsidies. Don’t be surprised if a militant atheist group starts up a school and rightfully demands the same subsidies as well. Those on the radical right will first be stunned, then scream bloody murder that they never meant to subsidize everyone’s religious schools, just their own. I don’t mind eating popcorn while watching Republican heads explode but I’d much prefer that we continue the understanding that Constitution requires neutrality, as the Court held in Everson v. Board of Education (1947), “no tax in any amount, large or small, can be levied to support any religious activities or institutions, whatever they may be called, or whatever form they may adopt to teach or practice religion.”

The doctrine of “Separation of Church and State” has served this nation well for nearly 250 years and is central to our freedom. Our founders were well familiar with the consequences of religious wars such as Thirty Years' War (1618-1648), which devastated Germany and killed one third of its population. In our lifetimes we’ve seen sectarian violence in both southeastern Europe and the Middle East. Continuing to chip away at that separation as Republicans have for decades will harm us all by adding more friction to the already polarized political situation we now find ourselves in.

Published in the Seguin Gazette - December 15, 2021

National Day of Prayer Needs To Go

At first blush the annual National Day of Prayer presidential proclamation every first Thursday in May seems innocuous. US Code Title 36, Section 119 states: The President shall issue each year a proclamation designating the first Thursday in May as a National Day of Prayer on which the people of the United States may turn to God in prayer and meditation at churches, in groups, and as individuals. The original bill, which didn’t include a fixed date, was passed in 1952 at the direct suggestion of Rev. Billy Graham. As Graham explained, its purpose was to help bring “the Lord Jesus Christ” to the nation. At the urging of evangelical Christian groups the law was amended to set a fixed date in 1988 so they could organize around it.

Doesn’t it seem at least a little insulting that government should ask the faithful to pray? I mean, if folks are going to pray aren’t they going to pray without the federal government asking them to?

The National Day of Prayer Task Force, chaired for 25 years by Shirley Dobson, wife of Focus on the Family founder James Dobson, organizes 30,000-40,000 events annually. Their events are so exclusively Christian that in 2005 when the Hindu American Foundation sought to join in they were refused. They're Americans so if an organization with the tacit support of the federal government is going to hold events shouldn’t Hindus be welcome just as should Jews, Muslims, Sikhs, and those of other faiths?

All this gets us to what’s really disturbing about the whole National Day of Pray business in the first place. Government in this country has no business endorsing any religion as it is expressly prohibited in the United States constitution in which the First Amendment states: Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof. Equally significant in understanding the founders’ views on the importance of maintaining distance between religion and government is Article IV which specifies that “no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States.”

It’s important for us to understand the circumstances of the time in which the constitution was written. In England, from the 1660s until the 1820s, the Test Acts were used to “establish” the Church of England as an official national church. The Test Acts required all government officials to take an oath disclaiming the Catholic doctrine of transubstantiation and affirming the Church of England’s teachings about receiving the sacrament. The point was to exclude Catholics, Lutherans, and members of other dissenting Protestant sects from exercising political power. In other words, you couldn’t just be a Christian, you had to be the right kind of Christian to even hold the lowliest government office.

Even after the Revolutionary War while the constitution was being adopted, many states included religious qualifications in order to hold public office. Delaware’s constitution required government officials to “profess faith in God the Father, and in Jesus Christ His only Son, and in the Holy Ghost.” North Carolina prohibited men “who shall deny the being of God or the truth of the Protestant religion” from government posts. Those states were a little more open minded in that at least their religious tests Protestants of all varieties to serve in government. Their religious tests were still designed to exclude certain people, often Catholics or Jews, from holding office because they were of the “wrong” faith.

It’s time for this country to fulfill the promise of the constitution and get out of the religion business entirely.

Published in the Seguin Gazette - May 12, 2021

American Taliban Strikes Again

Once again the American Taliban has struck a blow against our Constitution’s protection of religious freedom by promoting the National Day of Prayer on Thursday.

The right frequently makes the claim that if something isn’t specifically stated in the Constitution our federal government shouldn’t be involved in it, yet when it comes to religion and prayer they say just the opposite. The Constitution of the United States makes only two references to religion and both are in the negative. In Article VI it says “…no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States.” In the First Amendment it says “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof;…”

No where in our Constitution does it say that this is a “Christian” nation as theocratic extremists repeatedly assert. No where in our Constitution or its history is there any evidence that it is based on any of the several versions of the Christian bible.

As Rev. Barry Lynn, executive director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State reminds us “Americans don’t need to be told when or whether to pray”. Sadly Mayor Castro refused to sign a proclamation urging citizens of San Antonio to celebrate the First Amendment. It is time our elected officials stop pandering to those who would impose an unconstitutional theocracy on the citizens of this great nation and do away with the “National Day of Prayer”.

LTE in response to a guy that thinks this is a "Christian" nation and always was

Dale Wehrle and other purported constitutionalists might want to revisit some of this nation’s history when claiming that this is or ever was an exclusively “Christian” nation.

Roger Williams who founded Rhode Island in 1635 after a run in with the Puritan government of Massachusetts over separation of church and state wrote a warning against opening “a gap in the hedge, or wall of separation, between the garden of the church and the wilderness of the world”. That sounds a lot like Thomas Jefferson’s “building a wall of separation between Church & State” reference in his letter to the Danbury Baptists.

Perhaps most important to the constitutional argument though is our fourth president James Madison, lauded as the “Father of the Constitution” and primary author of the Bill of Rights. Madison was an ardent proponent of separation of church and state for decades who when opposing Patrick Henry’s efforts to merge them wrote in his Memorial and Remonstrance “[T]he Bill implies either that the Civil Magistrate is a competent Judge of Religious Truth; or that he may employ Religion as an engine of Civil policy. The first is an arrogant pretension falsified by the contradictory opinions of Rulers in all ages, and throughout the world: the second an unhallowed perversion of the means of salvation.”

If a man such as Madison thought it best to maintain separation of church and state where does Mr. Wehrle get the idea that the U.S. was ever a “Christian” nation?

Response to letter attacking science via separation of church and state

In Jeremiah Arevalo’s recent letter regarding separation of church and state he claims a false equivalence between Jesus and Socrates among other misleading statements.

With regard to Socrates, no one makes fantastic suggestions that he was god incarnate, and Xenophon was a contemporary of Socrates so can speak as a primary source. The same can not be said for Matthew, Mark, Luke or John as the earliest of them lived 60+ years after Jesus’ death.

Nothing the teachers are purported to have said is explicitly anti-Christian though the claim about the authenticity of the biblical description of Goliath as a giant might be construed as a questioning the literal truth of the bible. This type of fact based discussion is nothing that I as a student in a Catholic high school didn’t hear from Brother Brendan or my other instructors.

Former State Board of Education Chair, Don McLeroy, would have had science teachers instruct our children that the earth is 6,000 years old because he believes every word of the bible is literally true. Surely the vast majority of us know that there is ample scientific evidence disproving such foolishness, the Pope certainly does.

I wonder if Mr. Arevalo also wants teachers to avoid other such scientific realities as evolution, global climate change and the very real possibility of life on other planets now that the Kepler spacecraft has identified 687 planets orbiting 474 stars.

Religious right wrong again - many faithful support Separation of Church and State

In all of the hullabaloo over prayer at the Medina Valley High School graduation ceremony much was made about the young man who instigated the legal challenge being agnostic. Attorney General Dewhurst was quoted in this paper claiming “Coinciding with these concerns about the erosion of values have been attempts by atheists and agnostics to use courts to eliminate from the public landscape any and all references to God whatsoever”.

Well I’ve got news for your readers while Mr. Schultz is unabashedly agnostic the organization he turned to for help and which eventually filed the lawsuit is headed by Reverend Barry Lynn, an ordained minister in the United Church of Christ. Rev. Lynn supports separation of church and state on the grounds that it protects his faith from interference by government. http://www.au.org/about/authors/barry-lynn.html

Last month the San Antonio chapter of Americans United held a celebration of the First Amendment at which Rev. Lynn addressed Freedom of Religion. In addition to Rev. Lynn there was a panel of members of the San Antonio faith community including Rabbi Sam Weiss, Rev. Paul Zeise (a Lutheran) and Dr. Javier Elizondo, Professor of Biblical/Theological Studies at Baptist University of the Americas. All supported the separation of church and state that Dewhurst and his radical right supporters dismiss.

Next time anyone says that only atheists and agnostics support separation of church and state ask one of the fine members of the local faith community for their view.

More on Separation of Church and State

Steve Mis and I agree on one thing “I and those who agree with me believe in the Constitution” we unfortunately understand The Constitution to mean different things. There’s a lot that The Constitution doesn’t say but is implied and left open to future interpretation so as to keep the U.S. Constitution brief and flexible enough to be useful over time. The Courts have repeatedly ruled that any act by any member of government when acting in their official capacity, that means dog catcher on up to U.S. Senator, which favors one religion over another is unconstitutional based on the establishment clause. The key here is that in order for the individual’s freedom to say a prayer to be restricted they must be acting in their official government capacity. So Mr. Mis’ concern that those who believe as I do want to prevent him from expressing his religious beliefs in public is unfounded.

Regarding his suggestion that I implied he’s a bigot, I’m glad to hear that he isn’t but wasn’t my actual point. People are often uncomfortable when they feel that they are different from all the others in the room. Fairness suggests that we not drive that wedge further by offering a sectarian prayer. One of the enduring principles that makes the United States the greatest country in the world is that we believe that all are created equal and hence we all belong. Let us not allow anything to make members of our community feel otherwise.

Reponse to letter to the editor regarding separation of church and state

In his letter “Writer is wrong about court decisions on separation of church and state” Mr. Mis argues that since the Supreme Court found slavery constitutional one can’t use their decisions as the basis for governing. Mis should remember that at the time the Constitution considered slaves only three fifths of a person but I suppose he should be forgiven that error since the Republican House reading of the Constitution conveniently skipped over that since repealed section.

Mis refers to (Zorach v. Clauson) to support his position but all one must do is read the majority opinion to understand that it in fact supports separation of church and state. The 1952 case involved New York City schools allowing students to sign out of school to attend religious instruction or devotions off campus. From the majority opinion written by Justice Douglas: “The public schools are merely accommodating the people of faith who want to receive religious education. Lack of cooperation by the state towards religion should be construed as hostility.” That’s not so far from allowing kids to sign out of school to go to the orthodontist.

I have only one question for Mr. Mis and anyone who thinks as he does, how would you feel if the prayers offered at the next meeting of the City Council you attend were offered to Hindu gods, Native American spirits or pagan earth mother? After all if you have the right to say a sectarian prayer so do they.

Ken Mercer would destroy our religious freedom in the name of Christianity

Ken Mercer and the other extremist members of the State Board of Education claim that the United States was established as a Christian nation and seek to bring down the wall of separation between church and state. This extremist cabal seems to have forgotten their history lessons regarding one of the primary reasons that many European colonists came to America. We all learned that the Pilgrims came here seeking to escape religious persecution.

The Founding Fathers were not so far removed from the European religious wars between Catholics and Protestant sects all over Europe that they could fail to understand the value of separating religion and the state. In the years 1553 to 1660 there was religiously inspired violence or war between Christian sects somewhere in Europe each year almost without exception.

Mary I, Queen of England (1553-1558), restored Catholicism and in the process had almost 300 religious dissenters burned at the stake in the Marian Persecutions.

In France between 1562 and 1598, there were eight civil wars and other outbreaks of violence that were clearly motivated by religious differences.

The Thirty Years' War (1618-1648), began in Bohemia when Ferdinand II became the king in 1617 over Protestant fears he would recatholicize it.

The English Civil War (1640-1660) involved various Protestant denominations and Catholics and included the beheading of Charles I in 1649.

Ken Mercer doesn’t understand that separation of Church and State protects his freedom of religion and our children’s, but our founders did.

Radicals on State Board of Education seek to undermine religious freedom

At the last meeting of the State Board of Education the members proposed and discussed various aspects of the proposed curriculum developed by the volunteer teachers and subject matter experts. Board member Mavis Knight offered the following amendment: “examine the reasons the Founding Fathers protected religious freedom in America by barring government from promoting or disfavoring any particular religion over all others.” Knight pointed out that students should understand that the Founders believed religious freedom was so important that they insisted on separation of church and state.

Board member Cynthia Dunbar argued that the Founders didn’t intend for separation of church and state in America and claimed instead that the Founders intended to promote religion. She called the amendment “not historically accurate.”

Almost all constitutional scholars agree that separation of religion and state is clearly expressed in Article VI paragraph 3 of the United States Constitution which states: The Senators and Representatives before mentioned, and the Members of the several State Legislatures, and all executive and judicial Officers, both of the United States and of the several States, shall be bound by Oath or Affirmation, to support this Constitution; but no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States.
Ken Mercer voted with the rest of the historical revisionists to defeat the amendment. If you value your right to practice your religion and teach your children that religion Rebecca Bell-Metereau must be elected to the State Board of Education.