Blowing in the wind

In the latest skirmish between students and administration concerning religious content at graduation ceremonies, a graduate of a Seattle high school is suing the Everett School District for refusing to allow her and the other members of the school’s wind ensemble to play “Ave Maria” at graduation. Traditionally permitted to select one piece of music to play at the ceremony, the ensemble unanimously chose an instrumental version of “Ave Maria,” but their selection was vetoed by district superintendent Carol Whitehead because, according to the suit, Whitehead believed the piece was too religious.

This occurrence is absurd though not surprising. Public schools have come to the point where they are assuming that anything that is remotely religious may not be presented at school-sponsored events—even instrumental versions of religious songs. However, what interests me more in this case is the fact that Charles Haynes, lead expert at The First Amendment Center, was quoted in the story as saying that, “We’re in a culture war, and anything to do with religion in schools is scary for administrators.”

Haynes is a typical “expert” on First Amendment issues whom the press goes to for predictable quotes whenever a new case arises. He essentially spouts what the United States Supreme Court says the Amendment means and always errs on the side of curtailing religious expression in the public square. Thus, I almost never agree with his assessments, but it is interesting that even such a conventional First Amendment lawyer as Charles Haynes admits that the country is engaged in a culture war.

That phrase is usually only employed by conservative zealots like Pat Buchanan and Pat Robertson. Liberals avoid it like the plague because (a) they do not want to publicize their agenda to change the culture and (b) they do not believe there is such a thing as a culture: instead, they hold to the idea that as long as culture is changing it is evolving for the better. A “culture war” implies that there are two diametrically opposed philosophies of the social condition that are waging a battle for supremacy in our country. Whoever prevails determines the fate of the nation.

These occurrences at graduation ceremonies act as barometers of the larger war, indicating that there is an elite—represented in schools by the administration—that wants to inoculate the culture from any religious influence, and there is a rank and file—represented by the students—that wants to express the importance of the role that religion plays in their lives. The elite have power and the rank and file have numbers. The elite suppress expression through power and judicial decrees while the rank and file pipe up through occasional protest behavior. Obviously, to win the culture war the protests have to become more than occasional. Whether that will happen is anybody’s guess.

 

Cutting commencement

Proving once again that the ACLU only cares about free speech of the non-Christian variety, the liberal legal advocacy group is defending a Las Vegas school district that impeded a high school valedictorian’s commencement speech because it supposedly contained content that was too religious. Officials of the Clark County School District had edited an early draft of Brittany McComb’s commencement speech by cutting references to God, the Bible, and the crucifixion of Christ. When McComb started to give the unedited version of her speech to her fellow graduates and their families, school officials cut her microphone, claiming that the speech would have amounted to school proselytizing on behalf of Christianity.

This is classic hypocrisy from the ACLU. It waves the banner of free speech for even the vilest purveyors of smut, but when a high schooler wants to talk about how God has impacted her life in her valedictory speech the outfit jumps to the defense of the censoring school district. The district appears to be contradicting its own policy on these matters by interfering with McComb’s speech because the policy states that speakers “chosen on the basis of genuinely neutral, evenhanded criteria” are responsible for the content of their expression and “it may not be restricted because of its religious (or anti-religious) content.” McComb was chosen in about the most neutral way possible—earning the title of valedictorian—and therefore her speech should not have been censored, let alone ruined by being cut off in the process of delivery.

The school district’s excuse that they had to shut McComb up because the speech would have been perceived as the school proselytizing about Christianity is complete nonsense because, as McComb herself observed, “People aren’t stupid and they know we have freedom of speech and the district wasn’t advocating my ideas. Those are my opinions. It’s what I believe.” It is sad when a high school senior has more common sense and understands the law better than the school district that taught her or the vaunted ACLU. I hope students continue to protest the asinine curbing of religious expression at commencement ceremonies. Eventually schools will have to rethink their behavior.

 

Hawking nonsense

World-renowned astrophysicist Stephen Hawking is claiming that at a cosmology conference held at the Vatican the late Pope John Paul II told a group of scientists, “It’s OK to study the universe and where it began.  But [scientists] should not inquire into the beginning itself because that was the moment of creation and the work of God.”  One wonders whether the Pope actually recommended to scientists that they “should not inquire” about the beginning of the universe or rather cautioned that they would not figure out the beginning because it was accomplished through God’s miraculous work. 

The latter version seems more likely, and Hawking is either failing to recall the statement correctly or taking liberties with it to suit his own purposes.  It would not be strange at all for the Pope to proclaim that the mechanics of how God began the universe are beyond human understanding; conversely, it would be quite strange for a man as learned as the Pope and who led a church that firmly counsels the use of reason in conjunction with faith to tell scientists not to study God’s handiwork. 

Hawking’s version is likely the result of his penchant for seeking the spotlight and trumpeting his own importance in the scientific community.  In fact, Hawking went so far as to wonder aloud—albeit in the form of a joke—whether the Pope would hand him “over to the Inquisition like Galileo” because he had just presented a paper at the conference on the beginning of the universe.  Comparing yourself to Galileo and taking a shot at the Catholic church all in the same breath requires a hefty ego, and Hawking certainly fits that bill. 

Hawking obviously means for the story to be embarrassing for the Catholic church and probably religion in general because it supposedly demonstrates that believers in religion are scared that scientific inquiry my demystify God’s role in creation.  It is amusing if Hawking actually believes this to be the case because science has, in fact, done the exact opposite: the more science discovers, the more intricate and complicated the universe turns out to be, which confirms rather than diminishes God’s role in bringing about the universe.

 

English the language of “Brotherly Love”

The owner of a famous Philadelphia restaurant has come under fire for posting a sign that reads: “This is America—when ordering, speak English.” Roberto Santiago, the executive director of the city’s Council of Spanish Speaking Organizations, says that the sign is “racist” and that it means Geno’s Steaks does not want to serve Latino customers. Now the Philadelphia Commission on Human Relations has filed a complaint against Geno’s, charging that the sign constitutes discrimination on the basis of nationality or ethnicity. Owner Joey Vento, a grandson of Italian immigrants, is refusing to take down the sign, citing his free speech rights and that fact that no customers are turned away at the restaurant.

I would say that I am surprised that this is controversial except that almost nothing surprises anymore. Telling people they should order in English is racist? Such an idea assumes that language in inherent in race, which is absurd. Language is a learned behavior that a person masters with discipline and time; it has nothing to do with race or ethnicity. The simple fact is that English is the primary language in this country and has been since its inception over 200 years ago. Suppose Mr. Vento actually did require his patrons to order in English or else not serve them—would that really be wrong?

Discrimination in itself is not inherently wrong. Restaurants discriminate all the time based on the attire of customers, the number of people in a party, and how much the customers can afford to pay for meals. What is improper is unjustified discrimination: discrimination based on characteristics over which people have no control, such as race, ethnicity, nationality, and gender. But people do have a choice concerning what languages they learn. Since Geno’s is a private establishment, it is entitled not to serve customers based on values it deems to be important so long as doing so does not violate basic constitutional tenets. In this case, Mr. Vento is simply expressing his opinion that speaking English is important in America, which may discriminate against those who cannot speak English, but it is a perfectly legitimate and constitutional—not to mention rational—view to take.

 

Imprisoning Christian rehabilitation

A federal judge has ruled that the use of taxpayer dollars to support a program at an
Iowa penitentiary designed to rehabilitate prisoners and improve inmate behavior violates the First Amendment’s prohibition on establishments of religion.  The Christian group Prison Fellowship Ministries, which administers the program, has been ordered by the judge to halt its services and repay the state $1.53 million.  Some say that if the court’s reasoning is followed in other jurisdictions it will threaten President Bush’s whole faith-based initiative.  PFM says it will appeal the decision. 

The suit was brought, of course, by Americans United for the Separation of Church and State because the liberals care more about excising Christianity from every corner of society than they do about improving prisoners’ lives.  I am so sick and tired of hearing about how liberals care about the downtrodden when they engineer ridiculous lawsuits like this one.  No prisoner is forced to enter the program, they volunteer for it.  How in the world a voluntary rehabilitation program violates the First Amendment soars well beyond common sense, but there seems to be no end in sight for such absurdities.  Moreover, if you read the overreaching opinion, it seems to me that the federal district judge is the one who violates the principle of separation of church and state by delving so deeply into the faith tenets of the PFM program in order to find it unacceptable.

 

Life or death vote

This November South Dakota may hold the nation’s first popular vote on the issue of abortion in over 30 years if at least 16,728 signatures on a petition are verified by the state’s secretary of state.  In a stark departure from the lawsuit-oriented strategies usually employed by the pro-abortion lobby, the South Dakota Campaign for Healthy Families, a group that opposes the state’s new abortion ban passed by the Legislature claims to have gathered enough signatures to “refer” the law to the fall election ballot.

If they are correct, this could prove to be a watershed test of pro-life dedication to democratic principles.  True commitment to principle is only demonstrated in the fires of testing.  A vote on this particular issue is perhaps the ultimate test of democratic governance because lives are literally at stake.  It is possible that some pro-lifers may oppose an up-or-down vote on South Dakota’s abortion ban, preferring instead to take their chances in the courts and in particular putting their hopes in a newly constituted Supreme Court.  Such opposition would be truly ironic given that it was the strong-arm use of the courts by the pro-abortion lobby that yanked this issue out of the democratic process in the first place in Roe v. Wade in 1973.

If our harsh words about judicial tyranny and our desire to win the cold hearts of those who believe in abortion are to mean anything, those of us in favor of life must not be afraid of a vote by the people on the issue.  Surely it is better to trust in the judgment of thousands of regular individuals about a matter of moral conviction than it is to rely upon the intellectual musings of nine lawyers in black robes who care more about philosophy than life itself.

Win or lose, a vote in South Dakota would give us a glimpse into how the abortion debate would be in this nation if Roe is assigned to the ash heap of history as it deserves because, contrary to pro-abortion propaganda, a reversal of Roe does not mean a nationwide ban on abortion, but rather a return of the policy on abortion to each state in the Union.  Each state would be free to have its legislature or its electorate vote on whether abortion should be legal or illegal.

A loss would not indicate that the people want abortion-on-demand.  It probably would mean that many people still would like exceptions for cases of rape and incest.  While such a policy is not thoroughly logical, it does represent the kind of compromise that often becomes policy on difficult issues.  So long as the vote is a peaceful and forthright demonstration of democratic politics, then we will likely see other states do the same thing.  If so, it would be difficult for the Supreme Court to maintain the charade which claims that there must be one nationwide abortion policy which it dictates from on high.  In other words, we could witness a revolution in abortion politics.

 

Abolishing death and common sense

Cambridge University law professor Adam Benforado confidently predicts that the United States will eventually abolish the death penalty because “[t]he United States is the last Western country to permit it” and “the public is increasingly against it.  The absurdity of the prediction is only matched by its sheer audacity considering that apparently Professor Benforado is unfamiliar with the consistent polling that shows that more than 80% of the American people are in favor of the death penalty.  However, this prediction is not the most outlandish claim the professor offers in this article.

His primary point appears to be that abolishing the death penalty is but the first step toward creating a more “civilized” society in which people do not “kill” other people.  He suggests that “we make decisions to kill people all the time that have nothing to do with criminal justice—or wars on terror, for that matter.”  How do we kill people, you ask?  Well, “[w]hen the government decides not to lower the speed limit or not to ban cigarettes, it makes a decision to end life, just as it does when it elects to have capital punishment.”

This statement is so astonishingly stupid that one is inclined to take Professor Benforado to be making a satirical joke, but the tone of his piece suggests otherwise.  No, he is actually equating the refusal to ban cigarettes with the death penalty.  I am assuming that the professor missed the day they discussed causality in torts class.  It is elementary that a government legalization or ban on something does not cause the consequences that result from the use of that thing.  With cigarettes, for instance, banning the sale of them will not halt all smoking and therefore the people who do smoke will still get the health problems that accompany it.  The government policy simply reduces the number of people who smoke because some people choose to obey the ban while others do not.  The same is true of the speed limit: if the speed limit is 70 mph and it is determined that all people who go 85 mph die, the government lowering the speed limit to 65 mph does not save people’s lives.  Once the speed limit is lowered some people choose to lower their driving speed.  Perhaps some of those who choose to do slow down are ones who go 85 mph, but some of those excessive speeders will not care; after all, they did not care what the speed limit was in the first place.

The common thread of action with both the cigarettes and the speed limit is personal choice.  In other words, people cause things to happen to themselves.  While Benforado acknowledges this by observing that “[t]he government is not driving the car that crosses the median at 60 mph, nor is it sitting at the bedside holding a cigarette to a person’s lips.”  But he passes over this point with a second observation: “[I]f our primary interest is with preserving human life, we ought to be most worried about the role of the decision-maker and not with who ultimately pulls the trap door—whether it is the state enforcing a sentence or a private actor making the fatal choice that we knew, statistically, someone was going to make."

What Benforado is actually calling for here is not just the abolition of the death penalty, but the abolition of death.  I suppose this might be a marvelous idea—except that everyone dies.  There is no way to eliminate all risk or risky behavior in society, least of all in a free society.  Human behavior is too individualistic and unpredictable to be completely controlled.  Even if it could be controlled, there is no guarantee that taking steps to supposedly eliminate one cause of death will not have the unintended result of exposing another one.

More relevant in this country is the fact that part of the price for freedom is that some people will make bad choices; you cannot eliminate all mistakes by outlawing them.  This is not a question of policy, but rather a question of accepting reality, something that Benforado seems distinctly unwilling to do.  In fact, it could well be that his point is that this proliferation of choice—including the choice as to what policies we want enacted—is a bad thing and so we need a lot more regulation in our lives from the government, i.e., government must keep us from making bad choice that could lead to people’s deaths.  This is a tired mantra that has been tried in other places and found wanting.  Invariably it leads to dictatorship, which is the furthest thing from a humane society.

Professor Benforado may have the best of intentions, but his pipe dream requires an abolition of common sense.  If only we could lethally inject this kind of thinking.  

 

Bible study blues

A group at the Heritage Court Apartments in South Carolina has been ordered by the management of the complex to stop holding a Bible study in the common areas of Heritage Court.  The management company, One Management Inc., said that it fears the Bible study “may create the appearance that Heritage Court prefers or limits one religion over another, or even that it prefers residents who are religious over those who are not.”  One Management claims that it would run afoul of the Fair Housing Act if it permitted the Bible study to continue.  However, Housing and Urban Development officials say that position constitutes a severe misreading of the FHA, which simply requires complexes to keep common areas open to all kinds of groups.

This is a prime example of a public law trend seeping into the private sector.  For years courts federal courts have been issuing extreme rulings that prohibit even the most innocuous religious expression in the public square.  The ostensible rationale for these rulings has been that non-believers have a right not only to be free from religious coercion, but also to be free from being offended by any expressions of religious sentiment.  Displays of the Ten Commandments are removed from government property if they deemed to be too “religious,” public prayers at high school football games are not permitted because someone who does not believe in prayer may have to hear it, and Bibles cannot be read aloud in classrooms because a child might understand and choose to emulate the advice found there. 

Now the management of an apartment complex claims that it must remain “religiously neutral,” which to them means they cannot allow religious expression in the common areas of the apartment complex at all.  One Management’s citation to the FHA is bogus because that law simply requires accommodation of all groups, not cessation of religious expression.  So, in reality One Management is falling victim to the myth that there is a right not to be offended when it comes to religion.  The problem is that there is no such right in the Constitution or anywhere else.  Moreover, this a terrible business practice because it leads to alienating the tenets rather than encouraging them to stay by allowing them to use the apartment facilities for an activity they enjoy.

I suspect that One Management will change its policy in the near future because of the attention this situation has drawn from both state and federal officials and because its FHA cover has been blown.  However, the larger problem of private sector entities mimicking the anathema to religion shown by the federal courts in the public square will remain and needs to be addressed.

 

Byrd’s wing and a prayer

Sounding a lot like conservative evangelical preacher, West Virginia’s stalwart Democrat Senator Robert Byrd has proposed for the eighth time in his long career a constitutional amendment to allow voluntary prayer in public schools. In a wide-ranging speech introducing the proposal, Byrd expressed that he “do[es] not agree with many of the decisions that have come from the courts concerning prayer in school or prohibiting the display of religious items in public places. I believe that, in ruling after ruling, U.S. courts led by the Supreme Court have been moving closer and closer to prohibiting the free exercise of religion in America. It chills my soul.”

Sometimes things occur that make you feel as if you have stepped into The Twilight Zone. Robert Byrd introducing a constitutional amendment on prayer and giving a speech like this is one of those occasions. Byrd is the best argument for term limits in existence given that he has been in the Senate forever, he is the king of pork in a body that hands out money like its free, and he will ramble on and on incoherently on the Senate floor about the most irrelevant subjects. But sometimes you have to tip your cap even to someone who is so steadfastly on the other side of so many issues. This is one of those times.

Among the other highlights in Byrd’s speech, he offers a poignant ode to the power of prayer: “We know that while our way may not always be God’s way, His way is the only way. Therefore, our way must be His way. We know that life’s most bitter travails can, at times, sear the human soul, painfully driving good people to their knees — sometimes through no fault of their own. But we also know that, so long as there is life, there is hope. And that hardship can be endured and, in fact, diminished through the power of prayer.”

He derides the idea that prayer should not be allowed because it offends some people. “Yet, in America, prayer is increasingly estranged from public life. Some are hesitant to pray for fear they might 'offend' someone. How ridiculous. To think that prayer can be offensive. Offensive to whom? Non-believers? They need only close their ears. How sad, really, that we cannot share our faith, particularly in an effort to comfort others, without being accused of offending someone or, worse, violating the First Amendment.” One would think that is Justice Scalia talking, not one of the most liberal senators in America.

He lauds the religious beliefs of the Founders: “I think we should not forget the mindset of those who established our democracy. They were not afraid of prayer. They believed in a Supreme Being. And they were proud of their faith. They proclaimed it from the rooftops; they did not hang their heads in shame.”

He speaks in favor of “vivid religious images” that the “Founders did not view . . . as repugnant religiosity, something to be kept under wraps for fear of offending the popular culture. They were creating the culture.”

He upbraids the United States Supreme Court for a skewed focus: “I believe that members of the Supreme Court have placed exaggerated emphasis on the Framers’ alleged intent to erect an absolute 'wall of separation' between Church and State. I do not share that view.”

And he leaves no doubt that he does not approve of the current negative treatment of religion in the public square. “I believe that this ingrained predisposition against expressions of religious or spiritual beliefs is wrongheaded, destructive, and completely contrary to the intent of the illustrious Founders of this great nation. Instead of ensuring freedom of religion in a nation founded in part to guarantee that basic liberty, a suffocation, or strangulation, if you might of that freedom has been the result. The rights of those who do not believe—and they are few in number—the rights of those who do not believe in a Supreme Being have been zealously guarded to the denigration—and I repeat, denigration—of the rights of those who do so believe.”

Alas, as good and true as all of these statements are, Byrd does not get everything right in this speech. It is seemingly innocuous and obvious to observe that “[t]his principle makes a lot of sense to me, namely that government itself should seek neither to discourage nor to promote religion.” Government neutrality concerning religion would be fine save for two problems: (1) Neutrality is not possible; and (2) neutrality was not intended by the Founders.

Concerning the first point, it is not possible for the government simply to play umpire with regard to religion. Too often neutrality ends up resulting in hostility because not favoring religion at all by default favors atheism. The reason for this is simple: either there is a God or there is not; either the supernatural exists or it does not. There is no neutral position on this question. Consequently, the government takes a position whether deliberately or by default, so a determination has to be made as to which position is the better one to take. The fact that religion is a part of so many people’s lives and that it serves as a check on government power are just two of the reasons why government policy erring on the side of supporting religion is a good idea.

The second point—that neutrality was not intended by the Founders—could be proven many times over with historical anecdotes and quotes from the Founders, but it will have to suffice here to observe that the Declaration of Independence, the document which proclaimed the country’s reason for being, insisted that we are all “endowed by [our] Creator with certain unalienable rights” and that government should not violate these sacred rights. Our whole theory of government assumes the existence and importance of God to our lives as individuals and as a nation. Moreover, concerning the Constitution, founding patriot and second President of the United States John Adams once observed: “[W]e have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion. . . . Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate for the government of any other.” Thus, our system will not even work properly if the government insists on trying to achieve this mythical neutrality concerning religion.

It is better to emphasize, as do the words of the First Amendment, that government will not establish one religion or denomination as the official one in this country or blatantly favor one religion or denomination over all others. But to have a bias toward religion in general is to foster a climate more conducive to morality, generosity, and peacefulness. That is what a policy of encouraging prayer in schools is about. Such a policy is not neutral toward religion, but it is proper with regard to the Constitution. Byrd is to be commended for reminding us of that.

 

The Value of Public Faith

Jon Meacham, the managing editor of Newsweek magazine, argues in a recent essay that the benefits of “public religion” in America “have outweighed their costs.” Meacham observes that the rich tradition of public faith in American history led to a belief in God-given human rights that “has created the freest, most inclusive nation on Earth.” While giving religion its due, Meacham steadfastly denies that this religious tradition is predominantly Christian and emphasizes that “America is neither a Christian nation nor a secular one; it is somewhere in between.”

Meacham has some of his history wrong, but I am sympathetic to his argument. Meacham can emphasize the generic references to God made by some of the Founding Fathers all he wants, but it still does not change what the historical record unequivocally demonstrates: America was overwhelmingly Christian at its founding and the society and its laws therefore reflected this Christian influence. The “benefits” for American society that Meacham discusses—including tolerance for other religious beliefs—are essentially all due to Christianity and not other religions. After all, is it a coincidence that “the freest, most inclusive nation on Earth” was founded by Christians, while in the Middle East nations founded by Muslims became authoritarian and oppressive to human rights? How about the fact that the nations founded explicitly on atheism, the Communist nations of the Soviet Union and China, have had the worst human rights records in the world? It is simply political correctness that prevents people from making the connection between Christianity and freedom or the opposite conclusion, i.e., that other religions and non-religion produce oppression. Meacham sidesteps this elephant in the room of his discussion.

However, while we need to guard against the all to easy tendency to diminish the Christian influence on America and instead ascribe it to some vague “public religion,” it is also important to recognize Meacham’s central point that “America has not been wholly religious or wholly secular but has drawn on both traditions.” America is a mixture and part of its genius has been the way it has managed to combine secular tendencies with religious ones so that people with all types of beliefs feel at home on these shores. It is not unChristian to admit that “secular” elements in society have produced some good things because, as the Bible says, God “causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous.” (Matthew 5:45). As a philosophy professor of mine once said, “All truth, no matter where it be found or by whom it is discovered, is still God’s truth.” (Arthur F. Holmes).

This is a valuable insight to remember, first because it keeps Christians humble and second because it reminds us that a theocracy is not necessary (and I would argue not even the Biblical way) to produce a prosperous and healthy society. It is not Christian to force others to come to a belief in Jesus Christ; in fact, such forced conversions do not even count as true conversions to Christianity. (You must not only “confess with you’re your mouth, ‘Jesus is Lord,’” but also “believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, [and] you will be saved. For it is with your heart you believe and are justified . . . .” Romans 10:9-10). Moreover, we are called to live among non-believers (how else could we be “the salt of the earth,” Matthew 5:13, or “go and make disciples of all nations,” Matthew 28:19?), and we are told that most of the time we will be outnumbered by non-believers (“small is the gate and narrow is the road that leads to life, and only a few find it,” Matthew 7:13). Given these facts of our faith, the conclusion seems inescapable that Christians are not to strive for theocracy, but rather are to make the best of the given situation in this fallen world.

Of course, this does not mean we should permit the abandonment of or not advocate for the implementation of Christian principles in society. Indeed, the American example teaches that Christian principles should be fought for and maintained in society and that such efforts will benefit society as a whole. The difficulty lies in finding a balance between such advocacy and implementation and acceptance of secular contributions to our way of life. Harmony between Christians and non-Christians in one nation may seem next to impossible, but it has been achieved in America for over 200 years even though it must be recognized that there has existed sharp tensions between the two for almost that entire period. Domination by either group is not the solution: for Christians this would mean we would be acting no differently than some Muslims throughout the world and for non-Christians this would produce similar horrors to those seen in the Communist world and Nazi Germany because a world without God is a world without restraint. The only way for Christians to achieve this delicate balancing act is to pray and seek God’s guidance at every turn, keeping in mind that those in the other camp probably will not be as gracious as we are called to be by our Heavenly Father. We must stand up for our faith and its importance to our society without acquiring the hubris that leads to our own god-complex.