The Alliance Defending Freedom has stepped into the battle concerning prayer at public school events in South Carolina.
As reported by the Georgetown Times last week, the American Civil Liberties Union has issued Freedom Of Information requests to every school district in the state as the organization investigates religious activities that take place in schools and at school-related events.
Last week, Georgetown County School District attorney, David Duff, strongly urged the school board to discontinue the practice of beginning board meetings with a Christian prayer. Instead he said the panel would “be safe” if they opened the meetings with a moment of silence.
Board Chairman Jim Dumm said the board will follow that advise and have moments of silence at board meetings and discontinue prayer at other events such as graduation ceremonies.
The ACLU joined forces with the ACLU of South Carolina last month to launch a “Religious Freedom Goes to School” campaign to encourage freedom from religion in South Carolina’s public schools.
The organization, in a letter to school districts, says its campaign is being conducted to protect “time-honored First Amendment rights.”
The ACLU’s statewide inquest began after an incident last year in Chesterfield County in which a Christian rock artist known as B-Shoc and youth evangelist, Christian Chapman, were allowed to hold a concert during the school day at New Heights Middle School in Jefferson.
Duff explained to the school board the First Amendment — while known mostly as the freedom of speech act — does contain clauses that prohibit government entities from promoting or fostering religion.
The Alliance Defending Freedom disagrees with the ACLU’s interpretation of the Constitution.
“The Constitution should be the only permission slip students need to exercise their freedom of religion,” said Alliance Defending Freedom Legal Counsel Matt Sharp. “The ACLU’s ‘Religious Freedom Goes to School’ campaign paints a restrictive picture of the freedoms for students, teachers, and school administrators that the First Amendment protects. School districts in South Carolina should be wary of taking advice about religious freedom from an organization that frequently seeks to give that freedom a backseat to their own social and political agenda.”
According to the ACLU’s campaign, public schools should pattern their religious freedom school policies after a single settlement that the ACLU reached in a lawsuit against the Chesterfield County School District. The settlement put an end to various religious activities within the district.
The ADF says the Chesterfield settlement “does not accurately represent the current law on First Amendment rights” and “school districts have nothing to fear in permitting the free exercise of these rights.”
Concerning prayer at board meetings, graduations and other such events, the ADF says the ACLU “erroneously states that prayer and scriptural readings are not allowed “graduation ceremonies, athletic events, award ceremonies, and other school activities.”
The ADF says courts have held that school policies which equate all student religious speech with State speech go too far and actually violate an individual’s free speech rights.
“The Free Exercise Clause does not permit the State to whispers or banish it to broom closets,” the ADF says.
Georgetown High School, which has a sports chaplain, does hold voluntary prayer sessions and devotions in the locker room before each football game.
The sessions are not a requirement and the players participate voluntarily.
Read much more on this story in Friday’s Georgetown Times.
Although the courts do not understand it this way today, the word "establishment" in the first amendment was meant as a more concrete noun (i.e. like an eating "establishment." The current understanding treats it as more abstract (i.e. religion in general).
In this way it is used to try and separate religion (in general) from all government activities.
The first problem with this is that it is profoundly impossible to separate government from religion. Religion (being a fundamental element of culture) is on a sociological stratum below government; laws are based on principles which are by definition religious. Government is incapable of being separated from religion; it is like removing the brain from a person.
Whether or not they understand this fact, the ACLU and all who agree with its reading of the first amendment are actually using a religion to remove all other religions from the public sphere. That religion goes by several names, most of which are not officially recognized by the ACLU and similar organizations. One of those names is Secular Humanism, and it seems to best fit the beliefs and practices of these people.
The second problem with this approach is that it treats education as a government activity. Unfortunately we the people have created this problem by demanding government funding and accepting government regulation of education. If we choose, we can reject the funding and the regulations. If we take such a bold stand, we must be prepared to move towards a privatized education system. The very good news is that private education generally performs much better than the government variety.
Posted by Jeffrey Trexler
on 9/17/2012
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