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States' Liberty Party E-BookMorality & the ConstitutionChapter 5 - One Nation Not Under God
Supreme Court decisions controlling religion in schools used a qualifier of whether the activity had an underlying belief in God, and if yes then it was subject to prohibition. Over time, several standards were devised to see if there was an “establishing of a religion”. This was called the Lemon test, after Lemon v. Kurtzman (1971). A secular purpose was required, and the policy or action could neither encourage nor discourage religion, if initiated or condoned by a teacher school official. What may have sounded nice on paper became a patently unfair policy. The mere mention of religion is generally seen as an encouraging of the religion. Thus, excepting for textbook history, the test will fail anytime that religion was mentioned. Furthermore, even parent or student initiated religious acts may fail the test whenever the school simply tolerates the activity. A parent laid tile at Columbine School was removed on these grounds, out of fear that it had “established a religion”. Effectively all mention of religion is being stripped from schools, even to include a teacher wearing a tiny cross around her neck. The Lemon test had only given an appearance of balance. We could compare it to a black v. white policy, with black representing religion and white contrary values, such as evolution or birth control. A balanced policy should be gray; the mid color between black and white, but gray contains elements of black, which is banned. Only white, or contrary values will be tolerated. We might instead equate black with positive religion and white with negative religion. In this case both white and black are banned because both contain elements of religion. If we equate black with religion and white with science, then only science is allowed, presumably eventually even prohibiting Western philosophy, because it contains elements of religion. We can illustrate this with a black v. white test of creationism and science.
It would seem that entry #2 is the balanced one, but the Lemon test throws out #2 because it has elements of #1 that is prohibited. Only #3 will be permitted. It is true that creationism cannot be proved, but evolution is an unproved theory, and without creationism (or an intelligent guidance) evolution cannot be possible. It may seem astonishing that the unilateral federal prohibition of religion in state run schools and other government institutions is founded on a single clause in the Constitution that had intended to protect religion from federal interference. The Court’s declared authority for interfering with state religion is the prohibition against Congress from interfering with religion. Those advocating the “separation of church and state” point to the Constitution, which not once makes mention of God. However, the back of the Great Seal of the United States, designed and approved by Jefferson, Adams, Franklin and other Founding Fathers, displays a pictorial reference of both God and our Christian heritage, and includes the words ANNUIT COEPTIS, “God has Favored Us”. It would seem that the Founding Fathers desired that laws not reference religion, but that religion be a part of our daily lives, not suppressed by the government. |
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