Freedom to Pray; Freedom from Prayer

[gurdonark]

I've seen a number of posts in various journals this week about the efforts of a group called the American Family Association to attack a reading assignment of the Q'uran during a student orientation at the University of North Carolina. I went and paid a visit to the website for the American Family Association, including pages for its legal action group. The statements and descriptions there made me remember why we must never be complacent about our freedom. Anyone who wonders about the true agendae and compassion of these groups need only read the attacks on people of other views contained in those sites.

I believe strongly in the freedom of religion. I believe that neutral and free expression of religion or the lack thereof by priviate citizens is a key value. However, the religious right has taken a curious two prong attack upon our First Amendment liberties. The first prong is a repeated attempt to establish the Christian religion in our institutions. The second prong is a repeated attempt to attack any expression of non-Christian ideas through attempts to use the First Amendment in litigation.

The First Amendment has two key concepts in dealing with religion. One is that no state religion should be established. The other is that each individual should have freedom of religion. I support litigation which achieves either of those goals, such as the efforts of prayer groups to get equal treatment with bowling clubs and young Republicans in using school rooms after hours. But the right wing dual attack on the First Amendment freedom irritates me no end. On the one hand, repeated efforts to establish the Christian religion are made. One example is the series of statutes, all struck down as ignoble and obvious attempts to establish religion, that tried to force schools to teach "creation science" as an alternative to the theory of evolution. Right wing legal advocacy groups pushed hard to argue that such obviously religious teachings were "neutral". The current movement, in which right wing advocacy groups attempt to argue that any mention of any non-Christian religion, no matter how non-establishmentarian, is a First Amendment violation, is similarly without basis or nobility. In essence, the right wants us to freely air the Bible in public schools, but suppress any mention of any other scripture. As a member of the "religious left", I am deeply troubled by this.

The bottom line is that the religious right does not believe that the First Amendment means what it says. They imagine that Thomas Jefferson, who drafted it, would have insisted that they have the right to suppress other faiths while assidiuously promoting their own faith. They conveniently ignore Jefferson's own take on matters of faith and religious freedom. Indeed, Thomas Jefferson's views on matters of faith and separation are a far cry from the religious right's. The same people who argue for following the framers' "original intent" ignore altogether the broad support for freedom of religion held by many Deist framers.

I find offensive the conduct of liberal Senators and Congresspeople who leaped to joined the misguided effort to criticize the Ninth Circuit Federal Court of Appeals' decision that the use of "one nation under God" in the pledge of allegiance was unconstitutional. The record in that case clearly indicated that President Eisenhower signed the bill adding the phrase to the pledge with the express intention that children have to recite a belief in God. Although cases such as the pledge case, which involve "traditional" recitals, do not interest me very much, the Ninth Circuit's result was essentially right, and the election-minded legislators are clearly wrong when they denounce it.

One thing September 11 has taught us is the need to protect religious freedom from those who do not respect it. This is a need which requires all of us to stand up for freedom of religion, freedom from governmental imposition of religion, and freedom not to practice a religion at all.

When I see well funded conservative groups trying to dismantle our Constitution, I am reminded that the price of liberty is indeed eternal vigilance. I must figure out what I can do to try to help protect the freedom of religion, including the freedom from religion.

Comments

[uscwriter.livejournal.com]

Glad to read your take on the issue. When this issue came up several months ago, I dug out a copy of the constitution my mother gave me years ago and actually read it, and from what I read, the ninth-circuit decision is a just one. Unfortunately, since people have gotten used to having the phrase "under God" in the pledge, they assume it should be there by decree of the founders of the nation. While I agree that everyone should have the right to practice their own form of religion, or lack thereof, no one should have the right to demand others abide by their own "because it is easier" to leave it in the pledge. I argued that if the pledge said "under Buddah, under Allah and under God" right wing Christians would be horrified, though the concept is the same. They could just "ignore" the words and say them without believing them, right? since that is what they are insisting people who are not "udner God" could do. I taught in a small town near the coast of SC, where the principal insisted everyone said the pledge every day, with someone leading it over the loudspeaker. In fact, if he came by my homeroom and saw someone not pledging appropriately, that person would get in trouble. That's not very tolerant...

It will be interesting to see how this plays out, politically...
KIM

[gurdonark.livejournal.com]

The curious thing about all this is that the pledge did not originally have the words. It was a religious right engraftment. It's going to be interesting to see if our moderate right Supreme Court takes up this issue. Antonin Scalia can always figure out some way to ignore the intent of the framers, when it suits his agenda.

[reneesarah.livejournal.com]

Thank you for this post, with which I am in total agreement.

[gurdonark.livejournal.com]

Thanks for commenting! Fingers crossed on that other stuff!

[nacowafer.livejournal.com]

I don't usually get all sentimental about being from North Carolina and having attended two UNC institutuions, including UNC-Chapel Hill, but I have to say (in agreement with protoblast and ever so proud of effiemay, who's going to be leading one of the Koran discussion groups) that this makes me proud. Especially when so many associate N.C. only with Jesse Helms. I suffered culture shock upon moving to Richmond. It's a far less tolerant place than anywhere I have lived in North Carolina and still fancies itself "the capital of the Confederacy." The Koran reading assignment would never fly in Virginia, I doubt even at Mr. Jefferson's university. I'm actually offended a wee bit when people assume I couldn't possibly be from such a [insert negative stereotype here] place as North Carolina. Being from the south, in general, and North Carolina, specifically, is really an integral part of who I am.

[gurdonark.livejournal.com]

Of course, being from Arkansas, I know exactly what you're saying. It's not just a political thing, although it is irritating having to explain to people that while yellow dog democrat and born again Republicans are big there, a strong liberal strand has always also existed there. I wish I could find the old issue of the Arkansas Historical Society about the Socialist Party of Arkansas. It existed in the early part of the 20th C., ran some candidates fairly close for governor. It advocated some radical things--equal rights for women, a minimum wage, and safety for workers.

When I lived in CA, southern stereotyping was in full force. I tend to resist getting too down even on very Republican Dallas, because I have always found that the people who matter to me usually are in the minority on anything. I'll bet Richmond has ample quantities, too.

In Arkansas, the Qu'ran assignment (I never can remember where to put the accent) would fly without notice, because right wing nuts are too busy trying to get dirt on politicians' sex lives and real estate deals. I do remember when the novelist Carolyn Gilchrist caused rather an uproar at the Arkansas Governors' School summer camp for gifted high schoolers, when she suggested they need to be more radical and wear flags as clothing. I frankly thought she was typically melodramatic and condescending, and was more than a bit put off by her later move to Jackson, MS, to escape "the glare of publicity". But I guess an uproar did ensue. It taught me more about how great writing skills and great insight do not go hand in hand.

I'm sure if this controversy had arisen at U VA, the Koran reading would have gone forward.

You clearly are a southerner. Even the language you use to discuss your personal dilemmae of late are phrased in a language that I think shows your origins--a religiosity, if you will, that you get by osmosis. I'll bet you don't say "y'all" nearly as much as I do, though, so perhaps I should question your "true southern roots".

Sorry to ramble, but I always think that you get a tremendous advantage in NC by having Chapel Hill there. A top notch university--with in-state tuition! Great grad programs--the law school is top 20, and isn't the library program like, top 3, since Chicago and the other folks shut theirs down? By contrast, the University of Arkansas, my beloved alma mater, has the top animal science program in the country, and a top 20 creative writing MFA.

Yes, that is so neat that your friend effiemay is in the forefront of it. Kudos to her. You all should be proud that your school, after some wavering, did the right thing.

Hmm...does that mean you went to Greensboro undergrad? I'll bet you were an English major, but my bet might be wrong. You're just darn well read. As an aside, probably out of place in this thread, I've decided that your One True Calling is to be an art history professor. I reached this snap judgment based on a lack of accurate data by considering the fundamental dilemmae of the nacowafer journal--

a. nacowafer hates the drudgery of day to day work with uninspiring materials doing uninspiring things--answer: helping turn college kids onto art and doing research papers on outsider artists would always interest nacowafer;

b. nacowafer finds in art something some folks seek in religion--answer: nacowafer should be praying every day to this God in teh canvass, and an art history professor can be a sort of theologian for the saints with the brushes;

c. nacowafer needs to be around people who think. answer: aside from a good knot of friends which naco already has, a university town might give naco more like minded people around.

d. nacowafer has issues with ego and proportion. answer: she's perfect college professor material, as I never met one who did not.

So now that I've solved your life, I should try to figure out how to get the parts of my mix tape that didn't come out right fixed.