A major court battleground is – and will be for several years – the meaning, limits, enforcement and respect for the separation of church and state.
A major court battleground is – and will be for
several years – the meaning, limits, enforcement and respect for
the separation of church and state.
In Louisiana, this subject burst back into news
headlines because United States District Judge Ginger Berrigan ruled
that the Tangipahoa School Board could not open its regular meetings
with prayer.
Judge Berrigan’s ruling shows a continued lack of
understanding of the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United
States on the part of many in the court systems of our nation. In this
case, the judge does not recognize the difference between public school
officials leading prayer among a group of students in a required
gathering in a public school and a group of adults exercising their
freedom of religion by praying before a meeting of the school board.
When a teacher or another school official leads a
required gathering of students in prayer, that obviously is an agent of
the government requiring – or strongly encouraging – students
to engage in particular religious exercises. While we may think such
action is good from our standpoint as a religious people, that is the
government encouraging a particular belief and particular religious
exercise. Christians may approve of that if it is a Christian prayer,
but people of other religions would rightly object, as would Christians
if the prayer of another faith were offered and, thereby, encouraged.
However, a school board praying before its meeting
is completely a different matter. The school board is a group of adults
who are unlikely to have their faith shaped or hurt by hearing a
prayer. They are adults who have decided to exercise their
freedom of religion by agreeing to pray. Our response would be – “Right
on! Pray it, and mean it.”
The fact that these adults who agree to the
particular religious exercise of praying are a school board does not
have the same implications of a teacher leading students in prayer. The
school board certainly is not a required gathering of underage students.
The legal acceptability of adults conducting government business
praying is demonstrated by state legislators, the United States
Congress and even the Supreme Court.
Judge Berrigan’s ruling demonstrates again that
defining the implications of the First Amendment in American life is a
relatively new exercise for the courts. As long as most citizens lived
in basically homogeneous clusters, questions about the far-reaching
implications of the free exercise of religion were assumed to mean
everyone had the right to worship and to serve God – or not to worship
and to serve him – as their consciences dictated.
But our nation has become more complex. More and
more existence is multicultural with multiple religions. Now, the
courts are being required to rule on finer and more technical issues of
church-state separation. And as they do, they define more specifically
what the First Amendment means in these new settings. The rulings they
make will do much to shape what is acceptable under the law.
From the beginning, Baptists have been champions of
religious freedom, including a lack of interference from government in
religious matters. Now, it seems our role will include – more than ever
– praying continuously for divine guidance for the courts as they make
these incredibly important decisions that will greatly impact the
religious life of our nation.