Well, all we would really go into is: I don’t think the Ten Commandments should be up, though I think prayer should be allowed (though who really ever wants to pray in school? I’ve never seen a child, during my entire career as student—over 20 years—, have this impulse...I’ve come to believe it’s essentially a wedge issue to get people to vote for people like Huckabee). You would say you think the 10 commandments should be up, etc etc. It gets nowhere.
I agree with all this. Though...we’d have to allow also all religions or non-religions the right to express themselves whenever they wish. (Meaning, if a Hindu wants to pray in school, he should be allowed to.)
I suspect you and I would have to re-define what we mean when we say “separation of Church and State”. I don’t use the term in the sense of “banning religion” from the public sphere; I use it in the sense that the government does not do anything that endorses any religion—which means that I think school prayer is ok as long as the employees in public schools don’t organize it, and that I don’t think the 10 commandments should be up because many commandments are superfluous and simply antithetical to the beliefs of many individuals (really, having “have no god before me” on the courthouse? It’s absolutely repulsive to me; they are supposed to represent me and everybody else, not represent only Christians who believe in this religious law).
You were absolutely correct in your assumption that in the back of my mind I maintained that I was arguing against Theocrat and reconstructionism. I maintain still that enlightenment principles were chiefly the foundational cornerstone of our Democracy.
As for the issue of separation of church and state, I may have a stronger opinion about it's strictness, but I do sympathize with your version of it.
I look at the most recent case, Lee v Weisman, to help navigate what is in respect a complex argument either way... this one specifically deals with Graduation Ceremonies is of great interest, because it was decided by a rather conservative court, including an opinion piece by the newly appointed (at the time) Justice Kennedy.
For Reference
Lemon Test:
(1) reflect a clearly secular purpose; (2) have a primary effect that neither advances nor inhibits religion; and (3) avoid excessive government entanglement with religion.
Abridged:
The record in this case is sparse in many respects, and we are unfamiliar with any fixed custom or practice at middle school graduations, referred to by the school district as "promotional exercises." We are not so constrained with reference to high schools, however.
High school graduations are such an integral part of American cultural life that we can with confidence describe their customary features, confirmed by aspects of the record and by the parties' representations at oral argument. In the Providence school system, most high school graduation ceremonies are conducted away from the school, while most middle school ceremonies are held on school premises. Classical High School, which Deborah now attends, has conducted its graduation ceremonies on school premises. Agreed Statement of Facts 37, id., at 17. The parties stipulate that attendance at graduation ceremonies is voluntary. Agreed Statement of Facts 41, id., at 18. The graduating students enter as a group in a processional, subject to the direction of teachers and school officials, and sit together, apart from their families. We assume the clergy's participation in any high school graduation exercise would be about what it was at Deborah's middle school ceremony. There the students stood for the Pledge of Allegiance and remained standing during the rabbi's prayers. Tr. of Oral Arg. 38. Even on the assumption that there was a respectful moment of silence both before and after the prayers, the rabbi's two presentations must not have extended much beyond a minute each, if that. We do not know whether he remained on stage during the whole ceremony, or whether the students received individual diplomas on stage, or if he helped to congratulate them.
The school board (and the United States, which supports it as amicus curie) argued that these short prayers and others like them at graduation exercises are of
profound meaning to many students and parents throughout this country who consider that due respect and acknowledgment for divine guidance and for the deepest spiritual aspirations of [505 U.S. 577, 584] our people ought to be expressed at an event as important in life as a graduation. We assume this to be so in addressing the difficult case now before us, for the significance of the prayers lies also at the heart of Daniel and Deborah Weisman's case.
Deborah's graduation was held on the premises of Nathan Bishop Middle School on June 29, 1989. Four days before the ceremony, Daniel Weisman, in his individual capacity as a Providence taxpayer and as next friend of Deborah, sought a temporary restraining order in the United States District Court for the District of Rhode Island to prohibit school officials from including an invocation or benediction in the graduation ceremony. The court denied the motion for lack of adequate time to consider it. Deborah and her family attended the graduation, where the prayers were recited. In July, 1989, Daniel Weisman filed an amended complaint seeking a permanent injunction barring petitioners, various officials of the Providence public schools, from inviting the clergy to deliver invocations and benedictions at future graduations. We find it unnecessary to address Daniel Weisman's taxpayer standing, for a live and justiciable controversy is before us. Deborah Weisman is enrolled as a student at Classical High School in Providence and from the record it appears likely, if not certain, that an invocation and benediction will be conducted at her high school graduation. Agreed Statement of Facts 38, App. at 17.
The court decided, based on its reading of our precedents,
that the effects test of Lemon is violated whenever government action "creates an identification of the state with a religion, or with religion in general," 728 F.Supp., at 71, or when "the effect of the governmental action is to endorse one religion over another, or to endorse religion in general." Id., at 72. The court determined that the practice of including invocations and benedictions, even so-called nonsectarian ones, in public school graduations creates an identification of governmental power with religious practice, endorses religion, and violates the Establishment Clause. In so holding, the court expressed the determination not to follow Stein v. Plainwell Community Schools, 822 F.2d 1406 (1987), in which the Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, relying on our decision in Marsh v. Chambers, 463 U.S. 783 (1983), held that benedictions and invocations at public school graduations are not always unconstitutional. In Marsh, we upheld the constitutionality of the Nebraska State Legislature's practice of opening each of its sessions with a prayer offered by a chaplain paid out of public funds. The District Court in this case disagreed with the Sixth Circuit's reasoning because it believed that Marsh was a narrow decision, "limited to the unique situation of legislative prayer," and did not have any relevance to school prayer cases. 728 F.Supp., at 74.
These dominant facts mark and control the confines of our decision: State officials direct the performance of a formal religious exercise at promotional and graduation ceremonies for secondary schools. Even for those students who object to the religious exercise, their attendance and participation in the state-sponsored religious activity are, in a fair and real sense, obligatory, though the school district does not require attendance as a condition for receipt of the diploma.
This case does not require us to revisit the difficult questions dividing us in recent cases, questions of the definition and full scope of the principles governing the extent of permitted accommodation by the State for the religious beliefs and practices of many of its citizens. See County of Allegheny v. American Civil Liberties Union, Greater Pittsburgh Chapter, 492 U.S. 573 (1989); Wallace v. Jaffree, 472 U.S. 38 (1985); Lynch v. Donnelly, 465 U.S. 668 (1984). For without reference to those principles in other contexts, the controlling precedents as they relate to prayer and religious exercise in primary and secondary public schools compel the holding here that the policy of the city of Providence is an [505 U.S. 577, 587] unconstitutional one.
We can decide the case without reconsidering the general constitutional framework by which public schools' efforts to accommodate religion are measured. Thus, we do not accept the invitation of petitioners and amicus the United States to reconsider our decision in Lemon v. Kurtzman, supra. The government involvement with religious activity in this case is pervasive, to the point of creating a state-sponsored and state-directed religious exercise in a public school. Conducting this formal religious observance conflicts with settled rules pertaining to prayer exercises for students, and that suffices to determine the question before us.
The principle that government may accommodate the free exercise of religion does not supersede the fundamental limitations imposed by the Establishment Clause. It is beyond dispute that, at a minimum, the Constitution guarantees that government may not coerce anyone to support or participate in religion or its exercise, or otherwise act in a way which "establishes a [state] religion or religious faith, or tends to do so." Lynch, supra, at 678; see also County of Allegheny, supra, at 591, quoting Everson v. Board of Ed. of Ewing, 330 U.S. 1, 15 -16 (1947). The State's involvement in the school prayers challenged today violates these central principles.
That involvement is as troubling as it is undenied. A school official, the principal, decided that an invocation and a benediction should be given; this is a choice attributable to the State, and, from a constitutional perspective, it is as if a state statute decreed that the prayers must occur. The principal chose the religious participant, here a rabbi, and that choice is also attributable to the State. The reason for the choice of a rabbi is not disclosed by the record, but the potential for divisiveness over the choice of a particular member of the clergy to conduct the ceremony is apparent.
The First Amendment's Religion Clauses mean that religious beliefs and religious expression are too precious to be either proscribed or prescribed by the State. The design of the Constitution is that preservation and transmission of religious beliefs and worship is a responsibility and a choice committed to the private sphere, which itself is promised freedom to pursue that mission. It must not be forgotten, then, that, while concern must be given to define the protection granted to an objector or a dissenting nonbeliever, these same Clauses exist to protect religion from government interference. [505 U.S. 577, 590] James Madison, the principal author of the Bill of Rights, did not rest his opposition to a religious establishment on the sole ground of its effect on the minority. A principal ground for his view was: [E]xperience witnesseth that ecclesiastical establishments, instead of maintaining the purity and efficacy of Religion, have had a contrary operation. Memorial and Remonstrance Against Religious Assessments (1785), in 8 Papers of James Madison 301 (W. Rachal, R. Rutland, B. Ripel, & F. Teute eds. 1973).
The opinion also goes DEEPLY into the rights of the students after this section, which everyone hear should read.
http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/scripts/getcase.pl?navby=case&court=us&vol=505&page=577#581
