That’s the U.S. Congress. Is that what you were referring to?
Yeah, it’s the rationale of these decisions that’s so damned insulting to the intelligence. Not being “supervisors and censors of religious speech” my ass.
Really, if they wanted to uphold the practice, what they should have said was something like:
(In prettier and more dignified language, of course.)
Well, if the actual institutionalization of an official national religion, by the federal government (a la the Church of England), is the only definition of “establishment” that you will accept, then I guess the debate is over before it began. I readily acknowledge that every other expression of government support for religion is different from this one particular expression of federal government support.
By this logic, of course, the states should be able to establish their own religions. States should be able to punish religious dissenters. States should be able to banish heretics, just like the early colonies got rid of Anne Hutchinson and Roger Williams.
Accepting such a limited definition would also force us to reject, completely, the idea of incorporation when it comes to the Bill of Rights. I’m not sure whether or not that’s something you’d be comfortable with. If you’re an opponent of incorporation, then your position on the establishment clause is consistent. If you’re not an opponent of incorporation, i’d be interested to know how you decide which parts of the Bill of Rights are worthy of incorporation, and which aren’t.
Ah, but there’s the rub, right?
What percentage of religious rituals, conducted in the context of government business, have to be from one particular religion in order for us to consider that religion to be “elevated” by the government? If 50 percent of your opening prayers are explicitly Christian, is that elevating Christianity? What about 80 percent?
Do we make these evaluations based on population proportions, or based on a simple calculation of the number of religious rituals? That is, if there are 8 million Jews and 80 million Catholics in America, are Catholics allowed to have ten times as many government-sponsored ceremonies as Jews? Or should Catholics and Jews receive equal time. Do we differentiate Catholics and Protestants, or are they all just Christians?
I understand that much of the above is silly, but the point is that people might differ on what it means for government to “elevate” a religion, especially in a context like the decision currently under discussion, where basically every single prayer was Christian, except for a few instances right after the initial lawsuit was filed, when other religions were included in a clear effort to add some balance for the purpose of public and legal perceptions.
More generally, Jimmy Chitwood has also addressed some of my other thoughts on this issue. I’d also add that it’s not that we can’t draw distinctions between “establishment” and “state sponsorship”; rather, the courts seem to go even further, and engage in a sort of sophistry whereby “state sponsorship of religion” is actually defined as a secular rather than a religious act.
I know that you’re on record arguing that the second amendment is an anachronism, and i’d argue the same about the establishment clause.
For me, of course, the only problem is that my definition of “anachronism” is probably different from that of many Americans. Many Americans would argue for a much weaker establishment clause, and some would like to eliminate it altogether and turn the US into an explicitly Christian nation.
I believe that the establishment clause should be reworded to explicitly include both belief and non-belief, rather than simply rejecting the idea of establishment. The current clause implies that religion of some sort is a universal given, and I’d word a new clause to remove that implication, and to explicitly protect non-belief in the same way that it protects belief. That might seem paranoid, but i don’t think it is, especially when politicians—even liberals like Al Gore—bleating that “freedom of religion need not mean freedom from religion.” I believe that “freedom of” should, if that’s my preference, mean “freedom from,” and i’d like that in the Bill of Rights.
You’re seriously going to nitpick that as a cite for Christians getting bent out of shape when the ceremonial opening prayer that can’t possibly be offensive is Hindu instead of Christian because it’s Congress and not a city council meeting? Seriously?
It should be noted that none of the justices, including the ones dissenting, takes the position of the OP. So, I’m not sure what he has against Kennedy, but perhaps his vitriol should be directed at the entire court.
That’s the very essence of Bricker. Surely that doesn’t surprise you?
ETA: If you follow the quotes back, it was in response to a post about Congressional Chaplains.
It makes me want to bring in a ceremonial nuclear device…
Just so long as it’s neither ceremonial nor a nuclear device…
How about we declare a truce? I won’t make you all listen to ten choruses of Dayenu or sit through Yom Kippur services and you don’t force to me to listen to preachings about Jesus? 'kay?
I don’t know Dayenu… I was the guest goy at a Passover dinner once, and enjoyed it; what are Yom Kippur services like? I mean, I’m willing to try these things out once, at least!
But I suspect you’ve probably already heard no few sermons/lectures/essays/apologists for Christianity. A lot more prevalent in our society than Judaic material. (I emailed “Ask the Rabbi” once…)
Oh, I just YouTubed Dayenu. Only three verses. Hey, I’ve heard worse!
Had a similar experience, did some work for some extra-Jewish people on days when they couldn’t because God. Can’t deny the part about being goy but thought “shabby goy” was a bit judgemental. But they were nice folks, probably didn’t mean nothing by it.
My recollection is that there is a fair amount of scholarship suggesting that the Founders’ purpose in propounding the Establishment Clause was indeed to protect the established state churches from being superseded by the establishment of an official church at the federal level. Which of course means that the history has little to offer us in interpreting the E. Clause today…
I’d be happy to see these little religious demonstrations in government vanish entirely, but, like others here, I don’t think this is that big of a deal. Moreover, Justice Kennedy’s argument as quoted in the OP – while not, perhaps, ironclad – strikes me as reasonable, and undeserving of some of the scorn heaped upon it.
You think that a (neutered) prayer before a city council meeting constitutes “excessive government engagement”? That’s a pretty low bar. Furthermore, and maybe this is just me, but if I’d had to come up with a definition for an act that “minimally enforces” religious practice, an opening prayer such as this may well have been the *exact *example I came up with. (I’ll grant that an opening prayer’s clearing the bar set by that wording of the third prong is a little dodgier.)
IANAL.
Because he knows that those restrictions will in fact be ignored at every turn.
They also held slaves while claiming they considered all men to be created equal. They were hypocrites.
No, I don’t - but the devil is in the word ‘neutered.’
I think it’s workable for the courts to give an OK to ceremonial deism, but it requires real work on their part to make sure the prayers stay neutered. When they find people are stretching the definition of ‘ceremonial deism’ far enough to include stuff like “the saving sacrifice of Jesus Christ on the cross,” I think they can’t absolve themselves of having to push back.
When you get to that point, I don’t think that’s neutered at all. I think it’s a full-bodied statement of what my faith is all about - it’s what I want people to preach! Which would be great in plenty of other contexts.
But not this one.
Cue Sesame Street: “One of these things, does not belong here! One of these things, is not like the rest!”
Maybe I should sum up my argument, for clarity’s sake:
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I’ve got nothing against ‘ceremonial deism’ per se. I’m not keen on it, but I can certainly live with it.
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But having that concept in the law demands constant vigilance on the part of the courts to maintain the line between state-sponsored ‘ceremonial deism’ (which is permissible) and state-sponsored sectarian religious expression (which is not).
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Phrases like “the saving sacrifice of Jesus Christ on the cross”* are clearly sectarian religious expressions*, and are well beyond what can be construed as ‘ceremonial deism.’
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By allowing such state-sponsored expressions under the rubric of ‘ceremonial deism,’ the Court dropped the ball.
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Kennedy’s statement that “To hold that invocations must be nonsectarian would force the legislatures that sponsor prayers and the courts that are asked to decide these cases to act as supervisors and censors of religious speech, a rule that would involve government in religious matters to a far greater degree than is the case under the town’s current practice of neither editing or approving prayers in advance nor criticizing their content after the fact” is in this context an amazing refusal to maintain that line.
You can’t draw a line between supposedly not-really-religious ceremonial deism and sectarian religious expression, and then say you can’t enforce that line because that would have you operating “as supervisors and censors of religious speech.” That would be true enough if you agreed that ‘ceremonial deism’ was religious speech - but the whole reason that we can allow it in state fora is that supposedly it’s not.
Kennedy can’t have it both ways. Either ceremonial deism is religious speech, in which case it has no place in our government, or it’s not, in which case it’s his duty to maintain the line between government-sponsored non-religious speech and government-sponsored religious speech.
But it can’t be religious speech when you’re saying the courts can’t distinguish between different sorts of religious speech in government fora, and at the same time be non-religious speech in order to allow it in the door to begin with.
A whole lot is too much; too much is a whole lot. Same thing.
- Giving everyone the right to lead a sectarian prayer at a public forum just means the majority decides to get what the established religion is. Establishment of religion by majority rule is right out. The fact that it’s done through a ‘neutral’ mechanism doesn’t change that: of course such neutral mechanisms will favor the majority. Other majoritarian mechanisms have been rejected by SCOTUS concerning prayer at public school activities such as high school football games.
No, I was joint pointing out the establishing and sponsoring are two different things.
I wouldn’t look at quotas or outcomes, but at process. Is the process open to people of all faiths, and to people of no faith? Are there people who have had legitimate offerings, but were turned away because the process was rigged against them?
I’d be happy to see the “wall of separation” explicitly written into the constitution.
If you feel like offering a rebuttal to anything I’ve said, Counselor, you would be most welcome to do so.
So far, your contributions to this thread have been a mixture of whining and nonsense.
If you want to act like a grownup, I will be happy to engage you in conversation. If you don’t want to do so, I will talk with the other grownups.
[QUOTE=Der Trihs;17352226
They also held slaves while claiming they considered all men to be created equal. They were hypocrites.[/QUOTE]
Maybe, but doesnt that support the point? It took an amendment to outlaw slavery passed by a congress that specifically opposed it.