EXCERPT:
For generations Americans typically assumed the First Amendment made us a “Christian nation,” where Christianity (especially its Protestant version) remained on prominent public display. So our money says “in God we Trust,” Congress opens with prayer, presidents end speeches with “God bless the United States of America,” our Pledge of Allegiance is to a nation “under God.”
As a public school first-grader I was taught to recite the “Protestant” version of the Lord’s Prayer every day, after my teacher read a psalm from her King James bible. We always had school off for Christmas and Good Friday, and Christian symbols were displayed in classrooms for both Christmas and Easter. School cafeterias never served meat on Fridays, out of respect for Catholics.
Such public prominence to Christianity began to shift in 1962 when the U.S. Supreme Court banned prayer from public classrooms. This triggered a trend toward banning all Christian practices from public schools, and eventually from all public places. By 2012, Christian symbols and activities are typically not allowed in our public schools, parks, buildings, and institutions. Attempts to provide funding for religious schools (or even vouchers to parents) have consistently been ruled unconstitutional, and people seeking legal support for their faith-based positions on abortion, creationism, intelligent design, and even marriage have generally been rejected by the courts.
Many conservative movements and media have spent recent years claiming there is a governmental “war on religion,” especially on the part of “activist” judges.
All this begs a question: is the US becoming a European style “lay state”? Is our historical desire to protect religious freedom giving way to an approach that restricts religion to the private realm? Is the First Amendment no longer protecting religious practices that clash with public policy?
On January 11 the US Supreme Court delivered a loud “No!”--a landmark decision that may be as much a turning point as the 1962 school prayer decision.
In an era of chronic split-decisions by a divided court where one swing vote often determines the outcome, there was nothing marginal about this court’s 9-0 verdict. There could have been no clearer declaration that the court considered the issue at stake here to be a no-brainer.
And that issue was religious liberty…
For American Catholics, this decision has at least four ramifications:
First, it reverses the trend of cases restricting religion by affirming, especially by its 9-0 vote, that protection for free religious practice is a constitutional cornerstone. …
Second, this was also a reversal (some are calling it a “knockout punch”) for the Obama Administration, whose lawyers argued against the ministerial exception. When EEOC (Equal Employment Opportunity Commission) lawyer Leondra Kruger argued that the constitution grants churches no ministerial exception, only the same rights to free association that secular organizations (like labor unions and social clubs) enjoy, Justice Antonin Scalia objected: “That’s extraordinary! There, black on white in the text of the constitution, are special protections for religion. And you say it makes no difference?”
Similarly, Justice Roberts rejected the administration’s argument: “Their position, however, is hard to square with the text of the First Amendment itself, which gives spe¬cial solicitude to the rights of religious organizations.”
Remarkable, the unanimous decision included two supposedly “radical-leftist” Obama appointees.
Third, this decision reaffirms how unique the First Amendment is, compared to other countries’ ways of separating church and state. Two justices refer to the constitution as singling out religion for “special” protections that no other institutions enjoy….
Fourth, this decision should allay fears that changes in civil policy could impose changes on religious practice….
The US Bishops, for example, have tended to treat same-sex marriage as if it were a threat to the sacrament of matrimony, but the court rejected all suggestions that churches could be forced to marry homosexuals, accept married priests, or ordain women. The fact that religious liberty enjoys such extraordinary protection also means that liberalizing social movements cannot be treated as coercion against more conservative church practices…
Scholars have cautioned that this decision is restricted to how “ministers” are treated by churches. But while this application is somewhat narrow, the notion that religion enjoys “special” constitutional protections given to no other institutions has implications broad enough to touch not only Catholics, but all Americans, and even the human family. Far from becoming a “lay state,” the land of the “religious option” has just strengthened that option.
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