Archive for the ‘First Amendment’ Category

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Chaplain Should Have Given Inclusive Prayer

Tuesday, July 13th, 2010

Last week, North Carolina pastor Ron Baity demanded an apology from his state’s legislators after they dismissed him from his chaplain duties when he prayed in Jesus’ name. Baity was scheduled to deliver the opening prayer for the North Carolina House for the entire week of May 31st, but when he invoked Jesus’ name in the first of these prayers “he was relieved from his duties for the rest of the week.” Baity is now requesting that the North Carolina House issue an apology and invite him back.

This issue shows the complicated nature of legislative prayer. On the one hand, Baity argued that the legislature prevented him from freely exercising his religion, while on the other hand, the legislators argued that allowing him to pray in Jesus’ name would be an unconstitutional endorsement of religion and would have made some members of the House uncomfortable. The House had a right to request a nonsectarian prayer, but for Baity, there may be no acceptable and proper way to pray, according to his faith, except in Jesus’ name.

While Reverend Baity certainly has the right to pray in Jesus’ name, I believe that the House made the right decision in dismissing Baity from his chaplain duties. Baity has a right to pray as he chooses when serving as a private citizen. As a chaplain for the House, however, Baity was serving as a “government mouthpiece,” and he therefore had an obligation to provide an inclusive, nonsectarian prayer.

Baity also asserted that he “was made to feel like a second-class North Carolinian” because he could not pray in the manner of his choosing. However, Baity was not being treated differently from any other chaplain in a similar situation – government chaplains of all faiths abide by these same restrictions in order to ensure that every American’s religious freedom is protected. In being asked to deliver a nonsectarian prayer Baity was being treated as a first-class citizen, with all the rights and responsibilities that belong to a citizen of a pluralist and democratic nation

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Praying for the Gulf of Mexico

Monday, June 21st, 2010

Louisiana’s legislatures recently proposed making Sunday June 20th a statewide day of prayer to ask for God’s help in stopping the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. My take is that while this may have been a well-intentioned measure, it is at best unnecessary and at worst unconstitutional.

The resolution does not endorse a specific religion, and calls upon people of all religions to engage in “unified, intercessory prayer.” However, establishing a day of prayer ties the government to the private spiritual lives of its citizens. Government’s influence on religion, like religion’s influence on government, weakens both institutions, instead of strengthening them. I don’t think one would be going out on a limb by suggesting that people across the gulf coast region have been seeking comfort and relief through prayer since the start of this tragedy – and they have done so without needing the government to tell them when to do it.

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Supreme Court Hears Religious Freedom Case

Wednesday, April 21st, 2010

This past Monday, the Supreme Court heard oral argument on Christian Legal Society v. Martinez, a case that pits a faith-based student organization’s religious freedom rights against the University of California’s Hastings College of the Law’s non-discrimination policy.  Interfaith Alliance weighed in on this case by filing a friend-of-the-court brief for neither party with our colleagues at the Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty.

Why did we file for neither party?  As we said in our joint statement with the BJC, “a public university’s laudable goal of preventing discrimination is not impeded by allowing a student group to control its own message and membership criteria.”  The university’s non-discrimination policy “interferes with rights of expressive association and destroys its intended purpose of allowing student groups to meet around common interests and to encourage the exchange of ideas on campus.”

At the same time, however, we believe “protections should remain in place to keep public funds from supporting religious activity.”  Since we could not fully support arguments made on either side, we filed for neither party and articulated what we believe are the two central issues in this case.

See below for a few resources and articles on the case and stay tuned—the Court will hand down a decision in this case sometime over the next few months.
•    Don Byrd at the BJC’s Blog from the Capitol culled some key excerpts from the oral argument transcript
•    The American Constitution Society held a press briefing that provided an overview of the arguments and the implications of the case (the video is online)
•    Dahlia Lithwick wrote a thorough and witty article for Slate on the intricacies of case and the back and forth of oral argument

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Pray Diem: National Day of Prayer Found Unconstitutional

Friday, April 16th, 2010

Yesterday, federal district court struck down the National Day of Prayer as unconstitutional.  The opinion authored by Judge Barbara Crabb is a thoughtfully written, thorough explanation of the  many reasons why a congressionally-implemented, presidentially-proclaimed day of prayer violates the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment.

Judge Crabb was also clear that her decision should not in any way minimize the value that prayer can have for many people, simply that the separation of religion and government is best for both parties—a fact often noted by Interfaith Alliance President Rev. Welton Gaddy. In her conclusion, Judge Crabb said:

“I understand that many may disagree with that conclusion and some may even view it as a criticism of prayer or those who pray. That is unfortunate. A determination that the government may not endorse a religious message is not a determination that the message itself is harmful, unimportant or undeserving of dissemination. Rather, it is part of the effort to ‘carry out the Founders’ plan of preserving religious liberty to the fullest extent possible in a pluralistic society.’”

While this ruling won’t stop this year’s National Day of Prayer because the Administration will likely appeal and the injunction doesn’t go into effect until the appeals process is complete, I sincerely hope that Judge Crabb’s ruling will be upheld.

Posted in Daily News, First Amendment, public policy issues | No Comments »

Something is Rotten in the State of Texas

Thursday, March 11th, 2010

You just can’t make this stuff up.  Today, the Texas State Board of Education voted on a variety of amendments to the state social studies and U.S. government curricula.  Get ready to be appalled at the outcomes.  As reported by the Texas Freedom Network, the Board voted to

1)      remove Thomas Jefferson from world history curriculum on the impact of Enlightenment thinkers

2)      include discussion of the right to bear arms in curriculum on First Amendment rights and free expression

3)      strike down an amendment that would have required students to “examine the reasons the Founding Fathers protected religious freedom in America by barring government from promoting or disfavoring any particular religion over all others.”

What is most unbelievable and emblematic of the Board’s far-right majority’s (lack of) understanding of the separation between religion and government in America is the third item in this litany of woes.  According to Cynthia Dunbar (one of the more prominent conservatives on the Board), the separation of religion and government wasn’t actually the Founders’ intent— they wanted to promote religion.  Therefore, said Dunbar, the proposed amendment was “not historically accurate.”

While (luckily), Thomas Jefferson isn’t out of Texas education curricula as a whole, there is no doubt that he is one of the preeminent American scholars of the Enlightenment era and it is a shame students will not learn that.  Also, last time I checked, the right to bear arms had its own section of the Bill of Rights, you know, the Second Amendment.

What’s more unfortunate is that such a narrow minded group of individuals have such power over what children learn across the country, that these are “guidelines that will affect students around the country, from kindergarten to 12th grade, for the next 10 years.”  Why? Because the state of Texas buys or distributes “a staggering 48 million textbooks annually,” which leads “educational publishers to tailor their products to fit the standards dictated by the Lone Star State.”

To quote our friends at the Texas Freedom Network: “Let the word go out here: The Texas State Board of Education today refused to require that students learn that the Constitution prevents the U.S. government from promoting one religion over all others. They voted to lie to students by omission.”

Posted in First Amendment, public policy issues | 4 Comments »

Citizens worry that separation of religion and government is for show

Wednesday, February 3rd, 2010

When I read the headline “Religious leaders worry that Obama’s faith council is for show” in The Washington Post this morning, I imagined the story might have something to do with how concerned people are that the faith council may not be able to convince Josh DuBois to rein in the activities of the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Partnerships, an office with both a title and an agenda tweaked only slightly from the disastrous Bush Administration office of similar name.

Upon reading the full text, however, I discovered that the article’s focus was, instead, on those who think the faith-based partnership isn’t doing enough to entwine our domestic agenda and our country’s religious organizations.

Apparently, “critics” are concerned about the fact that the council hasn’t been allowed to weigh in on issues like religious hiring and abortion. They’d really like the council to be able to tackle those, because they want religious organizations that receive federal funding to be able to turn away job applicants on the basis of their religious beliefs, and because they want to influence the president’s reproductive health agenda with their religious views on abortion.

That’s all well and good, but the article all but skipped over the other half of the “critics,” whose concern stems from a very different point of view.

Faith plays a very important role in our country and is a large part of the diversity that makes us so unique, but it often plays a disproportionate role in public debate. People of faith have every right to speak out on the issues that are important to them, but a line is crossed when we put religious concerns about political issues before all else.

It may be impolitic to say so, but my concern with the role of faith in the Obama Administration is not whether or not faith leaders are being listened to. It’s the fact that the faith-based office is still operating under the rules of the Bush Administration, which are deeply flawed and of questionable constitutionality. We all need to keep in mind that, since the government accepts taxes from and represents every person in the country, whatever their beliefs, it is not free to create policies or pass laws that favor any one, or several, belief system or systems. That would be the establishment of religion, prohibited by the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment. Which, guess what?, exists to protect religion as much as it does the government.

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Posted in First Amendment, faith based initiative, public policy issues | 4 Comments »

Religion on Fox: News or evangelism?

Tuesday, January 5th, 2010

The picture on the television screen and the audio of reporter Brit Hume’s words struck me as contradictory. Just below the image of the reporter’s face, the insignia “Fox News” appeared in three different places. Yet, the content of Mr. Hume’s comments was not that of a news reporter so much as that of a televangelist.
(more…)

Posted in Daily News, First Amendment, Welton | 8 Comments »

Rev. Gaddy on the Rachel Maddow Show Talking About the Jindal Controversy

Friday, September 4th, 2009

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

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Rev. Gaddy talks to Dan Gilgoff About the White House Faith-Based Office

Thursday, June 11th, 2009

Dan Gilgoff of U.S. News & World Report, and a frequent guest on State of Belief, has posted an interview with Rev. Gaddy about the White House office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships entitled Critic of White House Faith-Based Office Joins Task Force on Reforming It. Rev. Gaddy says in the inteview that:

I have thought all along it would be best not to have such an office, and I still have that opinion. But if there’s going to be an office, I want to do everything I can to see that it is constitutional in nature and that it operates both legally and in the spirit of protecting the First Amendment’s historic separation between religious institutions and government institutions.

Posted in First Amendment, faith based initiative, public policy issues | 1 Comment »

Students at Liberty find none

Wednesday, May 27th, 2009

James Madison must be exhausted. The poor guy just can’t catch a break – with all of the government interference in religion (the faith-based initiative-turned-partnership) and religious interference in politics (Propositions 8, 102 and 2), he’s probably been rolling over in his grave nonstop for years.

The latest offense against religious freedom is Jerry Falwell’s Liberty University deciding to kick its chapter of College Democrats off-campus, a decision they announced late last week.

Usually when you hear about a student organization getting kicked off-campus, it’s a Greek that’s had its charter revoked for hazing. At Liberty, it’s apparently the desire for two-sided political discourse that will get you asked to leave.

Liberty University, which shares the conservative Christian views of its founder, Jerry Falwell, didn’t approve the presence of any student group affiliated with the Democratic Party (although College Republicans has been a presence on campus for some time) until this past October, when they recognized a chapter of College Democrats. Recognition was granted on the condition that its members would support neither gay marriage nor abortion – two issues that are major no-nos at Liberty.

The students say they’ve held up their end of the bargain. Unfortunately, Liberty’s powers-that-be have decided that endorsing candidates – something the College Republicans also practice and is in the College Democrats’ constitution, which its president, Brian Diaz, says was approved by the university – who “clearly promoted abortion” violates their agreement, and have revoked their recognition of the student organization.

Legally, Liberty has done nothing wrong. They’re a private institution, and as such they can make whatever decisions they want about student organizations.

But (and let me just insert here that I would be making the same argument if this were a liberal college denying its students a College Republicans chapter) one of the purposes of a college education is to teach you to discuss things – important things, big things, change-the-world things – with your peers. Those who agree with you, and those who don’t. In the real world, your peers aren’t limited to far-right conservatives who vehemently oppose both a woman’s right to choose and the (future, I hope) right of any couple to be married by the government. In the real world, you have to learn how to express your opinion, your reasoning for believing as you do and your rationale for disagreeing with “the opposition” – and be civil about it. (Not to mention that in the ivory tower of academia, rational discourse and the exchange of ideas are supposed to be sacred.)

Liberty has a perfect right to do what they did – but choosing to do so shows their poor sportsmanship, small-mindedness and fear of anything beyond the extremely limited scope of their definition of the norm.

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Posted in First Amendment | 2 Comments »

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