When you hear about members of groups like the conservative American Center for Law and Justice or the Southern Baptist Convention's Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission meeting with the ACLU or the First Freedom Center, you're unlikely to think it's because they agree on anything... but that's what just happened. On January 12, representatives of these groups and others held a press conference at the Brookings Institute in Washington DC to announce the signing of a document entitled RELIGIOUS EXPRESSION IN AMERICAN PUBLIC LIFE: A Joint Statement of Current Law.It's a consensus agreement on how the law affects individual, business and governmental expressions of religion. It's not a wish list, because many of the signers have very different ideas of what the law should be; it's merely a joint recognition of what the law currently is. The need for such a statement is important to the signers though, because there is so much confusion about the law in public discussions.
“There has been an incredibly brain-dead discussion about religious expression in American public life in so many contexts," said signer Melissa Rogers, director of the Wake Forest center and former general counsel for the Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty, "and part of that brain-dead nature of the conversation is that there are so many false claims” about what the law actually says about the protections for, and limits upon, individual, group and governmental expressions of religious faith."
The signers hope the document will not only clear up some of the public confusion about current law, but aid in the debate over what the law should be in the future. Referring to earlier consensus statements on religious expression in schools, Charles Haynes, a senior scholar at the Freedom Forum’s First Amendment Center in Washington, said, “Based on the track record of these past agreements, I am convinced that this new joint statement, covering a wide range of issues, can and will play a significant role in preventing litigation and promoting civil public discourse.”
In the works since 2005, the new document covers a lot more territory than earlier ones and there are numerous things in it for each group to love... or hate. Take consensus item #24, May legislative bodies hire chaplains and open legislative sessions with official prayers? The answer is "yes". The signers acknowledge that such practices have an "unambiguous and unbroken history" going back 200 years that the Supreme Court (March v. Chambers) concluded has become part of the fabric of our society and that the draftsmen of the Constitution did not see as a threat to the Establishment Clause.
Before the backers and opponents of legislative prayer begin, respectively, to cheer or groan, they should read what else consensus item #24 has to say on the subject. Legislative prayers must be non-sectarian in nature as a later court found the prayer in the March v. Chambers to be. In that case, the legislative chaplain "removed all references to Christ." Official prayers become impermissible when government attempts "to proselytize or advance any one, or to disparage (any) other faith or belief."
And so it goes all through 35 items including what can be taught about religion in public schools; the constitutionality of "In God We Trust" on our currency; religious symbols on public property; political expression and the tax-exempt status of churches, etc. The full text of RELIGIOUS EXPRESSION IN AMERICAN PUBLIC LIFE: A Joint Statement of Current Law can be found as a pdf file, here.
Signers of the document include Shabbir Mansuri of the Institute on Religion and Civic Values; Isabelle Kinnard Richman of the First Freedom Center; Charles Haynes of the Freedom Forum; E.J. Dionne of the Washington Post and the Brookings Institute; Holly Hollman and Brent Walker of the Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty; Melissa Rogers of the Wake Forest Center for Religion and Public Affairs; Marc Stern of the American Jewish Congress; and Rich Foltin of the American Jewish Committee.
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1) The First Amendment to the Constitution
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Comments
Interesting. For some evangelical religions everything they do seems oriented toward pushing forward their agenda.
Which of course includes prayer in schools, turning the AirForce Academy into a Christian or else institution, and worming their way into every aspect of our life. Where we should have the right to be totally totally free of their religion in any way, unless we choose to go to their churches or peoples private homes where they can do as they wish.
Religion - some of it has nothing to do with God per se, but is simply an attempt to force their beliefs on others, often using our tax money, eg the so called faith based initiatives in the public arena.
I wouldn't trust these people - the evangelicals and other conservative religions one bit. For them the game is little else then a goal of power over minds, and getting the money that further fertilizes their goal of control.
And if they achieve their goal, look out - we will be a christian Saudi Arabia. God s
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