

Written by Dr. Joe Chuman, Leader of the New York Society for Ethical Culture and the Ethical Culture Society of Bergen County, Approved by AEU Board
May 8, 2014 — The prevailing Supreme Court decision in the Greece v. Galloway case, permitting prayer at legislative sessions, including municipal meetings, is another giant step toward the dismantling of the separation of church and state.
The perspective on church state relations on which I was reared and continue to defend as eminently correct, both constitutionally and prudentially, was most clearly articulated by Justice Hugo Black in the Everson case of 1947. In that decision, Black stated:
This prevalent understanding was further operationalized by the Lemon Test of 1971. In Lemon v. Kurtzman, the Court determined legislation that pertains to religion must meet three conditions in order to be Constitutional. They are:
For decades the Supreme Court was guided by the Lemon criteria, and we Ethical Culturists can be duly proud that the late Alton Lemon, who brought the case before the Court, was a devoted member of the Philadelphia Ethical Society.
Both Everson and Lemon set down strict guidelines for separation. One could argue that separation not only upholds the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment, but also strengthens freedom of religion. Humanist that I am, I nevertheless have never exploited the Establishment Clause merely to suppress religion, but have no less been an advocate for the free expression of religion.
Since the late 1970s, the doctrine of separation, which I contend was the intent of the Founders, has been steadily replaced by a doctrine of “religious accommodationism.” What accommodation presupposes is that it is appropriate for the government to support religion (in direct violation of Lemon) as long as it does not favor one religion over another. In my politico-religious analysis, it has been the politicization of evangelical Christianity that has been the primary engine of this shift, though general conservative discontent with the religion decisions of the Warren Court, which removed organized prayer from the public schools, has been a major driver of the government support of religion in general. Accommodation, which certainly has its legal as well as political defenders, has permitted religion to flood the public square.
Among its legal victories has been the Religious Freedom Restoration Act that greatly widens the scope of religious practice. It is a provision I personally supported. But the RFRA has metastasized into other legal provisions which have empowered religious groups beyond all reason. One such development has been the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act. Though applicable to the religious rights of prisoners, its primary application has extended to religious organizations seeking exemptions from zoning provisions that secular institutions need to abide by. This has gone as far as churches and their real estate holdings attempting to evade health and safety codes that apply to the public in general. It’s an egregious and maddening abuse.
When looking at the replacement of the separation doctrine by religious accommodation, a brief survey reveals at least the following encroachments of religion into the public square since the 1970s, where, given my commitments, it does not belong:
Greece v. Galloway is the next step in this ominous tradition. It not only offends and marginalizes those with no religion or of minority faiths, it is also an affront to religion itself. If religion is to be meaningful, (and many religionists who supported removing prayer from the public schools understood this well) it should be an activity carried on in the house of worship or in the home. Prayers led by your gym teacher, or mouthed as a vapid pieties before a town council meeting debating garbage removal demeans religion as it offends non-believers.
John Locke and the American Founders knew that when religion is conjoined with the arms of state, not only is religion denigrated, society has created a wicked brew of religious absolutism empowered by the power of law and government. Their wise response was to privatize it.
The Supreme Court got it wrong. The prevailing decision in Greece v. Galloway is foolish, if not un-American. It’s part of a growing trend, now dominant, that is also very dangerous.
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