“Extremism in defense of liberty is no vice. Moderation in pursuit of justice is no virtue.” - Barry Goldwater
MisterVeritis (11-16-2020)
Chris (11-16-2020)
The school’s involvement with this program is very clearly an impermissible endorsement of religion. If you clicked on the web site for the program, it appears to be more of a Christian evangelization program than anything else. From the web site:
The mission of Operation Christmas Child is to provide God’s love in a tangible way to children in need around the world, and together with the local church worldwide, to share the Good News of Jesus Christ.
Every box is an opportunity to reach a child with the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
Borden v. Sch. Dist. of the Twp. of East Brunswick, 523 F.3d 153 (3rd Cir. 2008), cert. denied, 129 S.Ct. 1524 (2009) describes the endorsement test as follows:
I don’t see how any reasonable observer would conclude that this was not an exercise of the school in endorsing Christian religious activities.Under the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment, "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion." U.S. Const. amend. I. This provision applies equally to the states, including public school systems, through the Fourteenth Amendment. See Wallace v. Jaffree,472 U.S. 38, 49-50, 105 S. Ct. 2479, 86 L. Ed. 2d 29 (1985). The Supreme Court has set forth three tests for determining whether governmental action violates the Establishment Clause: the coercion test, the Lemon test, and the endorsement test. Modrovich, 385 F.3d at 400-01. We do not address whether Borden's conduct violates the Establishment Clause under the coercion[18] and Lemon[19]tests because we find that Borden's behavior violates the Establishment Clause under the endorsement test.
[I]The endorsement test applies "in cases involving state participation in a religious activity." See Santa Fe, 530 U.S. at 308, 120 S. Ct. 2266. For example, in Santa Fe, the leading case on prayers before high school football games, the Supreme Court used the endorsement test in considering whether a school district violated the Establishment Clause where its policy allowed a student to deliver a pre-game prayer based on a voting system. Id. Here, Borden, an employee of the School District as both the head football coach and a tenured teacher, would like to bow his head and take a knee while students pray. Thus, the endorsement test is applicable here because these facts involve a state employee engaging in the religious activity of students in some fashion.
The relevant question under the endorsement test is "whether a reasonable observer familiar with the history and context of the display would perceive the display as a government endorsement of religion." Modrovich, 385 F.3d at 401; see also Am. Civil Liberties Union Greater Pittsburgh Chapter,492 U.S. at 596, 109 S. Ct. 3086 (adopting the endorsement test). The test does not focus on the government's subjective purpose when behaving in a particular manner, but instead focuses on the perceptions of the reasonable observer. Modrovich, 385 F.3d at 401.
Standing Wolf (11-16-2020)
A class devoted to Comparative Religion, presented from an objective, academic viewpoint, would be perfectly fine in my opinion. If it were truly conducted that way I can't see how anyone could object on establishment grounds. I would foresee most of the objections coming from seriously religious parents, who wouldn't want their own Faith presented in that way...and might not want information about other religious Faiths talked about at all.
When I was in my twenties I belonged to a number of what most folks would probably consider to be "fundamentalist" denominations. In the late '70s I was even licensed to preach by a Southern Baptist church in Northern California. One thing these churches all had in common was their opposition to the idea of their members learning about other religious Faiths, other than in a very controlled and critical way, i.e. pamphlets detailing those other Faiths' failings or, in extreme cases, linking them to Satan. When I converted to Catholicism and visited my first Catholic bookstore I was amazed at the number and variety of books, scholarly and otherwise, about other religions to be found there - books that were dedicated to genuinely understanding other's religious beliefs, rather than simply disparaging them. Unvaryingly, the priests with whom I studied in the years that followed seemed to have the same attitude: your faith should be strong enough to learn about other's beliefs without losing your own.
One of the best volumes on the subject of comparative religion I ever encountered was 'The Faith of Other Men' by a Canadian Presbyterian minister named Wilfred Cantwell Smith. It's a classic, relatively short work, which I believe is still in print.
“Civilized men are more discourteous than savages because they know they can be impolite without having their skulls split, as a general thing.” - Robert E. Howard
"Only a rank degenerate would drive 1,500 miles across Texas and not eat a chicken fried steak." - Larry McMurtry
Call your state legislators and insist they approve the Article V convention of States to propose amendments.
I pledge allegiance to the Constitution as written and understood by this nation's founders, and to the Republic it created, an indivisible union of sovereign States, with liberty and justice for all.
Call your state legislators and insist they approve the Article V convention of States to propose amendments.
I pledge allegiance to the Constitution as written and understood by this nation's founders, and to the Republic it created, an indivisible union of sovereign States, with liberty and justice for all.
Standing Wolf (11-16-2020)
I said I wasn't interested in some judge's opinion and what I was looking for is an actual citation, the actual verbiage used in a law that prohibits such activity. The First Amendment does not have anything like that in it. I don't believe there is anything in the US Code like that. Some judge somewhere down the line just pulled it out of his ass and decided things like school plays or religious displays in public spaces somehow became a violation of
"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof".
How does a school allowing a religious themed kid's play violate "Congress shall establish no law..."? If anything, it seems to violate the "prohibiting the free exercise thereof" clause when a judge shuts it down.
So, I am not trying to waste your time. I am looking for a law, something in the United States Constitution or the US Code that actually prohibits such activity.
“Extremism in defense of liberty is no vice. Moderation in pursuit of justice is no virtue.” - Barry Goldwater
Chris (11-16-2020)