Culture Warriors Want To End The Wall Between Church And State. People Of Faith Will Miss It When It’s Gone.
The Heritage Foundation calls the wall between church and state “mythical.” Oklahoma State Superintendent Ryan Walters also calls the wall a “radical myth,” and has devoted himself to bringing God, prayer, and Bible instruction into public school classrooms. In Ohio, legislators are pushing a bill to make it mandatory for public school districts to release students from class for religious instruction.
Christian conservative advocacy groups have shepherded a series of cases to the Supreme Court, with more in the pipe, chipping away at that wall with decisions like Carson v. Makin and Kennedy v. Bremerton. Watch next for the Supreme Court to decide to take the case of the Oklahoma Catholic charter school. Conservatives, says MCNBC, want to “blow up” the separation of church and state in education. They see schools as the best point of attack.
Many supporters of taxpayer funding for religious schools argue that it corrects a problem of religious discrimination.
But religious folks may well regret the success of these attempts to dismantle the wall between church and state.
Some conservatives have already warned about consequences. Oklahoma’s Republican Attorney General Gentner Drummond has sued to stop the state’s proposed Catholic charter school, warning that the school represents a “slippery slope” that will end up requiring taxpayers to fund schools that promote religions with which they disagree.
In Carson v. Makin, Chief Justice John Roberts repeated the argument that to refuse to fund religious schools is to discriminate against them. If lack of state funding is, as Roberts asserts, discrimination against a religion, exactly who will decide the conditions of religious equity in the eyes of the state? As Justice Breyer pointed out, “Members of minority religions, with too few adherents to establish schools, may see injustice in the fact that only those belonging to more popular religions can use state money for religious education.” How is the state expected to resolve such “discrimination”?
It always seems that the Christian Nationalists are totally focused on getting their hands on the secular gears of government, but totally ignore that when the wall is down then government will have its hands upon the churches. This was a major selling point for the separation of church and state to the religions, including evangelical churches, when the Constitution was being debated for adoption.
For example, say a state wants to adopt a state religion, just as was the case when the Constitution was being adopted. But which one? Maybe the Catholics have a majority in that state. How are evangelicals going to feel when state monies, including their tax dollars, flow into Catholic coffers, but not evangelical's because they are not the official state religion.
I have the privilege of being in Oklahoma at the heart of this discussion. It’s fascinating.