For all of you who live in the States, today the Supreme Court has struck a serious blow against the separation of Church and State as we know it.
The Friendly Atheist explains the background of the court case:
[1]Before 1999, the Town Board of Greece, New York opened its meetings with a moment of silence. After 1999, at the insistence of Town Supervisor John Auberger, the meetings began with a prayer. Nearly all of those prayers were delivered by Christian clergy members. Furthermore, unlike other city councils, there was no requirement that the prayers be inclusive or non-denominational.
How did town officials select speakers? They used a list of local religious leaders provided by the Greece Chamber of Commerce… which, not surprisingly, was full of Christians. City officials later argued that they didn’t purposely try to exclude atheists (and Pagans and Wiccans and Hindus, etc) — they just didn’t have them on the list.
From 1999 through 2007, Christians delivered every single invocation prayer.
In February of 2008, with the help of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, town residents Susan Galloway (who’s Jewish) and Linda Stephens (who’s an atheist) filed a lawsuit against the Town Board and Auberger. They argued that these prayers violated the Establishment Clause of the Constitution and promoted Christianity.
Once they spoke up, the town invited non-Christians to deliver invocation prayers at four of its next twelve meetings. But starting in 2009 till mid-2010 (when the case was being decided), the invocations went back to being entirely Christian.
(Most notably, one of the 4 non-Christians who delivered the invocation prayers was a local Wiccan Priestess who invoked Apollo and Athena to guide the legislative body.)
Up until now, the general understanding of the Separation of Church and State is that the government may not "endorse a particular religious belief or take any action that could convey such a message of endorsement to the reasonable observer."[2] However, after Justice Sandra Day O'Connor (the Court's leading supporter of this view) was replaced by Justice Anthony Kennedy (a conservative judge appointed by Bush), this interpretation of the separation of church and state was in jeopardy of being overturned.
Today, the US Supreme Court ruled 5-4, with Justice Kennedy as the swing vote in this case, that sectarian (i.e. prayers falling under one religion or another - for example, prayers that directly invoke Jesus Christ or a Christian God) invocations do not automatically violate the US Constitution, arguing that it does not constitute "religious coercion". Even though the Town of Greece's legislative body has opened with a Christian prayer about 98% of the time (yes, I did the math), this is constitutional because there was not an overt attempt to "intimidate, coerce, or convert nonbelievers" [3].
However, just because there isn't an overt attempt to proselytize doesn't mean that these prayers won't have a harmful effect on people of minority faiths. Sectarian prayers, "even if people of all faiths are allowed to say them, are undoubtedly coercive when the majority of speakers are Christians ... when you’re going to a city council meeting with a request, you don’t want to piss council members off by remaining seated during the prayers. So you stand, against your own conscience, to get on their good side." [4]
What does this mean for us Pagans who are a religious minority in this country?
I am not sure exactly how this ruling will affect separation of church and state outside of prayer in legislative bodies, but certainly this is a bad omen in general. But the general erosion of separation of church and state can have far-reaching implications on issues such as government funding of religious schools, government display of religious symbols (which we have discussed elsewhere on the forum), prayers and invocation in public schools, etc., and has the potential to severely harm the equal treatment of people of minority faiths.
- According to Gregg Lipper, a lawyer with Americans United for Separation of Church and State,
[3]the decision allows local government bodies to give less attention to the interests of members of minority faiths and nonbelievers. Lipper said, "It definitely increases the leeway of local boards to impose majority religion" and was likely to be felt in majority Christian areas.
- "If the Court agrees (in a broad, far-reaching ruling), we’d be kissing goodbye to nearly six decades of Establishment Clause precedent. This would be disastrous, opening the door to Christian invocation prayers at city council meetings — and even school board meetings — all across the country." [1]
- "For the sort of people who believe America should be a “Christian nation,” today is a today to celebrate ... By the time this project finishes, it is unlikely that many limits will remain on overt government endorsements of religious faith. [2]
Sources
[1] http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyat ... nt-prayer/
[2] http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2014/0 ... and-state/
[3] http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/05/ ... FO20140505
[4] http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyat ... -galloway/
The Wild Hunt also has coverage of the court case, and I will try to keep this thread updated in the next few days.