Christian Corrections.

Howard Friedman at Religion Clause writes that a few states have considered Christian prisons, particularly Oklahoma. He writes:

As reported last November, a non-profit Texas-based prisons ministry, Corrections Concepts Inc., plans to build a private all-Christian 600-bed prison in Wakita, Oklahoma. The facility will be for men near the end of their sentences who volunteer to be housed there and agree to participate in its program. The ministry has recently announced that discussions are underway with Oklahoma, Kansas and California regarding contracts to house their prisoners in the new facility. In a press release yesterday, Americans United said that it has written officials in the three states urging them to refuse to send prisoners to Corrections Concepts. The identical letters argue that state funding for prisoners in religious facilities would violate the Establishment Clause. The Oklahoma Department of Corrections has already decided not to send prisoners, bu discussions are continuing with the Oklahoma Office of Juvenile Affairs.

Packing the California Courts.

At California Progress Report, Dan Aiello reports on the new push to add religious judges to local courts in California:

In what has been described as an attempt by right wing religious conservatives to "pack the courts" with judges who will oppose Separation of Church and State and "uphold traditional moral beliefs," an organization created by former Prop 8 activists is working to shift the San Diego Superior Court further to the right with a slate judicial conservative candidates to challenge four moderate incumbents of San Diego County's Superior Court in the June primary.

The candidates of the organization, Better Courts Now, were vetted on issues of Separation of Church and State, abortion, same-sex marriage and "traditional moral values," according to the group's web site and BCN leaders. In what has become the all-too-familiar alliance between religious fundamentalists and pro-business interests, Better Courts Now candidates also pledged their opposition to "end frivolous lawsuits against California businesses."

Challenging incumbent judges, most of whom are appointed by California's governors, is rare, but there have been challenges to the independence of the judicial branch by conservatives before, according to Jennifer Pizer, chief counsel for Lambda Legal, a national organization focused on the attainment of equal rights for gays and lesbians.

A New Film: Chaplains in the Military.

Chris Rodda at Talk 2 Action writes about a new film that looks at religion in the military. You can learn more about the film here.

Here's an excerpt of Rodda's post:

While MRFF does receive a good number of complaints about chaplains, it is actually far more common in complaints about the pushing of religious beliefs on the troops for the pushing to be coming from a superior officer or senior NCO than from a chaplain. InChaplains Under Fire, one of the chaplains interviewed describes an incident that is very typical of the kind of incidents reported to MRFF. The chaplain recounts what he walked into when he was called in after a member of a Marine unit committed suicide and a senior NCO's pronouncement of his theological opinion had made the situation even more upsetting for the other members of the unit.

"But the evening after, there was a senior staff NCO who talked with the guys, and he stated, 'We've lost one of our Marines, but we need to go forward with the mission that we have, even though right now that individual is burning in hell.' And luckily I came in afterwards, dealing with especially those who were immediately close with him."

Chaplains objecting to this sort of behavior by NCOs, officers, and even other chaplains, is not uncommon. Among the thousands of service members who have contacted MRFF, ninety-six percent of whom are Christians themselves, have been a number of Christian chaplains. These are the chaplains who understand what Billy Baugham and Arthur Schulcz, who, in Chaplains Under Fire, talk about the infringement on the First Amendment's free speech rights of the chaplains, just don't get. Chaplains are there to serve the troops and ensure their First Amendment rights, not the other way around. Chaplains simply do not have the right to push their beliefs on the troops, nor should a chaplain encourage their congregation to push their beliefs on their fellow troops, as one chaplain is shown doing inChaplains Under Fire. While chaplains certainly do have the same right as a civilian minister to preach the beliefs of their religion in the setting of an actual worship service, statements like the following from a chaplain in a worship service are troublesome.

"How many of you on a day to day basis go up to your neighbors in your workspace and witness to them about Christ? Why not? It's risky, isn't it? Somebody might look at you, and they might label you something, right? Two words. He's a Jesus freak. That's a little bit scary. I'm not saying that God's calling you to go to Baghdad and preach the word there, because, first of all, I don't think you're gonna get clearance to get off the base to do that. But God's got plenty of missions for you every single day right here on base."

On the one hand, evangelizing is part of the Christian faith, so the chaplain has the right to talk about it in a worship service, but on the other hand, the chaplain's military congregation does not have the right do what the chaplain is encouraging them to do -- evangelize in the military workplace.

Christian Reconstructionism.

Do not miss Sarah Posner's recent post on Christian Reconstructionism at Religion Dispatches. Here's an excerpt:

Back when Huckabee was running for president, a reporter asked him if he was a Christian Reconstructionist. It was an amusing moment -- because anyone who didn't want to be linked with some Christian Reconstructionists' endorsements of slavery or the death penalty for homosexuals would of course say no. And Huckabee did. But many have documented his Reconstructionist ties, and how his callsfor biblical law in place of the Constitution reflect Reconstructionism's influence.

Huckabee is not alone. Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell, who backed away from his controversial thesis during his campaign last year, was shown by Diana Butler Bass to be tied to Christian Reconstructionism, both through the subject matter of his thesis and his advisor Herb Titus.

Now comes Star Parker, a favorite on the religious right speaking circuit for being a walking example of how a welfare queen who had had multiple abortions can be transformed into a conservative Christian icon. Parker -- an early endorser of Huckabee in 2008 -- is now running for Congress in the 37th district of California, and hopes to "have the opportunity to share my ideas inside the Congressional Black Caucus" about how the country is sliding towards socialism.

Parker -- who is an admirer of Christian Reconstructionism founder R.J. Rushdoony -- recently gave aninterview to the John Birch Society, which during the Kennedy administration insisted that proposed civil rights laws were "in flagrant violation of the 10th amendment," and threatened individual freedom. (Sound familiar? The same arguments are being made about health care reform.)

In the JBS interview, Parker said that Obama "is a secular leftist" who doesn't have a "biblical worldview" and is "pushing the envelope as far as angering God." Whether he is a "Pharaoh or a Nebuchadnezzar we don't know, but we do know that ultimately he will not succeed. The Scriptures are very clear, that God abhors the bloodthirsty and the deceitful." (According to some eschatology, Nebuchadnezzar is the Antichrist.) Parker not only endorsed the notion that abortion is genocidal in black communities, but added that Obama supports abortion through the ninth month (which is false).

The Blaine Amendments.

Watch today for news about a new bill in Florida that would end the ban on government funding for religious institutions. There are a number of Blaine amendments around the country, enacted in the late 1800s during what many call a period of anti-Catholic sentiment. While the amendments were enacted for the wrong reasons, they do the right thing. Their repeal would increase the federal funding of religious institutions - to anyone who ascribes to separation of church and state (as stated in the Establishment clause of the first amendment and held up in common law since then), a clear violation.

For more noise on the Blaine Amendments and some history, see here, here, here and here.

As an aside, I was speaking to a class yesterday about abortion and assisted suicide. Both caused a stir during the health care debate with conservatives crying "not with my tax dollars." Yet we don't hear the same cries regarding other governmental support of services that other minority groups oppose. And that list is long. My single point is that the Religious Right has won the illegitimate battle of decrying what they oppose as unworthy of government funding. Those who support separation of church and state know they can't make the same arguments because, well, we all pay for lots of services we don't agree with or make use of.

We Believe in Theocracy.

Rick Santorum spoke at the Southern Republican Leadership Conference last week. And told us what we believe: free enterprise, a Christian God, that the traditional family is the primary unit of society. Watch the creepy video here.

New Study on Church Political Activity.

From Lubbock online, an article about the new study published by Duke on the most politically active denominations.

Catholic and black protestant churches are the most active while white mainline protestant and white evangelical were the least active.

Here's a clip from the article:

Duke University released the National Congregations Study this week, analyzing the traits of different religious groups, divided by race, and their political influence.

It also showed churches overall are getting more politically active.

The Most Rev. Placido Rodriguez, bishop of the Catholic Diocese of Lubbock, said he wasn't surprised by the results.

"We follow our own tradition," he said.

The Catholic Church strives to focus on issues rather than individual candidates, he added.

Last month Lubbock Catholic churches distributed postcards urging parishioners to forward them to local congressmen. The postcards petitioned for immigration reform. Catholics have also been known to speak out against abortion rights.

The Catholic church may in part be more political because of its large size and many institutions, including Catholic schools, said the bishop.

"We have the principles and the teachings and many of the institutions to teach our faithful," he said.

The Rev. David Veal, a retired Episcopal priest, said he wasn't surprised to hear the survey found white mainline Protestant churches, the category his church falls into, among the least politically active.

"The Episcopal Church's tradition is not to get involved in politics," Veal said. "Of course, our people do, and that's just fine."

From slavery to prohibition, he said, the church has not preached for or against government reform.

On becoming more active overall, researchers asked church leaders to respond to the survey in both 1998 and 2006-07. The number of church leaders who encouraged their congregations to get involved in politics - whether by distributing voter guides or hosting an elected official as a speaker - increased.

I have to admit that I'm surprised white evangelical groups didn't rank higher in lobbying. Yet, as someone at Catholics for Choice told me during a phone interview a few months ago, evangelicals don't really have access to the Democratic party. But Catholics can access Democrats and Republicans equally. Their "palaces" and flowing robes still impress some legislators. And the bishops who do access legislators say they represent a large constituency that the Democratic party would like to appeal to; the problem is that most Catholics today are out of line with the hierarchical teachings of the church, particularly on women's rights and gay marriage.

The quote above from Catholic priest in Lubbock is typical. The Catholic church, as we've clearly seen during the health care debates, see itself as the keeper of morals in society, the teacher of the rest of us on how to live, govern, legislate and behave.

That the study find increased political activism over the past 8 or 9 years is, I think, significant.

Regarding the laws around lobbying and church political activism, the article states:

Separation of church and state has long been a sensitive issue, but church leaders everywhere have been known to preach about political issues such as abortion, the death penalty and gay marriage. Because of freedom of speech, church leaders are allowed to preach politics.

But church leaders also have been warned to be wary of such preaching. Besides polarizing members, churches also run the risk of losing their special status with the Internal Revenue Service that makes them tax-exempt.

IRS regulations are not specific, but the "Tax Guide for Churches and Religious Organizations" says the regulations prohibit churches from lobbying and supporting specific candidates either by donating campaign contributions or making public statements of position, in favor or opposition to a candidate. During the 2008 presidential primary, Brad Jurkovich, pastor of Victory Life Baptist Church, welcomed Republican presidential hopeful Mike Huckabee and introduced him at a Lubbock rally.

Jurkovich said he invited Huckabee, a former Baptist preacher Jurkovich has known for more than a decade, to speak at the church, but it didn't fit into his busy schedule.

"Obviously, I love his conservative background," Jurkovich said. "... And the fact that he had Chuck Norris with him."

Despite his appearance at the rally, Jurkovich said he's not worried about the church losing its tax-exempt status. He said he typically tries to separate politics from preaching.

"I'm not preaching that Sunday by Sunday, but I certainly want our congregation to be responding to the freedom in this country," he said.

Larry Jones, the Lubbock Area Baptist Association's director of missions, said traditionally the Baptist Church as an organization is not politically active, but its members are. He cited past presidents Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton as members of the Baptist church.

"Baptists have pretty much led the way in separation of church and state," he said. "In those terms, they have a higher respect for the government."

Interfaith Alliance Makes Recommendations to Obama on Faith-Based Initiatives.

For Immediate Release

March 9, 2010

Contact: Ari Geller - Rabinowitz/Dorf Communications 202-265-3000

Interfaith Alliance Calls for Quick Implementation of

Recommendations From President’s Advisory Council

Washington, DC –Interfaith Alliance President, Rev. Dr. C. Welton Gaddy, issued the following statement today urging the president to move quickly to implement the recommendations of his Advisory Council on Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships. Rev. Gaddy was a member of the taskforce charged with making recommendations on the reform of the faith-based office in the White House.

The recommendations made by the advisory council go a long way toward bringing the White House Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships in line with the Constitution. I have made no secret of my desire to see this office closed, but if it is going to continue, it must do so – and can do so – in a way that respects the boundaries between religion and government.

The ball is in the president’s court now. Until the president takes action, these are only recommendations. Until he takes action, we are still working under the same guidelines used by the Bush Administration which allowed for untold damage to befall the institutions of religion and government. I have urged the administration to implement the recommendations via executive order as soon as possible.

The recommendations presented to the president will not only strengthen the constitutional foundations of the office, they will protect the religious freedom rights of social service beneficiaries, increase transparency, and most importantly, ensure that government money does not flow directly to houses of worship.

Interfaith Alliance celebrates religious freedom by championing individual rights, promoting policies that protect both religion and democracy, and uniting diverse voices to challenge extremism. Founded in 1994, Interfaith Alliance has 185,000 members across the country from 75 faith traditions as well as those without a faith tradition. For more information visit www.interfaithalliance.org.

Do Judges Decide With Their Souls?

The Washington Post today writes about religion and the Supreme Court. John Paul Stevens, the lone Protestant on the bench, turns 90 next month.

The question of faith and the court has come up often lately and I too have pointed out that a majority of the justices are Catholic. Yet the justices seem to make decisions that are less predicated on their faith than on their political ideology.

Of course the most conservative justices on the court tend to think of themselves as "post-religious."

Clearly, the court thinks of itself as post-religious. Last fall, Alito said he was frustrated that discussions about the court's Catholic majority became "one of those questions that does not die." He complained of "respectable people who have seriously raised the questions in serious publications about whether these individuals could be trusted to do their jobs."

Scalia has said he would be "hard-pressed to tell you of a single opinion of mine that would have come out differently if I were not Catholic." Ginsburg has said that whereas her predecessors on the court have been known collectively as the "Jewish justices," she and Breyer are "justices who happen to be Jews."

The article also quotes the fantastic Marci Hamilton. Here's a clip:

Such diversity makse religious labels at best incomplete. "Just because there is a disproportionate number of Catholics on the court doesn't mean that you will know how the decisions will come down," said Marci A. Hamilton, a law professor at the Cardozo Law School in New York, who has written extensively about religion and the court.

Other scholars agree that even on questions of the separation of church and state, a justice's generally liberal or conservative philosophy is a far better indicator than religion. Sotomayor, for instance, seems likely to side more with colleagues appointed by Democratic presidents than with the court's conservative Catholics, appointed by Republicans.

But perceptions matter, too. Religion becomes a diversity consideration just like ethnicity and gender, especially with 51 percent of Americans identifying with one of the Protestant religions.

Clearly, Obama did not consider Sotomayor's Catholic upbringing to be disqualifying, despite the court's majority. "And the president has every right to ask [a potential nominee], 'What is your position on how you would separate your faith from the rule of law?' " Hamilton said.

Perceptions also matter, she said. As religions become more politically active, it is natural for the public to wonder about the influence on the court.

Former Justice Sandra Day O'Connor surprised some last fall at a conference when asked about the need for geographic diversity on the court. "I don't think they should all be of one faith, and I don't think they should all be from one state," she said.

Repealing the Conscience Clause.

After more than a year of waiting for the Obama administration to address the hideous provider refusal laws that Bush passed in his last weeks of office, 365Gay reports that there may be movement to rescind - at least in part - some of the discriminatory restrictions:

(Washington) The Obama administration is expected this week to begin the process of repealing so-called “provider conscience” regulations that could have been used to discriminate against gays, people with HIV/AIDS, and women seeking abortions.

The regulations, instituted in the last days of the Bush administration, strengthened job protections for doctors and nurses who refuse to provide a medical service over religious beliefs.

Human rights groups say the regulations could impair LGBT patients’ access to care services if interpreted to permit providers to choose patients based upon sexual orientation, gender identity or family structure.

The regulations also threaten women’s access to comprehensive health care by permitting pharmacists to refuse to dispense contraception even when doing so significantly burdens the patient’s access, or to refuse to participate in an emergency abortion even when the woman’s health is at risk.

snip

The Bush administration rule was quickly challenged in federal court by several states and medical organizations. As a candidate, President Barack Obama criticized the regulation and campaign aides promised that if elected, he would review it.

Late last week the White House released a statement saying that Obama supports a “carefully crafted” conscience clause – not Bush’s version.

The administration early this week will publish notice of its intentions, opening a 30-day comment period for advocates on both sides, medical groups and the public.

The administration already held a comment period regarding the laws. I hope that the "carefully crafted" regulations will protect the conscience of all individuals, not just those of health care providers and denominational institutions hell-bent on discriminating agains gays, women, and elders.

Ten Florida Billboards Renounce Separation of Church and State.

From TampaBay.com, an article on the 10 new billboards that will visibly grace Florida's byways renouncing the validity of separation of church and state in the U.S. Constitution:

A Hillsborough public policy group whose Christian platform included a push for a state ban on gay marriage has embraced a new attack on an old target: the separation of church and state.

Ten billboard advertisements against what activist Terry Kemple called the separation "lie" are being put up across Pinellas and Hillsborough counties. Seven or eight of the billboard messages already are in place, and the rest will be by the end of this week, Kemple said.

For the next six months, they'll be seen a million times a day, said retired businessman Gregg Smith, who rented the ad space for $50,000.

The message, as explained onwww.noseparation.org, is that "America's government was made only for people who are moral and religious."

"The Judeo-Christian foundation that the Founding Fathers established when America began is the reason that this country has prospered for 200-plus years," said Kemple, president and sole employee of the local Community Issues Council, which paid for the Web site.

"The fact is, for the last 40 years, as anti-God activists have incrementally removed the recognition of God's place in the establishment of our country, we have gone downhill."

Smith, 73, who spends half of the year at his Tampa home, brought the idea to Kemple's attention as a "separate ministry" needing local support. For now, the initiative is just educational, though both men left open the opportunity for future work.

Columbus Pastors Ask IRS to Investigate The Family.

From Joe Hallett The Columbus Dispatch:

In their 10-page complaint, the pastors say they are concerned that "an exclusive residential club for powerful officials may be masquerading as a church."

C Street's activities, they say, "are shrouded in secrecy. Its powerful residents reportedly adhere to a code of silence. This lack of transparency shows a disdain for the political, legislative and economic accountability that define constitutional democracy."

The IRS complaint has the potential to pry open the funding sources and activities of a red-brick house at 133 C Street SE - just a short walk from the Capitol - that is a residence and spiritual refuge for influential members of Congress and last year became the epicenter in Republican sex scandals.

"I look at C Street as a total abuse of claiming to be a church," said one of the complainants, the Rev. Forrest Hoppe, Columbus-based regional minister of the United Church of Christ. "On behalf of the churches I work with and serve, I have a responsibility to call into question the legitimacy of this organization as a church."

Various news reports have said that the C Street facility, valued at more than

$1.8 million, is run by a secretive evangelical Christian network called the Fellowship Foundation, also known as the Family, which has its headquarters in Arlington, Va. For more than 50 years, the Fellowship Foundation has organized the National Prayer Breakfast in Washington, traditionally attended by U.S. presidents.

But Richard Carver, president of the Fellowship Foundation, said his charitable organization does not own the C Street Center and has no control over its policy. He said he does not know who owns or runs the center.

Heritage Foundation Finds Religious Tolerance on President's Day.

I subscribe to The Morning Bell, a daily email publication by the ultra-conservative Heritage Foundation. Always good to know what ahistorical, revisionist work they're up to. Usually I'm rightly disdainful of most of the shit they post and rant about. But today, I'm happily surprised to say, they got it just about right:

First in War, First in Peace, and First in the Hearts of His Countrymen

This season’s snow falls and Snowpocalypse presents a great opportunity to remember our president who also suffered through the cold to save the Republic.

Happy William Henry Harrison Day! No wait. That is not right.Failing to wear a coat in cold weather is not the same asdefeating the British during a blizzard.

The third Monday in February has come to be known—wrongly—as President’s Day. But, this is not a day to celebrate every president in our Nation’s history: like one who served only a month in office. This is the day that we celebrate the man who led America to victory in the War for Independence, who was instrumental in the creation of our Constitution, and whose character forever shaped the executive branch. We celebrate George Washington. That’s why it’s Washington’s Birthday; not President’s day.

What makes George Washington a great president, worthy of such celebration, and example to all other presidents? In short, he was committed to the principles of the American Founding. Liberty, Natural Rights, Equality, Religious Liberty, Economic Opportunity, the Rule of Law, Constitutionalism, Self-government, National Independence: these are the truths that George Washington held.

Matthew Spalding, in his latest book We Still Hold These Truths, explains each of these first principles in depth and often points to Washington as an exemplar practitioner. For instance, Spalding points to an important series of letters to different religious congregations as an example Washington’s commitment to the principle of religious liberty. In a letter to a congregation of Jewish people, one of the most persecuted religious minoritiesin all history, Washington explains:

The citizens of the United States of America have a right to applaud themselves for having given to mankind examples of an enlarged and liberal policy—a policy worthy of imitation. All possess alike liberty of conscience and immunities of citizenship. It is now no more that toleration is spoken of as if it were the indulgence of one class of people that another enjoyed the exercise of their inherent natural rights, for, happily, the Government of the United States, which gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance, requires only that they who live under its protection should demean themselves as good citizens in giving it on all occasions their effectual support.

Washington understood that citizenship did not require professing particular religious doctrines. Nor does the possession of rights depend upon one’s membership in a certain race or social class.

Not all presidents are George Washington. But all presidents—and all Americans—can and should dedicate themselves to preserving American’s First Principles.

Beck, Textbooks, and the "Wall of Separation."

I wrote last week about the fake historian David Barton who was called on for testimony during the Texas Board of Education hearings to discuss the writing of the textbooks that will not only be used in Texas but across the country.

Turns out that Barton's got bigger ears to fill than just the Texas School Board's. Glenn Beck who has been scheming up a conspiracy-laden next "great awakening," called "The Plan," set to be kicked off in DC on the anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech, draws on Barton's ahistorical accounts of the US founding. Here's a segment from Keith Olberman's show that account's not only Barton's rewriting of history but Beck's plans for our nation's next 100 years.

In tomorrow's New York Times Magazine, Russell Shorto has a story that looks at the battle over the soul's of the Founding Fathers and how the Texas School Board and affiliated organizations (the Legal Right) work to establish that not only was the country founded on Christian principles but that the US' laws are Biblical in origin. Barton makes an appearance, below. In the article, Shorto writes that like last year's battle over "intelligent design," this year's battle over the religious birth of the nation has a long history:

The cultural roots of the Texas showdown may be said to date to the late 1980s, when, in the wake of his failed presidential effort, the Rev. Pat Robertson founded the Christian Coalition partly on the logic that conservative Christians should focus their energies at the grass-roots level. One strategy was to put candidates forward for state and local school-board elections — Robertson’s protégé, Ralph Reed, once said, “I would rather have a thousand school-board members than one president and no school-board members” — and Texas was a beachhead. Since the election of two Christian conservatives in 2006, there are now seven on the Texas state board who are quite open about the fact that they vote in concert to advance a Christian agenda. “They do vote as a bloc,” Pat Hardy, a board member who considers herself a conservative Republican but who stands apart from the Christian faction, told me. “They work consciously to pull one more vote in with them on an issue so they’ll have a majority.”

snip

The Christian “truth” about America’s founding has long been taught in Christian schools, but not beyond. Recently, however — perhaps out of ire at what they see as an aggressive, secular, liberal agenda in Washington and perhaps also because they sense an opening in the battle, a sudden weakness in the lines of the secularists — some activists decided that the time was right to try to reshape the history that children in public schools study. Succeeding at this would help them toward their ultimate goal of reshaping American society. As Cynthia Dunbar, another Christian activist on the Texas board, put it, “The philosophy of the classroom in one generation will be the philosophy of the government in the next.”

On Barton, Shorto writes:

The other nonacademic expert, David Barton, is the nationally known leader of WallBuilders, which describes itself as dedicated to “presenting America’s forgotten history and heroes, with an emphasis on our moral, religious and constitutional heritage.” Barton has written and lectured on the First Amendment and against separation of church and state. He is a controversial figure who has argued that the U.S. income tax and the capital-gains tax should be abolished because they violate Scripture (for the Bible says, in Barton’s reading, “the more profit you make the more you are rewarded”) and who pushes a Christianity-first rhetoric. When the U.S. Senate invited a Hindu leader to open a 2007 session with a prayer, he objected, saying: “In Hindu [sic], you have not one God, but many, many, many, many, many gods. And certainly that was never in the minds of those who did the Constitution, did the Declaration when they talked about Creator.”

In his recommendations to the Texas school board, Barton wrote that students should be taught the following principles which, in his reading, derive directly from the Declaration of Independence: “1. There is a fixed moral law derived from God and nature. 2. There is a Creator. 3. The Creator gives to man certain unalienable rights. 4. Government exists primarily to protect God-given rights to every individual. 5. Below God-given rights and moral laws, government is directed by the consent of the governed.”

Social conservatives have long known that the best way to shape the future tone of the country is through Christian schools (and universities, targeting particularly the medical and legal fields) that instill respect for and adherence to God's laws.

My first reaction to the need to paint the founding fathers as Christian is the question: So what if they were? As a necessarily "living" document, the Constitution should be interpreted to reflect contemporary society and technological, social and scientific advancements. But as Shorto notes, even the term "living document" has been eradicated from text books:

To give an illustration simultaneously of the power of ideology and Texas’ influence, Barber told me that when he led the social-studies division at Prentice Hall, one conservative member of the board told him that the 12th-grade book, “Magruder’s American Government,” would not be approved because it repeatedly referred to the U.S. Constitution as a “living” document. “That book is probably the most famous textbook in American history,” Barber says. “It’s been around since World War I, is updated every year and it had invented the term ‘living Constitution,’ which has been there since the 1950s. But the social conservatives didn’t like its sense of flexibility. They insisted at the last minute that the wording change to ‘enduring.’ ” Prentice Hall agreed to the change, and ever since the book — which Barber estimates controlled 60 or 65 percent of the market nationally — calls it the “enduring Constitution.”

I was born and raised in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. My grandparents were Mennonite and their story and that of Martin Harnish, our ancestor who was recruited by William Penn, along with other Anabaptist families (Amish and Mennonite) to come to America in the early 1700s, is the perfect illustration of the importance of separation of church and state. The Radical Reformation bred a hostile environment for those in Switzerland and Germany who did not ascribe to the beliefs of the state-ordained church. They were killed and tortured for their faith for centuries. A ticket to the frontiers of what would soon be called Pennsylvania saved my ancestors from continued persecution.

Today, the Amish and to some extent the Mennonites live outside society, protected from governmental discrimination by the Establishment Clause and the "separation of church and state."

One can only wonder how non-evangelical or non-fundamentalist Christian Americans feel about a particular "Christian" history being taught at their public, federally-funded schools. It is this sort of discrimination against individual religious conscience that "separation of church and state" is meant to prevent. And yet, it is this sort of discrimination that the Texas Board of Education and other related groups seek to perpetrate.

Proposition 8: How Many Souls Have You Saved?

Ashby Jones at the Wall Street Journal's "Law Blog" quips that while little should be happening in the Proposition 8 case in California at the moment - the trial has ended, the post-trial brief isn't due until the end of the month - there's still a lot happening in the case.

Not only have supporters of the law gone bonkers over reports that the judge is gay (perhaps threatening any public support gains the case could have made 'cause, you know, those gays stick together) but the Alliance Defense Fund is now screaming that supporters of "traditional" marriage are being discriminated against for their religion:

One of the lawyers handling the case for the defendants (that is, defending the constitutionality of Prop. 8) sent us a note recently attacking the plaintiffs’ approach in the case. Specifically, Brian Raum, the head of marriage litigation for the Alliance Defense Fund, has accused the plaintiffs and their lead lawyers, David Boies and Ted Olson, of unfairly attacking religion.

In an email, Raum wrote to us:

As one of the attorneys defending California’s marriage amendment, I’ve been uniquely privileged to be at trial in federal court over [recent] weeks. As the proceedings unfolded, though, something became perfectly clear that can only be described as outrageous. This lawsuit challenges the constitutionality of the voter-enacted state amendment protecting marriage. But the plaintiffs, who want to redefine marriage, have focused unabashedly on a systematic attack of orthodox religious beliefs.

The defenders of Prop 8 have been standing on two feeble legs, really: they claim that the vote to define marriage as only between a man and a woman was a democratic process; and that the state has an interest in protecting "traditional" marriage. While the first premise may be true, huge amounts of church money (protected from disclosure by the government's lobbying laws and tax-exempt status for churches) ensured that the proposition passed by 52%. That "traditional" ideas of marriage are defensible has proven a more difficult case to make. Everything from the need for procreation to arguments that homosexuals are not monogamous has been thrown up as justification for a "defense" of heterosexual marriage.

What the defendants tried hard to stay away from during the trial were overtly religious arguments for same sex marriage, fearing that the Establishment Clause could be called on to disprove their arguments. Same sex marriage, they claimed, is a moral wrong, not a religious one.

Yet the overtly Christian Alliance Defense Fund was started in 1994 by the likes of Campus Crusade's Bill Bright and Focus on the Family's James Dobson in order to inhibit the legal rights of non-Fundamentalist Christians. They've made an art out of claiming that individual rights are "religious opression," even if those rights in no way impact the lives of others.

As the cornerstone of what I call the Legal Right (similar in purpose to the Religious Right and the Medical Right), ADF is a well-funded, savvy, highly effective force in law today. Their founding principle, that religious freedom is defined as tolerance by society of their particular religious proselytizing, is neither sweet nor benign.

When you define religious freedom as a one-sided demand that all others tolerate your proselytizing (because your faith is right and others need to be converted), any resistant non-believer becomes opposition to your goal of saving souls. Theologically, fundamentalism is designed to measure a believer's chances at heavenly afterlife by how he's lived (though a little deathbed salvation can fix that) and how many he has converted. It's this work to convert - to "reform" the gay, to make chaste the whore, to assert God's laws on society - that ADF is after.

From abstinence education to school prayer, from ahistorical text books to ten commandments statues in court houses, the primary goal is to teach the word of God - a very specific God - and to win all of society into that faith. Religious freedom, in this frame, doesn't mean freedom to believe as one's conscience dictates - no Christian then would need the ten commandments in a courthouse or to be kept from condoms - but freedom to spread that view either by conversion or imposition of laws unchecked.

It is the intolerance demonstrated by religious forces and their desire to convert and govern that Proposition 8 most highlights, not a greater need for tolerance of religion.