Scalia: Government religious neutrality not Constitutional

U. S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia voices an obvious truth one could discover by simply reading the language of the First Amendment. From the Associated Press:

METAIRIE, La. (AP) -- Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia said Saturday the idea of religious neutrality is not grounded in the country's constitutional traditions and that God has been good to the U.S. exactly because Americans honor him. 

Scalia was speaking at a Catholic high school in the New Orleans suburb of Metairie, Louisiana. Scalia, who was appointed by President Ronald Reagan in 1986 is the court's longest serving justice. He has consistently been one of the court's ... more conservative members 

He told the audience at Archbishop Rummel High School that there is "no place" in the country's constitutional traditions for the idea that the state must be neutral between religion and its absence. 

"To tell you the truth there is no place for that in our constitutional tradition. Where did that come from?" he said. "To be sure, you can't favor one denomination over another but can't favor religion over non-religion?" 

He also said there is "nothing wrong" with the idea of presidents and others invoking God in speeches. He said God has been good to America because Americans have honored him.

Read more here.

In response, internet atheist P. Z. Myers, who moonlights as an amateur Constitutional scholar, says:

That’s right. I thought it was clear: the government doesn’t get to interfere in private matters of conscience. It’s a concept that really isn’t that hard to understand. There should be no federal bias in favor of Baptists over Catholics, or Christians over Muslims, or religious vs. non-religious — it’s just not their job. It’s worrisome that a Supreme Court justice thinks it is their job.

Sure. It's right there in the Constitution. It's in the subsection on Baptists, Catholics and Muslims. Let's see, let me find it ... Uh, I could have swore ... Hmmm.

We'll get right back to you on that.

Bibles Booted from U.S. Navy Base Guest Rooms

Where is the outrage from the liberals who are always lecturing us about the evils of censorship?

The U.S. Navy will no longer allow Bibles and other religious materials in the guest rooms of Navy lodges, a decision that has infuriated some conservative groups, which recently learned about the new policy. 

The Navy’s decision came after the Freedom From Religion Foundation sent a letter questioning the constitutionality of religious literature in the Navy lodges’ 3,000 guest rooms.
The June 19 directive from the Navy Exchange Service Command, which runs the Navy’s 39 guest lodges in the U.S. and abroad, allows religious materials to be made available to guests. 

But it forbids religious items to be placed in guest rooms, aligning the command, known as NEXCOM, with U.S. Navy policy, said NEXCOM spokeswoman Kathleen Martin.

On Tuesday the American Family Association made the directive the subject of its latest “action alert,” asking members to call Navy officials to reverse the decision. The Chaplains Alliance for Religious Liberty has called on the Navy to do the same. 

But supporters of the Navy directive, said it rights a constitutional wrong, in that the Establishment Clause does not allow the U.S. government to promote or favor any particular religion.

read more


http://ift.tt/1cf7PcC

Jack Conway: The Pope made him do it

Where is the outrage!!! Where are the finger-wagging lectures on the separation between church and state?!!! Where are the indignant looks and upturned noses?!!!

We all know what would have happened if a conservative attorney general had gone before the camera's yesterday in Frankfort and announced that he was going to appeal the ruling striking down part of the state's marriage law and then told a national magazine that he did it partly for religious reasons.

Liberals would have choked on their vegetarian lunches. Volvos on the state's highways would have gone careening out of control. Sensitivity training would have been called for to cleanse him of his ideological sickness.

But for a liberal attorney general to announce that he was not going to appeal and to then say that he did it partly for religious reasons ... well now, that's another thing entirely.

Here's Jack Conway told Time Magazine yesterday:

A Catholic and a Democrat considering running for governor in 2015, Conway said he knew the decision could put him at odds with voters and with church leaders in his hometown. His thinking was shaped partly by statements from Pope Francis that encouraged openness toward gays. “Our new pope recently said on an airplane ‘Who am I to judge.’ The new pope has said a lot of things that Catholics like me really like. I have, as someone who grew up as a Catholic listened to some of the words of the new pope and found them inspirational.”

The liberal reaction? Crickets chirping.

George Washington's Thanksgiving Day Proclamation

New York, 3 October 1789

By the President of the United States of America, a Proclamation.

Whereas it is the duty of all Nations to acknowledge the providence of Almighty God, to obey his will, to be grateful for his benefits, and humbly to implore his protection and favor, and Whereas both Houses of Congress have by their joint Committee requested me “to recommend to the People of the United States a day of public thanksgiving and prayer to be observed by acknowledging with grateful hearts the many signal favors of Almighty God, especially by affording them an opportunity peaceably to establish a form of government for their safety and happiness.”

Now therefore I do recommend and assign Thursday the 26th day of November next to be devoted by the People of these States to the service of that great and glorious Being, who is the beneficent Author of all the good that was, that is, or that will be. That we may then all unite in rendering unto him our sincere and humble thanks, for his kind care and protection of the People of this country previous to their becoming a Nation, for the signal and manifold mercies, and the favorable interpositions of his providence, which we experienced in the course and conclusion of the late war, for the great degree of tranquility, union, and plenty, which we have since enjoyed, for the peaceable and rational manner in which we have been enabled to establish constitutions of government for our safety and happiness, and particularly the national One now lately instituted, for the civil and religious liberty with which we are blessed, and the means we have of acquiring and diffusing useful knowledge and in general for all the great and various favors which he hath been pleased to confer upon us.

And also that we may then unite in most humbly offering our prayers and supplications to the great Lord and Ruler of Nations and beseech him to pardon our national and other transgressions, to enable us all, whether in public or private stations, to perform our several and relative duties properly and punctually, to render our national government a blessing to all the People, by constantly being a government of wise, just and constitutional laws, discreetly and faithfully executed and obeyed, to protect and guide all Sovereigns and Nations (especially such as have shown kindness unto us) and to bless them with good government, peace, and concord. To promote the knowledge and practice of true religion and virtue, and the encrease of science among them and Us, and generally to grant unto all Mankind such a degree of temporal prosperity as he alone knows to be best.

Given under my hand at the City of New York the third day of October in the year of our Lord 1789.

Go. Washington

I will be on "Pure Politics" tonight at 7:00 p.m.

I will be on CN2's "Pure Politics" tonight at 7:00 p.m. and again at 11:30 p.m. The panel discussion/debate is on the issue of religion and politics. Guests are me, State Sen. and Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Whitney Westerfield, and Edwin Kagan, representing American Athiests.

Fragile atheists lose case against state homeland security law that mentions God

Last we heard from them, a group of atheists was huddled together shivering in fear that a state law that gives credit to God for homeland security might be retained on the books. But last week, the Kentucky Supreme Court turned down a request to hear a case challenging the law, thereby letting it stand.

And the atheist group? Well, someone ought to keep an eye on them to make sure they don't do anything drastic as a result of what must surely be a bad case of despondency.

We go to Peter Smith at the Louisville Courier-Journal:

At issue were two related laws passed in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.  

The first was a 2002 “legislative finding” saying the “safety and security of the commonwealth cannot be achieved apart from reliance upon Almighty God.”  

The second was a 2006 act creating the state’s Office of Homeland Security and requiring its executive director to publicize “dependence on Almighty God” in agency training and educational materials and through a plaque at the entrance to its emergency operations center.

The group challenging the law, American Atheists, claimed the law was causing them to suffer sleep disorders and "mental pain and anguish." Many of us didn't know until the onset of this case just how mentally fragile atheists really were that the mere mention of religion reduced them to a quivering puddle of emotions.

We just took them at their word that they were hardy, courageous individuals who didn't need the "crutch" of religion to get through life. Now we come to find out they are just effete busybodies who talk a good game, but emotionally wilt in the face of any acknowledgement of God.

Atheists didn't used to be this frail. It's a darn shame.

More First Amendment nonsense

"The first amendment of the United States Constitution forbids state-sanctioned religion," says Robert Asher of the Huffington Post, "yet guarantees the right to its expression."

Uh, no. Sorry.

The First Amendment does not forbid state-sanctioned religion. It prevents the U. S. Congress from establishing one. Five states who ratified the Constitution with this language in it had established churches.

Just because people keep making this claim doesn't make it true.

Separation of church and state group should get a life

There's a lot of views you can have about the "Ark Park" that Answers in Genesis is wanting to build here in Kentucky. My own view is rather dim, since turning Bible stories with serious theological points into theme park attractions seems rather to undermine than underscore the message.

In fact, it should be Christians who should have the most trouble with this kind of thing. I'm trying to think, for example, how a roller coaster down through the Tower of Babel is going to do anything other than trivialize the issue of human speech and its cultural consequences--or how a water slide out of the hold of Noah's ark is going to promote a serious understanding of human obedience and God's reaction to human evil.

But whatever you think about an "Ark Park" one of the available reasonable responses to it is not to oppose improving the roads around it, as Americans United for Separation of Church and State has chosen to do.

Since when do we choose whether to build or improve roads on the basis of what they lead to?

Church state separatist and atheist groups don't need a theme park to trivialize their views. They do a good job of it already.

Michael Shermer: the skeptics' David Barton

It's amazing how someone who fashions himself a skeptic can be so credulous when it comes to cultural questions involving religion. Michael Shermer, founding editor of Skeptic magazine and author of The Believing Brain: From Ghosts and Gods to Politics and Conspiracies--How We Construct Beliefs and Reinforce Them as Truths, has constructed a skeptical belief about the role of Christianity in America and reinforced it by a wide selection of quotes on his recent blog post from skeptics who have taken exception to Charles Colson's recent remark that America is a Christian nation.

The comments catalogued on Shermer's blog are a litany of largely boneheaded statements on the issue, the unimpressive nature of which is testimony to the lax intellectual standards of professional secularists like Shermer. But Shermer unaccountably finds them impressive, or maybe he thinks that the sheer volume of sophistry demonstrated by them somehow renders the whole post more cogent.

I'm inclined to think that large quantities of bad reasoning renders someone's case weaker, not stronger. But maybe it's just me.

Evangelical writer David Barton, who has attracted attention recently because of his connections to Texas governor and Republican presidential candidate Rick Perry, comes under frequent criticism from fundamentalist secularists like Shermer (I haven't seen any comments by Shermer himself on Barton, but they're fairly common among those of his ilk) because of his oversimplifications, occasional inaccuracies, and sometimes fallacious reasoning--as well as for the many of the correct things he says--about the Christian influences on American history and culture. So its kind of ironic that Shermer would employ such a low threshhold of tolerance when it comes to what he includes on his blog.

And it's not just the things he includes on his blog written by other people. Shermer wrote an op-ed piece in the Los Angeles Times last month criticizing the decision by the U. S. Congress to reaffirm the national motto "In God We Trust." No one observed the strange irony that a man who believes America is a secular nation would be upset because the most significant legislative body of that nation had just reaffirmed a blatantly religious motto by a vote of 396-9. But the irony was lost on the blissfully ignorant Shermer.

On the other hand, maybe that's why he doesn't mention his secularist America thesis in the op-ed, since the congressional vote is at least a prima facie rebuke of it. In any case, the article is a bizarre conglomeration of red herring arguments. He talks about the philosophical problem of evil posed by natural and not so natural  disasters (e.g. 9/11) and talks about the benefits of trust between individuals and society.

And these are arguments against the social benefits of religious belief in society ... how?

The David Barton's of the world could be excused if they assented to basically every factual and philosophical assertion in Shermer's piece and still wonder what they have to do with whether the nation having a religious motto is a good thing, since none of the reasons Shermer offers would contradict it.

"It's time to drop the God talk," says Shermer, "and face reality with a steely-eyed visage of the modern understanding of the origin of freedom on which the United States was founded and continues to be secured. God has nothing to do with it."

Secularist atheists are all about having a "steely-eyed visage." Just look at the photo that graces the inside flap of the (intellectually suspect) books of Sam Harris. There he is, looking like a character out of an Ayn Rand novel: defiant, rationalistic, ruggedly handsome, and ... and ... oh, what's the expression? ... "steely-eyed."  The problem is that, while a few secularists like Harris can pull off the "steely-eyed" thing, others, like Shermer, look like way too professorial and grandfatherly for the part. And besides, most of these kinds of secularists are of the politically leftist type that Rand would consider wimpy.

Maybe we ought to be thinking of the code heroes of the Hemingway type. But, alas, neither Shermer nor Harris have shot themselves yet. And clearly, if after arguments like the ones Shermer himself articulates in his Los Angeles Times piece and which he includes from others on his recent blog don't cause secularists to shoot themselves, I don't know what will.

On the other hand, maybe its just because these people are all opposed to the possession of firearms. In fact, we ought to be glad (those of us with a compassionate bent) that the L.A. Times copy editor did not have a pistol close by when she realized that she had approved the Shermer sentence quoted above, which perpetrates unspeakable violence on the rules of competent expression. Apparently secularism extends to disbelief in the gods of rhetoric too.

In regard to the comments that grace his blog post (or plague it, depending on your perspective and knowledge of logic), we have:

• David Schumacher: that some of the "Christian founders" were involved in the Salem witch trials (an argument which, if "founders" is supposed to refer to anyone involved in either the Declaration of Independence or the Constitution, ignores the fact that anyone participating in the Salem witch trials of 1692 would have been dead by that time)
• Adam Qureshi: who asks, "What the heck did we do before Christianity came along a mere 2 thousand years ago?" (Answer: Oh, let's see: enslave, kill, oppress, have government sponsored public games in which people of a certain religion were fed to lions, engage in child sacrifice, and generally disregard human rights because the concept historically required Christianity to formulate. But come to think of it, we still do sacrifice children, don't we? It's called abortion, and most secularists support it)
• Eric Lawton: who is under the impression that "Christianity plunged us into centuries of dark ages, superstition and theocracy." (Nevermind the fact that the Church was virtually the only civilizing and institutional presence in the West after the fall of Rome and was solely responsible for saving Western civilization by preserving the great works of antiquity without which there literally would have been no Renaissance, no scientific revolution, no "Enlightenment", and ... no modern secularists) 

It goes on.

Colson was spot on in his response to Shermer:

According to Shermer, what really makes people feel free and secure are things like “the rule of law,” “education for the masses,” the establishment of “fair and just laws” and the “equitable enforcement of those fair and just laws.”

What Shermer doesn’t tell us is that things like the rule of law, mass education and the other things he credits with making our freedom and security possible didn’t spring fully-formed out of nowhere. They are part of Christianity’s legacy to the West.

To argue that these the things didn't, as a matter of historical fact, arise from the influence of Christianity is just historical ignorance.

Quiet Please. Atheist Zone.

Increasingly wimpy atheists, who apparently lay awake nights worrying that someone, somewhere might be having religious thoughts, have just had their nights rendered sleepless by a Kentucky appeals court. The court ruled that language in Kentucky's homeland security law "stressing the dependence on Almighty God as being vital to the security of the Commonwealth" doesn't violate the state's constitution because, uh, you know, the same acknowledgement of God is in the preamble of the state's constitution.

Next thing you know atheists will be arguing that the Constitution is unconstitutional--which, come to think of it, is exactly what they were indirectly arguing in this case.

American Atheists, the cross-appellant in the suit, was suing because the law was causing them to suffer sleep disorders and "mental pain and anguish."

Many of us remember the good old days, when atheists didn't cower in fear at the mere mention of God. In fact, all that talk from the New Atheists about how brave they are because they face the world without the comfort of religion is kind of hard to square with atheist groups like this one whose tender psyches are reduced to a trembling puddle of emotions whenever they hear religious language.

They just don't make atheists like they used to.

NY Mayor Bloomburg to exclude clergy from 9/11 event

New York Major Michael Bloomburg is excluding clergy from participation in the 10th anniversary commemoration of 9/11. Wouldn't it make more sense to exclude politicians?

Kentucky atheists in need of smelling salts

A state appeals court heard oral arguments last Thursday in a case involving nervous atheists who object to language in a 2008 Kentucky law that appeals to "dependence on Almighty God as being vital to the security of the Commonwealth."

The language, which was put in a section of the law governing the state's Office of Homeland Security, "invokes God for is ordered to publicize God's benevolent protection in its reports, and it must post a plaque at the entrance to the state Emergency Operations Center with an 88-word statement that begins, 'The safety and security of the Commonwealth cannot be achieved apart from reliance upon Almighty God.'"

The atheists who filed the lawsuit say they "suffer anxiety from the belief that the existence of these unconstitutional laws suggest that their very safety as residents of Kentucky may be in the hands of fanatics, traitors or fools."

It seems that public policy must now take account of the tender feelings of contemporary atheists who, apparently, no longer possess the fortitude of the more stalwart atheists of old.

Something really must be done about this crisis of masculinity among the ranks of the disbelievers. It used to be that you could exchange verbal blows with these people, and, when the final bell rang, both parties retired in mutual respect to lick their wounds. These days you have be careful they don't faint on you.

Sheez.

In any case, one wonders what the problem with such language is, given countless federal and state proclamations over the years honoring the Deity, and the language on our coinage which proclaims "In God we trust."

More WWJD Constitutional Misinterpretation Sightings

The WWJD (What Would Jefferson Do?) School of Constitutional Interpretation has reared its ugly head again in the 2010 campaign. Preachy proponents of the preposterous view that Thomas Jefferson's sentiments expressed in a letter to Baptists written years after the writing of the Constitution are somehow binding on Constitution interpretation are reported to be lecturing another candidate on how he should ignore the plain language and the clear intent of the First Amendment in favor of the secularist view that the First Amendment means exactly the opposite of what it says.

This time, it's happening in Denver, Colorado.

If you are worried about being accosted by one of these people (careful of being wrestled to the ground and having your head stomped on), just be sure to carry with you an actual copy of the Bill of Rights as well as a list of the states that had established religions at the time of the Constitution's signing.

Once they begin their sermon, just begin reciting it and chanting the names of the states. After they hear it several times, they will begin sputtering about "separation of church and state" as if it was part of the language of the Amendment even though its not.

After a few more minutes, they will begin babbling something about the 14th Amendment and how it somehow applied to the states the promise that established state religions would not be disestablished by Congress, resulting in exactly the opposite effect.

Keep reciting the Amendment and chanting the state names until they have become fully logically incoherent. As soon as they are laying there, panting on the ground, exhausted from their attempts to justify their position in the face of the rational, linguistic, and historical facts, just fold up your copy of the Bill of Rights and stick it in their pocket on the distant chance that they will actually read it and realize how bone-headed their position is.

It's all you can do.

The WWJD School of Constitutional Interpretation

I have little use for Christine O'Donnell, the Republican Senate candidate in Delaware, partly because she sued one of the finest conservative organizations on the planet, the Intercollegiate Studies Institute, for $6.9 million for "mental anguish" caused by alleged "gender-based discrimination." That and her record of public comment is not exactly impressive. And just by invoking tea party affiliation doesn't get you immunity from legitimate criticism.

All that being said, she's right in saying that the First Amendment does not contain the words (or the principle) "separation of church and state"--and she's right in thinking that it matters. And Rush Limbaugh was correct earlier this week in defending her.

But Ed Brayton, who fashions himself a voice of reason on church/state issues, is having none of it. Brayton loves to criticize David Barton for oversimplifying and misrepresenting the role of religion in America's founding. I agree with much of what Barton says, but Brayton is correct in criticizing some of Barton's overstatements and oversimplifications. He was also correct this week in criticizing the argument, often used by Barton and many evangelicals, purporting to demonstrate a connection between the taking of prayer out of public schools and the later decline in SAT scores. You couldn't invent a more egregious example of the post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy--that the mere fact of something following another thing implies that the former is caused by the latter.

But secularists like Brayton don't usually just react to religionists like Barton and O'Donnell, they more commonly overreact, as Brayton does to O'Donnell's remarks:

Only an ignoramus, a moron or a demagogue would make such an argument. The fact that it doesn't use this exact phrase is irrelevant. Nowhere in the constitution will you find the phrases "separation of powers," "checks and balances" or "limited government." But no one in their right mind would claim that those concepts are not accurate descriptions of the purpose of various provisions in the Constitution.

Ed is right is saying that from the fact that something is not explicit it does not follow that it is not implicit. But if it is not explicit, you better have a good argument for saying that it is implicit. Brayton and his ilk argue that within the first, establishment clause is some latent church/state separatism. In other words the reason for preventing Congress from establishing an official national religion was because of the larger concern that government and religion be kept apart. Is this true? Was it really because they had a philosophical problem with mixing religion and government? What is the evidence for that?

How do we know this? Because the men who wrote the Constitution used those phrases to describe those provisions, just as Jefferson and Madison used the phrase "separation of church and state" to describe the purpose of the First Amendment. We can disagree about what exactly that phrase means or entails, of course; the founders themselves disagreed on it. But to pretend that it just isn't there at all is either idiotic or dishonest -- take your pick.

Somehow you just knew that Jefferson's name would come up in this regard, since he is the man who coined the phrase "separation between church and state" in a letter to Baptists. This is the most common argument for this position--just as the argument that the expression doesn't actually appear in the First Amendment is the most common argument on the other side.

Can we just map every belief Jefferson had onto the Constitution? Wouldn't that make everyone's life easier? This way, the courts could save themselves a lot of trouble trying to interpret it: they could just look at what Jefferson said, and presto, you've got your answer.

WWJD: What Would Jefferson Do?

It all sounds so simple. But while it is common to see the WWJD School of Constitutional Interpretation in operation, it's hard to find people who will actually man up and expressly admit to their assumption that we can simply take the views of a few of the Founders and simply map them onto the Constitutional language, as if the plain language of the Constitution itself didn't matter.

In fact, isn't this exactly the kind of reasoning that Brayton and his ilk criticize when they see it in the arguments of those who argue that America is a Christian nation? Can we just take some statements from the orthodox Christians involved in the Constitutional Convention and do the same thing?

So why did the writers of the Constitution try to prevent the establishment of a national church? If it was because of some commonly held belief among the delegates of the signatory states that government and religion should not be officially (or unofficially) connected, then why was it that, at the time of the signing of the Constitution, five of the thirteen colonies had established state churches? And two or three of them only disestablished during the course of the Constitutional deliberations. Only Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Rhode Island, and Delaware never had established churches.

This fact is not even in dispute. No one denies it. But people like Brayton do the next best thing: they ignore it.

Now ask yourself a question: If the First Amendment was a general declaration of the principle of the "separation between church and state," then how could the delegates from these five states have approved it? If that was the understanding, how could they, being the representatives of states with established churches, have committed their states to it? The answer, of course, is they couldn't--and wouldn't--have. It is fairly clear that those who deliberated on the First Amendment did not have anything like the view of it that the WWJD School has.

In fact, isn't it more likely, given the historical context, that at least one of the reasons Congress was prohibited from establishing a national church was that it would have conflicted with the state churches then in existence--and with state and church entanglement that existed in the colonies? That view would make far more sense than the strict separationist view that now rules in the courts and on secularist blogs.

But one thing is perfectly clear--not only from the express language, but from the likely principle that the framers were working from: the First Amendment says nothing about what states themselves (as opposed to the federal government) should or can do. Nothing. It applies only to the federal government ("Congress shall make no law..."). Brayton can bellow all he wants about "ignoramuses, morons, and demagogues," but at least the ignoramuses, morons, and demagogues can read plain language.

Let's do something that most of the people who make these kinds of arguments hardly ever do. Let's review the actual language of the First Amendment as it pertains to religion:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof ...

In other words, the Congress (that's right, the Congress alone) can neither establish a national religion or prohibit people from doing religious things.

That's it.

If anything is clear from this amendment, it is that its chief purpose seems to be to restrict the federal government from being involved in the issue at all--one way or the other. After all, there are only two ways the federal government could conceivably be involved: through a) having an official religion itself and b) restricting some other religion(s). So the import of the text is pretty clear: "Federal government, don't have anything to do with religion. Don't have one of your own and don't do anything to hamper anyone else's." And yet from this language has been spawned all kinds of mutant legal progeny.

The First Amendment is a limitation on the federal government explicitly, and, far from imposing a limit on the states as to what they can or cant' do about religion, part of the reason for the amendment was to protect what the states could do in promoting and entangling themselives with religion from federal government limitation.

How do we know this? Why, because Jefferson said so:

In matters of religion, I have considered that its free exercise is placed by the constitution independent of the power of the federal government. I have therefore undertaken, on no occasion, to prescribe the religious exercises suited to it; but have left them, as the constitution found them, under the direction of state or church authorities acknowledged by the several religious societies. (Second Inaugural Address)

Furthermore, Jefferson himself, as a state legislator, voted in favor of bills that entangled church and state.

WWJD. You gotta love it.

Why the Bible should be taught as literature in public schools

The question of whether public schools should teach the Bible as literature has come up again, this time as a result of a piece of legislation in the Texas legislature that proposes to do just that. Some people seem to think that there are two sides to this issue: secularists who don't want the Bible taught in any way because it would violate the separation between church and state, and religious people who want the Bible taught in schools because they think it's true.

That would be a dramatic oversimplification of the situation. You could just as well point out that there are secularists who, whatever they think of the Bible, agree that there is an educational value attached to Biblical literacy that is essential to understanding, for example, much of Western literature. And there could certainly be a case made by a religious believer that he doesn't want the teaching of the Bible placed into the hands of an unbelieving public school teacher.

D. A. Ridgely at Positive Liberty gets some of this. Being a secularist, he still understands, for example, the value of Biblical literacy for understanding classic literature, but he doesn't get the relevance to contemporary literature or society, and, because of this, his analysis goes from the sublime to the ridiculous:

This is an excellent idea at least insofar as understanding literature, art and music is concerned. I’m not so sure contemporary literature, art or music requires all that much of a working knowledge of the Bible as literature, but the history of Western civilization and its literature, art and music sure as hell does. Nor do you have to go back as far as Dante or Milton or medieval mystery and morality plays or European sacred music or church architecture or the endless profusion of religious paintings and sculptures between the fall of the Roman Empire and the Enlightenment. You can’t read William Faulkner’s Absalom, Absalom or understand the death and resurrection themes in One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest without a working knowledge of the Bible. So, also, an inadequate knowledge of the Bible as literature might lead one into thinking that Lyndon Johnson (“Come, let us reason together”) or Abraham Lincoln (“A house divided against itself cannot stand”) were more original orators than, in fact, they were; so I’ll grant Texas the oratory rationale, too.

But “contemporary society and culture, including … mores … and public policy”? Can this language be anything other than a glaring 1st Amendment violation just waiting to happen? Not, I hasten to add, because I think Judeo-Christian ethics are per se incompatible with contemporary American secular mores and public policy but because biblical content, characters, poetry and narratives are not, in fact, prerequisites to understanding contemporary mores and public policy and the suggestion that they are constitutes at least a colorable case of unconstitutional establishment.

First to the issue of the necessity of Biblical literacy to an understanding of classic literature. To put it simply, you can't understand much of classic literature without it. End of story. It is like trying to understand the Iliad or the Odyssey without understanding Greek mythology, or the Aeneid without understanding the Roman versions of the stories of the gods.

This point is, in fact, mentioned prominently in Northrop Frye's book, The Great Code: The Bible and Literature. Frye, one of the great literary critics of the 20th century, became so frustrated with Biblically illiterate students in his English classes when he was a junior instructor, that he started teaching a course in the Bible so his students could understand what they were reading:

I soon realized that a student of English literature who does not know the Bible does not understand a good deal of what is going on in what he reads: the most conscientious student will be continually misconstruing the implications, even the meaning.

... The Bible is clearly a major element in our own imaginative tradition, whatever we may think we believe about it. It insistently raises the question: Why does this huge, sprawling, tactless book sit there inscrutably in the middle of our cultural heritage like the "great Boyg" or sphinx in Peer Gynt, frustrating all our efforts to walk around it?

It is a book, says Frye, "that has had a continuously fertilizing influence on English literature from Anglo-Saxon writers to poets younger than I." "The Old and New Testaments," he quotes William Blake as saying, "are the Great Code of Art." Hence the title of Frye's book.

Just try reading Melville's Moby Dick, or Billy Budd, or his short story "The Lightening Rod Man" without a basic knowledge of the Bible. Or anything by Steinbeck, but especially East of Eden and The Pearl. And then, of course there is Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Faulkner, O'Connor, Tolkien, Golding. The list goes on. Even works by people plainly non-Christian in their own beliefs are steeped in it: for example, Fitzgerald's The Grapes of Wrath, and Hemingway's Old Man and the Sea. I mean, for crying out loud, there is a Christ figure in Hair.

Of course, these works, along with Chaucer, Shakespeare, Milton, Donne, are the backbone of our Western heritage, and the chief impulse of our public schools seems to be the abandonment of this tradition. It is seen not only in the choice of book students are expected to read, which tend toward the modern and ephemeral, but in the overall change in the purpose of education, which is now seen, not as the the passing on of Western culture, which was always the objective of classical education, but, instead, progressivism (the political use of schools to change the culture) and pragmatism (the practical use of schools to fit children to the culture).

Your support for teaching the Bible as literature should have nothing to do with what your religious convictions are, and everything to do with whether you think Western culture is a legitimate focus of education.

It is a measure of Ridgely's own lack of Biblical literacy that he would say that contemporary literature and society is not informed by the Bible. It is the Biblically illiterate who swim like fish in the Biblical water and wonder where the water is. He thinks because the influence is mostly imperceptible, or indefinite, or inconspicuous that it is not there. Or that because the influence is second or third hand, that it is therefore not important to be aware of.

I don't know what Ridgely means by "contemporary," but if 19th century to mid-20th are too dated for him, he ought to try reading Stephen King, or John Grisham, or Robert Heinlein, or Ray Bradbury, or Wendell Berry. Oh, and then there's that silly little series of children's books, Harry Potter, where, in places, the Biblical imagery is palpable. And that's just the books.

If Ridgely wants to keep his contemporary world sanitized of Biblical influence, he'd best not go to the theater. The list of movies he'll have to miss will include virtually every superhero movie (especially Superman), Star Wars, The Lord of the Rings (he might want to miss the book as well), the Pirates of the Carribean, The Matrix, Star Trek (particularly II), and (I am told) Transformers.

Oh, and if it makes Ridgely feel better, I'm going to miss Transformers with him.

The people who argue against teaching public school students some kind of basic Biblical literacy ought to come right out and say they are for keeping public school students ignorant. And now that I think about it, that fits right into the rest of public school policy these days.