Overlooking the Obvious: The First Amendment

"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."

Thus reads the First Amendment to the United States Constitution. It is often used to justify the banning of religious activity on public-school campuses. The recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance, for instance, in which the phrase "under God" occurs, has been called "unconstitutional" insofar as it requires, or at least encourages, students to pledge allegiance to something "under God" and therefore qualifies as an "establishment of religion." By similar reasoning, valedictorians have been forbidden to thank the "Lord Jesus Christ" in their graduation speeches and students forbidden to assemble peacably for Bible study on school grounds.

Such prohibitions are obvious nonsense, as in none of the aforementioned examples has Congress made a law requiring the offending action or activity. Were Congress to mandate the recitation of the Pledge, the thanking of God in graduation speeches, or the accommodation of on-campus Bible study, opponents of public religion (usually abetted by the American Civil Liberties Union) would have a legal leg on which to stand. But Congress has never made such a law. Therefore a school may permit whatever it wants in the way of public piety without violating the Constitution.

It may also, of course, forbid whatever it wants along these lines as well, but to do so in the name of the Constitution constitutes blatant sophistry.

What is one to make of a society in which schools demonstrate such indifference to the plain meaning of one of the most important documents in the history of their country?

Quite a bit, I'm afraid, and none of it good: first, that the administrators of such schools are apparently not very intelligent; second, that they therefore probably don't do a very good job of hiring qualified teachers or of knowing whether anything resembling good teaching takes place in their classrooms; third, that the "education" of the students in these classrooms amounts to little more than twelve years of this trickle-down stupidity; fourth, that these poorly taught students graduate and start voting, thus determining the fate of their nation.

There are, of course, many other consequences of First Amendment ignorance, not least of which is that the "free exercise of religion," which the First Amendment is plainly meant to protect, goes completely by the boards. Public schools, so the specious argument goes, receive funds from the federal government and are therefore an arm of the federal government--the same government that must not permit public religious practice (lest it "establish religion") and that, by disseminating funds to an ever-growing percentage of the private sector (e.g., its recent takeover of failing banks and automobile companies), reduces the area in which one may practice his religion to a very small piece of turf indeed. And to stray from that turf is practically to become an enemy of the State.

Whether one approves or disapproves of religion, it is only the religion-establishing acts of Congress that the First Amendment prohibits. In his book Catholicism and American Freedom (Harper & Brothers, 1952), the late James M. O'Neill argued that, because the First Amendment affected Congress only, an individual state was free to establish a religion if it wanted to. Utah and Louisiana, for instance, could declare Mormonism and Roman Catholicism respectively to be their official state religions while leaving the First Amendment inviolate.

O'Neill was not a right-wing zealot but, according to a blurb on the back of his book, a "widely recognized authority on the subject of the separation of church and state in America."

He was also, according to that same blurb, a "long-time leader in the American Civil Liberties Union." What a difference half a decade makes....