Do You Hear What I Hear?
Gregory Edison
January 28, 2010
Filed under News, Opinions and Views
One wintery December morning a joyous chorus of voices rose up into the Heavens praising God in their harmony, the multitude of voices sweetly serenaded the sky with their holy hymns.
But this outburst of pious song didn’t take place in a church, but in the high school gym. North Augusta High School’s relationship with religion has always been a close one, narrowly skirting across the 1st amendment, through school prayer at football games, graduation, and now through a selection of spiritual carols at the school’s toy drive assembly. Determining if any or all of these are violations of The Establishment Clause, however, necessitates an examination of the 1st amendment and its changing interpretation over the years.
The relationship between religion and government in the United States is complex, regulated by two, almost conflicting, clauses of the 1st amendment. The first, The Establishment Clause, prevents the government from promoting one religion above another, or establishing a national church. The second, and more contested by the court, is the Free Exercise Clause which prevents the government from restricting a citizen’s ability to express his or her religious beliefs. In conjunction, these two clauses can provide somewhat contradictory rulings. However, this conflict as well as the entire second clause is relatively unimportant when considering the position of God at North Augusta High School.
While the Free Exercise Clause does protect one’s freedom of belief, North Augusta High school is a public institution, funded by the government, and is therefore first subject to The Establishment Clause.
But in order understand this limitation placed on the school, one must first look at the clause’s history and the Supreme Court decisions that shaped it. One of the earliest examples of this, and perhaps the most prominent, is Jefferson’s “Wall of Separation” letter. In this letter to the Danbury Baptists, President Jefferson propagated the expression, “Wall of Separation,” and according to most interpretations advocated a strong separation between church and state. This view of the Establishment Clause is the most widely cited and has shaped the Supreme Court’s decisions about government and religion throughout the twentieth century, albeit slightly softened to some degree.
The first of Supreme Court cases regarding the Establishment Clause took place in 1947 and was known as EVERSON v. BOARD OF EDUCATION. The case involved a New Jersey Law that completely subsidized the transportation costs of students to and from schools, public and private. In this case the Supreme Court declared that the Constitution’s first amendment guaranteed that the government could not: establish a national church, aid one religion, aid all religions, support one religion over another, punish someone over their religious beliefs, or tax a religious organization. However, despite the strict reading of the clause, the court voted in favor of the Board of Education because the law in question did not explicitly support any religious organization, but rather provided support for parents trying to get their children to school regardless of beliefs espoused by those schools. This case is the foundation of all interpretation of the Establishment Clause and the Court’s aforementioned rules have been used in determining all cases since.
While EVERSON v. BOARD OF EDUCATION provides an invaluable guideline regarding the place of religion in government, the Court’s next decision provides a ruling that is even more relevant to our own school’s situation, ENGEL V. VITALE, 1962.
This case was set in a New York school that had developed a school prayer for the students to recite at the beginning of each day. Although the prayer was “denominationally neutral” and non-mandatory, a group of Jewish students were perturbed by the school’s practices and their families sued. The court found in favor of the plaintiff stating that prayer was inherently religious, and despite its non-mandatory status it was “indirectly coercive” to religious minorities and therefore illegal due to The Establishment Clause. By disallowing the arguments of non-mandatory participation and non-general prayer, the court established an important precedence for future cases involving religion and state, including our own.
Armed with these tools, and using these two cases as guide lines, we can begin to determine how legal some of our own school’s actions are. More specifically the school’s Toy-Drive Assembly.
The assembly took place on December 11, 2009 and involved music, song, and the ideals of fellowship. However, the major problems came from the school’s choice of songs. Out of the eight carols, four were openly Christian containing between them ten explicit references to a Judeo-Christian God, and several more to other elements of the Christian religion. Even ignoring the efforts of at least one teacher to make students stand during the event, these religious carols remain completely and irrevocably illegal due to ENGEL V. VITALE, and by almost any current interpretation of the 1st amendment. Regardless of intent, leading the student body in such songs is an action born of inane judgment, which completely subverts some of the more exemplary actions of our government.
After considering this circumstance, one can see the growing “wall of separation” between Church and State, and of course our schools subsequent disregard of said wall. Once we consider this, the penultimate question of the situation becomes more prominent: where does such separation stop? Does the winter break’s conjunction with Christmas inherently violate The Exclusion Clause? Does the spring break with Easter? My own opinion says no, but only a close eye to the future can tell. Regardless of the courts eventual trends throughout the rest of the twenty-first century it certainly will be an exciting ride.
But, in a more fitting conclusion to the original impetus for this article: maybe next year just stick to the secular songs.
