Amendment Revives Church Vs. State Issues

Students who want to commemorate Good Friday at an assembly would quickly learn organized religious observances are not allowed in public schools.

But a proposed Religious Freedom Amendment would change that by lowering the Constitution’s wall of separation between church and state.

The amendment would allow copies of the Ten Commandments and other religious symbols in courthouses, city halls or other public buildings. Students who attend private religious schools would be entitled to government vouchers if children attending non-religious private schools get them.

But the amendment probably would not let the government declare the United States a “Christian nation,” says its sponsor, Rep. Ernest Istook, R-Okla.

His amendment is backed by the Christian Coalition. But opponents - including a coalition of other religious groups - say the measure would allow majorities to impose their religion on others.

“The separation of church and state is good for religion, not bad for it,” said J. Brent Walker, general counsel of the Baptist Joint Committee. “This country belongs to the minorities as well as the majorities, to the nonbelievers as well as the believers.”

Istook’s proposed amendment says, “To secure the people’s right to acknowledge God: The right to pray or acknowledge religious belief, heritage or tradition on public property, including public schools, shall not be infringed. The government shall not compel joining in prayer, initiate or compose school prayers, discriminate against or deny a benefit on account of religion.”

It would allow students to lead organized prayers in public school classrooms. Other students could not be forced to join in, but the amendment does not spell out whether they would be expected to listen silently or leave the room.

“I don’t think that listening to someone is an imposition of their viewpoint upon you,” Istook said.

But Justice Anthony M. Kennedy wrote in 1992 that prayer exercises in public schools “carry a particular risk of indirect coercion.”

Writing the court’s decision that barred minister-led prayers at public school graduations, Kennedy said, “What to most believers may seem nothing more than a reasonable request that the nonbeliever respect their religious practices” may seem to a nonbeliever “an attempt to employ the machinery of the state to enforce a religious orthodoxy.”

Steven McFarland of the Christian Legal Society said Istook’s amendment would mean that “whatever faith can wrestle control of the city council in any community can get their religion accommodated or preferred.”

Notre Dame law professor Douglas Kmiec said the Supreme Court has moved toward a greater government accommodation of religion in recent years.

He said courts might have trouble interpreting the proposed constitutional amendment.