HOW DID we get from there to here? I'm not confused about the nature of the starting or ending points. But I'm not so clear on how we got from point A to point B.
The starting point was the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment. It has been preserved in original form - there isn't any confusion about what the Framers wrote. But somehow, that provision has been transformed into a current state of affairs in which any attempt to provide for free religious practice in public is vigorously attacked.
Last week, public schools in the Commonwealth began observing a 60-second moment of silence at the beginning of the school day. This move has come under harsh attack from civil liberties groups and the media for violating the Establishment Clause.
This doesn't make sense. Lawmakers have provided those who wish to do so the opportunity to pray. They've offered prayer as an option. They haven't endorsed it. They haven't come close to mandating it. There is a vast separation between the moment of silence and beginning the school day with prayer sponsored by the Official Church of the Commonwealth.
Criticism of the moment of silence is typical of the anxious, edgy reaction many people have to any public religious practice these days. But it's hard to understand how that hypersensitive defensiveness against all things publicly religious flows from the foundation set forth in the Constitution.
The Constitution doesn't prohibit religion. It doesn't demand that religious practice occur only behind closed doors. It merely demands that the state not be involved in an official capacity in a religious establishment. The Framers meant to prevent any attempt by the government to adopt an official religion. There should never be a Church of America. This was a reaction against the oppressive nature of a state church - the Church of England - that many of the Framers experienced before coming to America. They came here largely to get away from that. Likewise, it's logical that the Establishment clause prohibits the government from mandating prayer or actively supporting one religion over another.
But a moment of silence doesn't do any of those things. The allowance of time for prayer -- not mandating it but simply permitting it - isn't "a law respecting an establishment of religion." Rather, the moment of silence is part of the right to the "free exercise" of religion. This is protected by that same Establishment Clause..
Civil liberties activists likely would respond by saying that, while a moment of silence doesn't mandate a specific religious practice, it puts pressure on students to pray. In other words, it creates a situation where peer pressure could make students uncomfortable.
The concern of these objectors can't really be that students are going to be so overcome by the peer pressure of seeing their classmates pray that they're going to convert to another religion on the spot. A Muslim child isn't going to leap up and yell, "All right, I'm a Christian now!" just because his classmates are saying the Lord's Prayer. That's ludicrous.
Rather, the concern must be that an official state activity has put some children -- those who are of a different religion or prefer not to practice a religion at all -- in an uncomfortable situation, that it sets them apart.
Maybe it does. But so what? The government creates situations that make students uncomfortable all the time. Many of the things that set a student apart from his or her classmates in an uncomfortable way - such as being put on the spot by a teacher in the middle of class - don't have anything to do with religion. But among these, only the moment of silence is criticized. Why does it get singled out? Why is its potential to make students uncomfortable any different from anything else?
It isn't. It gets attacked when other activities don't because our society is on guard against religion, terrified that religion will get its foot in the door and the next thing we know, the president will be appointing an Official Priest to his cabinet.
Adopting an official state church or requiring students to recite the Lord's Prayer instead of the Pledge of Allegiance poses a clear danger to freedom. But providing the opportunity to exercise the freedom of religion, something the First Amendment explicitly protects, doesn't.
(Bryan Maxwell is a Cavalier Daily associate editor.)
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