Category Archives: History

This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Tuesday, August 2, 2022:  

Following the unanimous Supreme Court ruling in Shurtleff v. City of Boston, Camp Constitution will fly its Christian flag on one of the three flagpoles outside Boston City Hall on Wednesday morning.

It will be the last time any such flag will fly there, as Boston has changed its rules, thanks to the Supreme Court decision.

The implications are immense, and reach further than many expected. The city declined Camp Constitution’s initial request five years ago for fear that it would somehow violate the faux “separation of church and state” mantra adopted by anti-Christian forces.

Simply put, the faux reasoning is based on a letter Thomas Jefferson wrote to a religious group. There was no other basis for thinking that the Founders meant to keep Christianity from having an influence in American culture. There is no phrase “separation of church and state” in the Constitution, nor can it be found elsewhere in America’s founding documents.

The Supreme Court, however, ruled that Boston’s defense was faulty, and that the city violated Camp Constitution’s right to free speech when it denied its request to fly the Christian flag from that flagpole five years ago.

The ruling forced Boston to change its rules. It is also forcing numerous towns, cities, and municipalities to reconsider their own rules, in favor of free speech, and away from concerns over violating the nebulous but dangerous “separation of church and state” thought to be part of the Constitution.

Since 1971, the Supreme Court used something called the “Lemon Test” to handle the cases that came their way: the government (local, state, or federal) violated the Constitution unless it met the Lemon Test criteria:

1. Did it have a secular, or non-religious, purpose?;
2. Did it advance or inhibit a religion?;
3. Did it promote an “extreme entanglement” with religion on the government’s part?

As Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote in his concurrence in Shurtleff:

This dispute arose only because of a government official’s mistaken understanding of the Establishment Clause.

 

A Boston official believed that the City would violate the Establishment Clause if it allowed a religious flag to briefly fly outside of City Hall as part of the flag-raising program that the City had opened to the public.

 

So Boston granted requests to fly a variety of secular flags, but denied a request to fly a religious flag.

 

As this Court has repeatedly made clear, however, a government does not violate the Establishment Clause merely because it treats religious persons, organizations, and speech equally with secular persons, organizations, and speech in public programs, benefits, facilities, and the like.

 

On the contrary, a government violates the Constitution when (as here) it excludes religious persons, organizations, or speech because of religion from public programs, benefits, facilities, and the like.

 

Under the Constitution, a government may not treat religious persons, religious organizations, or religious speech as second-class.

Justice Neil Gorsuch, in his concurring opinion, made it even clearer:

Lemon sought to devise a one-size-fits-all test for resolving Establishment Clause disputes. That project bypassed any inquiry into the Clause’s original meaning. It ignored longstanding precedents. And instead of bringing clarity to the area, Lemon produced only chaos.

 

In time, this Court came to recognize these problems, abandoned Lemon, and returned to a more humble jurisprudence centered on the Constitution’s original meaning.

 

Yet in this case, the city chose to follow Lemon anyway. It proved a costly decision, and Boston’s travails supply a cautionary tale for other localities and lower courts.

The attack on Christianity continues, despite the high court’s shift to originalism. Wrote Gorsuch:

This is why some still invoke Lemon today. It reflects poorly on us all.

 

Through history, the suppression of unpopular religious speech and exercise has been among the favorite tools of petty tyrants.

 

Our forebears resolved that this Nation would be different. Here, they resolved, each individual would enjoy the right to make sense of his relationship with the divine, speak freely about man’s place in creation, and have his religious practices treated with respect.

The day governments in this country forage for ways to abandon these foundational promises is a dark day for the cause of individual freedom.

The high court has abandoned the Lemon test, to the benefit of all who cherish religious freedom. In recent cases it ruled that a football coach shouldn’t have lost his job merely because he prayed on the football field after a game. It also ruled that religious schools in Maine must be allowed to participate in the state’s voucher system.

The “separation of church and state” canard, promoted for so long by so many opposed to the impact Christianity has on American culture, is now on the wane at the highest court in the land.

And all because of its return to “originalism” — restoring the understanding of the Constitution as its writers originally intended. That’s what makes tomorrow’s flag raising in Boston so important.

This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Tuesday, June 28, 2022:  

In its ruling in Kennedy v. Bremerton School District released on Monday, the Supreme Court not only upheld the First Amendment’s guarantee of the right to free speech and the exercise of religion, but it also challenged, for the first time, the canard that the Establishment Clause creates the illusion of “separation of church and state.”

Bremerton School District bought the canard and refused to renew football coach Joe Kennedy’s contract when he persisted in praying on the 50-yard line at the conclusion of each game. The district thought it was avoiding a lawsuit.

Instead it brought on an eight-year-long series of lawsuits that could have been avoided if the district had simply issued a statement that Kennedy wasn’t speaking for the school when he prayed.

Supreme Court Justice Neal Gorsuch reamed the district for not only punishing Kennedy by not renewing his contract, but for deliberately and intentionally making his religious expression its target.

Wrote Gorsuch:

The Free Exercise and Free Speech Clauses of the First Amendment protect an individual engaging in a personal religious observance from government reprisal; the Constitution neither mandates nor permits the government to suppress such religious expression.

At issue was Kennedy’s kneeling and praying in public view after each game. This was, in the district’s view, a violation of the separation of church and state. Such view has been pushed for decades, using Thomas Jefferson’s private letter to the Danbury Baptists as the battering ram to remove all religious expression from the culture.

Gorsuch explained:

The contested exercise here does not involve leading prayers with the team; the District disciplined Mr. Kennedy only for his decision to persist in praying quietly without his students after three games in October 2015.

 

In forbidding Mr. Kennedy’s brief prayer, the District’s challenged policies were neither neutral nor generally applicable.

 

By its own admission, the District sought to restrict Mr. Kennedy’s actions at least in part because of their religious character.

 

Prohibiting a religious practice was thus the District’s unquestioned “object.”

Gorsuch concluded:

Respect for religious expressions is indispensable to life in a free and diverse Republic.

 

Here, a government entity sought to punish an individual for engaging in a personal religious observance, based on a mistaken view that it has a duty to suppress religious observances even as it allows comparable secular speech. [Emphasis added]

 

The Constitution neither mandates nor tolerates that kind of discrimination. Mr. Kennedy is entitled to summary judgment on his religious exercise and free speech claims.

Nowhere in the 75-page ruling does the phrase “separation of church and state” appear. But Rachel Laser, the president of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, which represented Bremerton, saw the threat clearly enough. In anticipation of the ruling Laser said:

[I]f we lose this case, it would be a radical departure from decades of well-established law protecting students’ religious freedom.

 

We think it would open the door that could be kicked in, in particular in this climate where there’s a real escalation in religious extremists across our country, to allow teachers and coaches to be able to pray again and pressure students to pray in school.

Without this writer commenting on her claim of the “real escalation of religious extremists” except to say that it is highly welcome and timely, Gorsuch answered her charge that those former freedoms to pray in school might be in jeopardy in future court rulings: “That the First Amendment doubly protects religious speech is no accident. It is the natural outgrowth of the framers’ distrust of government attempts to regulate religion and suppress dissent.”

As for Coach Kennedy, it has been a long and difficult eight years. But in his letter to Fox News, he wrote:

No one should be fired from their job just because [he or she] can be seen engaged in private prayer….

 

I hope [the ruling] means that our public school teachers and coaches don’t have to hide their faith from view….

 

Win or lose, when the whistle blows and everyone shakes hands, you’ll find me at the 50-yard line on a knee in private prayer.

This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Wednesday, June 22, 2022: 

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled on Tuesday that Maine’s practice of forbidding parents from choosing religious schooling for their children when paid for with public funds is unconstitutional. Wrote Chief Justice John Roberts for the majority:

Maine’s “nonsectarian” requirement for its otherwise generally available tuition assistance payments violates the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment.

 

Regardless of how the benefit and restriction are described, the program operates to identify and exclude otherwise eligible schools on the basis of their religious exercise.

Some 5,000 of Maine’s 180,000 school-age children live in areas where there is no public school. The state has for decades offered tuition assistance to them, allowing their parents to select a nearby school — school choice, in other words — for their kids.

For years, the state has prohibited those parents from selecting a school that teaches religious values. The parents of children discriminated against brought suit — Carson v. Makin — claiming discrimination under the First Amendment.

Having lost their case in lower courts, the parents appealed to the Supreme Court. It took the case, heard the oral arguments in January, and reversed lower courts in their ruling.

While this appears to be a minor skirmish in the war against religion, it is fraught with great significance in the overall battle. For years Thomas Jefferson’s infamous letter to the Danbury Baptists, in which he used the phrase “separation of church and state,” has been used as a hammer by atheists and socialists to discriminate against and ultimately abolish all religious influence in the culture.

In explaining the historic importance of a proper understanding of the Founding Fathers’ intentions, Wallbuilders’ David Barton noted, “The First Amendment was intended to keep government out of regulating religion, but it did not keep religion out of government or the public square.”

In the 6-3 decision Justice Sonia Sotomayor recognized immediately the threat of such high court decisions to remove that hammer from atheists and socialists, falsely claiming, “This Court continues to dismantle the wall of separation between church and state that the Framers sought to build.”

The Wall Street Journal decried the decision, recognizing that threat, referring to the decision as “the latest … by a conservative majority [who are] skeptical of precedents that draw a bright line between church and state.”

The Journal is referring to two recent high court decisions that reflect the Founders’ original intent, including Trinity Lutheran v. Comer and Espinoza v. Montana Dept. of Revenue.

In Trinity Lutheran, money granted by the state of Missouri for playground resurfacing excluded those owned or controlled by a church. Writing for the majority in that case, Chief Justice Roberts said:

The exclusion of Trinity Lutheran from a public benefit for which it is otherwise qualified, solely because it is a church, is odious to our Constitution … and cannot stand.

In Espinoza, Roberts wrote again for the majority:

A State need not subsidize private education. But once a State decides to do so, it cannot disqualify some private schools solely because they are religious.

Jeffrey Toobin, CNN’s legal analyst, saw the mounting threat to the Left’s continuous and deliberate misinterpretation of Jefferson’s phrase, claiming on Twitter that “’Separation of church and state’ is a vanishing concept at the Supreme Court.”

The ACLU also recognized the continuing threat to the false narrative by declaring that “The Supreme Court’s decision today undermines our Constitution’s promise of separation between government and religion.”

Of course, as Barton pointed out, “The phrase ‘separation of Church and State’ cannot be found in the Constitution or the Declaration of Independence. In fact, it is not found in any of our nation’s founding documents.”

The most egregious attempt to reframe yesterday’s decision came from American Atheists’ attorney Geoffrey Blackwell:

With this decision, the Supreme Court has betrayed our nation’s founding principle that the government should not fund religion, including a religion like Christianity.

 

This court is destroying the Establishment Clause of the Constitution, which protects all Americans — especially atheists and members of minority religions.

Other officials with American Atheists expanded on what they perceived as a threat to the Founders’ intentions. Alison Gill, AA vice president, said:

The religious conservative majority on the Supreme Court is intent on placing the interests of Christians above all others, including individuals’ fundamental rights.

 

These justices will keep working at breakneck speed to undermine nondiscrimination protections, replace public education with a discriminatory religious “education,” and force Americans to fund conservative Christianity and other religions. This will harm countless Americans, especially children.

Of course, a proper reading of the Founders’ original intent reveals no such thing. But the rant from AA by its president, Nick Fish, continued the group’s fabrication:

Extremists are weakening our democracy. Calls to reform and expand the Court to limit the impact of its dangerous Christian nationalist wing will only grow louder, as the Supreme Court tries to establish what can only be described as a theocracy.

Fish did get one part correct:

Today’s decision is appalling, but it isn’t the first and it won’t be the last.

As the war against the nation’s culture includes an attack on its religious freedom, yesterday’s proper ruling in Carson v. Makin is comforting.

This article was published by TheNewAmerican.com on Tuesday, June 14, 2022:  

Days before the Supreme Court is likely to issue its ruling in Kennedy v. Bremerton School District, Sports Illustrated offered its criticism of it in advance. After reviewing “more than 1,000 pages of documents related to the lawsuit and [having] met several times … with [football coach Joseph] Kennedy and his legal team,” author Greg Bishop was ready to make his own ruling in the case: If the high court rules in favor of Kennedy, that ruling will be “a sledgehammer aimed at a bedrock of democracy: the separation of church and state.”

Even worse, such a decision will unleash a wave of “white Christian nationalism” on the nation. Wrote Bishop, “They believe America was created by a preeminence of people like themselves [“white Christian slavers”] and should always have laws in place that reflect America’s origins.”

He quoted Rachel Laser, president and CEO of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, which represents Bremerton: “That’s what this case is about.… [it’s] a movement that is so determined they are not willing to stop. They are willing to destroy our democracy to achieve their ends.”

She claims that those groups supporting Kennedy through amicus briefs represent a “who’s who of religious extremists in this country.”

It’s all part of a master plan, wrote Bishop, to “redefine church and state.” Previous court rulings prohibiting the teaching of creationism and prayer in schools are likely to be threatened as part of that master plan. Under recent rulings “God,” he complained, “can remain in the Pledge of Allegiance … the federal government can give money to faith-based schools, and … religious groups can discriminate based on their beliefs when hiring.”

“It’s really,” wrote Bishop, “whether church and state should be separated — and where that line of separation should be drawn. Or redrawn. Or removed.”

Kennedy himself is the unlikely “hero” in the drama. For seven years he coached Bremerton High School’s JV football team and helped with the varsity. For years he prayed by himself after each game on the 50-yard-line.

And for seven years, nobody minded. Nobody said anything. Nobody sued. Nobody even threatened to sue.

But when a school administrator paid a public compliment to how the coach was positively impacting the lives of his players, the school board told Kennedy to stop. When he didn’t, the board decided not to renew his contract.

In 2015, he sued to get his job back. That’s when First Liberty entered the fray. Since then, the lawsuit wended its way through the judicial system until it finally was taken on appeal by the Supreme Court in January.

Oral arguments were heard in April and the ruling is expected at any moment.

The ruling is likely to disappoint Bishop. The court has limited itself to answering just two questions:

(1) Whether a public-school employee who says a brief, quiet prayer by himself while at school and visible to students is engaged in government speech that lacks any First Amendment protection; and

(2) Whether, assuming that such religious expression is private and protected by the Free Speech and Free Exercise Clauses, the Establishment Clause nevertheless compels public schools to prohibit it.

The high court will not visit the issue of the alleged “separation of church and state.” David Barton, founder of Wallbuilders, clarifies that issue:

The early colonists who came to America … made sure that the government, or the State, could not control or limit religious beliefs or activities. This was their understanding of the separation of Church and State….

 

The phrase “separation of Church and State” cannot be found in the Constitution or the Declaration of Independence. In fact, it is not found in any of our nation’s founding documents. Related to government, the phrase first appeared in a letter written by Thomas Jefferson to the Danbury Baptist Association of Connecticut in 1801….

 

The Danbury Baptists wrote Thomas Jefferson expressing their concern that the government might try to regulate their religious expression. In response, Jefferson wrote his now famous letter, using the phrase “Separation of Church and State” to reassure the Danbury Baptists that the First Amendment prohibited the government from trying to control religious expression.

 

In short, the First Amendment was intended to keep government out of regulating religion, but it did not keep religion out of government or the public square.

That is what frightens Bishop and groups such as Americans United for Separation of Church and State. Supreme Court originalists may some day restore the original understanding of the relationship between church and state, demanding that tyrants and atheists cease using the government to regulate religion into oblivion via an intentional misreading of Jefferson’s phrase.