Church and State
sciencepunk | March 31, 2009
What is a charity? Ostensibly, it's an organisation dedicated to the public benefit, one that does not seek to make profits, and that does not have political goals. So how the heck does something like the Catholic Church qualify as a charity?
In England and Wales, all charitable organisations with an income of more than £5,000 must be registered with the Charities Commission, which acts as a supervisory power. The core rule is that all charities must exist "for the public benefit". There exists a list of 13 purposes that a charity can subscribe to, including advancements of animal…
sciencepunk | March 13, 2009
For the last few weeks, community action site Amplify Your Voice have been chronicling the extraordinary vestiges of the Bush administration's disastrous policies on sexual health and education: Derek Dye, the Abstinence Clown.
Derek Dye is supported by Elizabeth's New Life Center, a Christian-orientated organisation that received a federal grant of $800,000 in 2007. Dye appears to be a little more reticent to wear these religious overtones during his talks, preferring instead to compare pre-marital sex to juggling with machetes.
For a person whose success depends upon popularity, it was…
stcynic | November 15, 2006Here's a story I bet is far more common than gets reported. A high school history teacher in New Jersey, David Paszkiewicz, has been using his position to proselytize students for Christianity. It's not a coincidence that he is also a Baptist minister. But this time, a student has been taping the class and has proof.
On Sept. 14 -- the fourth day of class -- Paszkiewicz is on tape saying, "He (God) did everything in his power to make sure that you could go to heaven, so much so that he took your sin on his own body, suffered your pains for you and he's saying, 'Please accept me, believe me…
stcynic | November 13, 2006While I was away this weekend, I received a very kind email from Ellery Schempp that included a brief response that he has written to last week's election, which he gave me permission to post if I choose to. For those who do not know who Ellery Schempp is, you should acquaint yourself with Abington Township School District v. Schempp, a 1963 Supreme Court ruling that outlawed mandatory Bible reading in public schools. Ellery was 16 years old when that case first began in 1956 and he prompted the case by reading from the Quran instead of from the Bible during the mandatory Bible reading time.…
stcynic | November 5, 2006Charles Haynes of the First Amendment Center, one of the most moderate and objective church/state scholars in the country, has an excellent essay about religion in public schools and where the line is drawn between personal religious expression, which is constitutionally protected, and government endorsement of religion, which is constitutionally forbidden. He takes a look at two different cases, one in Tennessee involving a group called the "Praying Parents" and one in California involving a school-sponsored Transcendental Meditation club.
The Tennessee case has gotten a lot of attention…
stcynic | November 5, 2006I wrote previously about the case of Benjamin Arthurs, a North Carolina high school student who was prevented from handing out "Day of Truth" cards at his school the day after other students were allowed to hand out "Day of Silence" cards, as well as prevented from wearing a t-shirt that said "I love Jesus, you should too" on it. Now a Federal judge has granted a preliminary injunction in the case enjoining the school from enforcing their policy against handing out relgious literature in schools. The case will now proceed to trial on the specific allegations.
The Day of Silence is an annual…
stcynic | November 2, 2006Here's a case where the Christian legal groups are absolutely right. A kids dance group was prevented from taking part in a holiday festival in Chula Vista, California, because their shirts bore a religious message. The American Family Association Center for Law and Policy filed suit on their behalf and the city just settled the case. The really good part of the settlement is that the city has agreed to put police officers and city officials through first amendment training to prevent it from happening again. I think that's a great idea and ought to be done in every school and city in the…
stcynic | October 26, 2006I think the Thomas More Law Center must be feeling neglected after all the attention I've given to the ADF recently, and they're out to get their place of honor back. And if they keep saying things like this, they'll get plenty of it. I'm just going to quote the first part of the article:
A Michigan-based law center that defends the religious freedoms of Christians says the courts, the schools, and even the military should stop favoring religions that don't represent the values and traditions of America.
I'll give you a moment to pick your jaw up off the floor. Their evidence for this alleged…
stcynic | October 23, 2006Howard Friedman reports that the judge in the West Virginia "Jesus Picture" case has accepted a settlement agreement agreed to by both sides and dismissed the case. The ADF has previously declared the case a victory, but I can't imagine why. The settlement agreement says that the school agrees not to replace the picture and that any such display with religious content must be in compliance with all current court rulings on such matters. And while the settlement does that the perfunctory "we are not admitting guilt" clause, it's pretty obvious that they bailed out because they knew they were…
stcynic | October 16, 2006The American Association of School Administrators has devoted an entire issue of The School Administrator to the issue of what is and isn't allowed in terms of religion and public schools. They've invited folks like Charles Haynes to write articles on the subject. Haynes' article contains much good advice:
When school leaders ask how they should handle religion in public schools, religious liberty attorney Oliver Thomas begins his answer with this advice: "The time to buy the fire truck is before the fire."
As simple as that may sound, it's actually a tough sell in many school districts…
stcynic | October 13, 2006Georgetown recently announced that it was not renewing any of its relationships with "affiliated ministries" - outside religious ministries that were allowed to have a presence on that Catholic campus to work with students. This includes many Protestant groups, which has led to a lot of media attention and protest from the religious right on the issue. The ADF, in particular, have really played fast and loose with the facts in the situation. The Worldnutdaily reports many of their misleading claims on the matter:
He (ADF attorney David French) told WND that there's been no satisfactory…
stcynic | October 12, 2006Berkley, Michigan, that is, the city trying to decide what to do with its nativity scene that I mentioned the other day. Jay at STACLU quotes the TMLC's press release, which offers to defend the city for free in case the ACLU files suit. Hey, that sounds kind of familiar. They did the same thing in Dover over the ID policy. They ended up getting their butts kicked from one side of the courtroom to the other. If Berkley is interested in taking the case to court, I would strongly suggest finding more competent representation than the TMLC can offer.
But of course, the city is considering…
stcynic | October 11, 2006A case I mentioned a couple weeks ago, where a school denied permission to a student to hand out "day of truth" cards to classmates in response to the "day of silence" the day before, will go forward. The school filed a motion to dismiss and the judge rightly denied the motion. The ADF issued a press release about it. I can't imagine on what possible grounds the school tried to argue the case should be dismissed. The case is pretty much a no-brainer.
stcynic | October 10, 2006The New York Times is doing a series of articles on religous exemptions from generally applicable laws (first and second). This is an interesting subject for me, but not one on which I have fully formed views. In general, I am in favor of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act and similar laws. I think the RFRA sets up a very reasonable standard, in fact one that I think should be applied in all situations where a law impedes an individual's right to self-determination; every law should be narrowly tailored to achieve a compelling state interest and should be the least restrictive means of…
stcynic | October 9, 2006A settlement has been reached in the lawsuit in Harrison County, WV, over a picture of Jesus hanging in the hallway of a public high school there. But amusingly, both sides are declaring victory. The ADF, which apparently intervened at some point to represent the school board in negotiations, put out a press release declaring that the settlement "conforms to the board's consistent position that school officials did not violate the Establishment Clause by having had a painting of Jesus Christ on one of its walls." But Americans United, representing the plaintiffs, put out a press release…
stcynic | October 9, 2006One of the Talk to Action diaries has the text of a speech by Gary Lankford, president of the Ohio Restoration Project. Some of the statements in it are astonishingly ignorant. Like this one:
For over 300 years in America, it was widely assumed that to be in public office, you needed to be a Christian--or at least a Unitarian or a Deist. And that distinction, though important, wasn't critical, because even Deists in ages past were much more biblical in their worldview and their understanding of scripture than many of today's Evangelical office-holders.
Wow. Has he never read Thomas Paine? Or…
stcynic | October 6, 2006In Berkley, Michigan the city has erected a creche on the grounds of city hall for the past 65 years. Last year, the ACLU started making noise about a possible lawsuit, since the city pays for it and puts it up and does not allow any other religious displays, and now the city council is considering what to do about it. The Detroit News reports:
Since then, a city ad hoc committee has been studying the issue and recently narrowed its list of options down to three: move the creche to a nearby business property, establish a free-speech zone where religious groups can display their symbols, or…
stcynic | October 2, 2006The Rutherford Institute is suing a school in Greenbelt, Maryland after the vice principal threatened a 7th grader with punishment because she was reading her Bible while eating lunch in the school cafeteria. I just don't understand how a school administrator could be this stupid. Even if you don't know anything about the law, this is just plain common sense. This kind of nonsense just feeds into the religious right's persecution complex and makes the schools look like the bad guys.
stcynic | September 26, 2006This post on the ADF blog has a rundown of what is and isn't allowed in terms of prayer in public schools. Most of it is accurate, saying that prayer groups and Bible clubs are allowed to form and that students are allowed to pray individually and collectively during non-instructional time. But there's one statement in it that I think is, at the very least, exaggerated:
Considering the decline in the moral values of America's youth, teen pregnancy, and school violence, SYATP is seen by many as a refreshing and much needed injection of religion and faith in an increasingly dark sector of our…
stcynic | September 21, 2006Since I've been bashing Jordan Lorence of the ADF for the last few days, I should also give credit where credit is due when he's right, and this post about a new 9th circuit ruling is on the money. In a 2-1 ruling, the 9th circuit overturned a lower court's preliminary injunction on behalf of a church group that was refused the right to use a local library meeting room on the same basis with other community groups. The ruling makes an absurd distinction between religious worship and religious speech, even while admitting that religious worship is protected free speech. The case is now…