Our Religious Culture

Washington Post ^ | 7/11/05 | William Raspberry

[Crackingham]

The trouble with the Kentucky display of the Ten Commandments, said the Supreme Court, while approving a similar display in Texas, is that the it was motivated by a "predominantly religious purpose."

The trouble with the court's confusing -- some say absurd -- rulings, says Kevin "Seamus" Hasson of the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, is that they proceed from an impossible premise.

"The 'predominantly religious' test suggests that anything not predominantly secular must be religious. It in fact has strong anti -religious overtones."

Hasson, whose organization is devoted to defending the free expression of all religious traditions, believes the court -- and many of America's intellectuals and civil libertarians -- are missing the fact that expunging religion from public life is neither possible nor desirable.

"There's nothing in common sense -- and certainly nothing in the First Amendment -- that requires government hostility to publicly expressed religion, which is where the requirement that government be 'secular' takes you," he says. "I think it's better to say 'temporal' rather than secular. Temporal means the here and now, without reference to the hereafter. Our government was designed to be temporal, but you have only to look at the words and actions of the Founders to understand that they had no interest in the sort of secularity the court now seeks to enforce."

But it's not just in impossibly arcane Supreme Court decisions that "secular" plays us false, says Hasson. "It gets us in needless trouble internationally as well. The Arabic word for secular is almehni , meaning godless. So when Muslim fundamentalists hear us talk about secular government, they think we mean, quite literally, a godless government. Temporal translates into another Arabic word entirely, dunyawi , or worldly.

[E Rocc]

So you support faith-based initiatives?

Absolutely. As long as the money is being used for secular purposes and recipient selection is based soley on program effectiveness.

-Eric

[E Rocc]

They are clearly protected by the First Amendment.

Protected from what?

Protected from being forced to follow the practices of any faith, or from being treated as second class citizens because they do not profess the approved faith.

-Eric

[Jim Noble]

Protected from being forced to follow the practices of any faithCorrect.

or from being treated as second class citizens because they do not profess the approved faith

There is no legal category "second class citizen" in the United States, and it is therefore impossible for anyone to be treated as one by the government. You are referring to acts of the government, I trust? I, or any other private citizen, can treat you as we please without implicating the Constitution.