Parents Sue School over 'Lord's Prayer'

FOX NEWS VIA WORLDNETDAILY ^ | 5/02/02 | Steve Brown

[TaRaRaBoomDeAyGoreLostToday!]

Christine Skarin and her daughters are suing over Woodbine High School's graduation song.

WOODBINE, Iowa

[Frumious Bandersnatch]

"You find out really quick who your fair-weather friends and who your real friends are," Skarin said.

I'm sure that her erstwhile friends feel the same way...

[LarryLied]

Two hundred years of Constitutional interpretation have accepted this Article (Article VI) as meaning that a State couldn't require its officeholders and employees to adhere to a specific religious doctrine.

Wrong again.

State religious tests were declared unconstitutional in the 1961 case Torcaso v. Watkins. Interestingly enough, your pal, former Klu Klux Klan member and anti-Catholic bigot Hugo Black, in a famous footnote in that decision, declared humanism a religion.

Odd the courts have not expanded on that. Someone needs to bring lawsuit. Much of the liberal agenda could be tossed out of government schools based on Torcaso v. Watkins.

Thank you for playing. What to try again?

[LarryLied]

10 years before the State ratified the US Constitution making that provision null and void.

Don't play games. People can scroll back. You wrote:

Every state constitution dating from the Colonial period contains the same or similar language. . .

You were wrong and now you are trying to weasel out of it.

Btw...the US Consitution did not make laws in the states or state consitutions "null and void".

You need a few courses on constitutional law and American history.

[spokanite]

Where's the tolerance? I thought we live in a day and age where we are supposed to tolerate everything! Or is it everything except anything to do with christianity?

[Aggie Mama]

Beautiful response. I didn't know he was a Unitarian.

[MEGoody]

Oh come on. It's easy to see that he was refering to the same or similar language as the constitution. Since the constitution did not exist at the time of 'constitution' you quoted, his remark would not apply. It seems you are the one playing games.

[Dante3]

Good point!

[Corin Stormhands]

IOWA?

See, I knew something like this would happen if we let that pesky Kevin Bacon boy hold a dance...

Does anybody know if The Rutherford Institute is aware of this? I'm not sure how best to let them know.

[SJackson]

It seems you are the one playing games.

Since South Carolina rewrote their state constitution in 1790 without the above mentioned references to religion, I'd have to agree.

The 1778 constitution required officeholders to be Protestant, barring Catholics, Jews and other faiths from holding office. It was a throwback to the European religious wars the founders were trying to escape. As a model for contemporary America it's a disgrace.

[JediGirl]

The tyranny of the minority who are offended by a God they don't believe in. Go figure.

Yes, I wouldn't mind praising Allah in the morning if the majority of the people in my school were Muslim.

[JediGirl]

Burn the witch, it's time to bring back this grand old tradition. =o)

What tradition is that?

[MEGoody]

Or you could quietly abstain from participation if you didn't want to praise Allah in the morning. That's what these girls should do - quietly abstain from singing in the choir, or even just from singing that particular song.

[JediGirl]

Or you could quietly abstain from participation if you didn't want to praise Allah in the morning. That's what these girls should do - quietly abstain from singing in the choir, or even just from singing that particular song.

Which is what I do as far as prayers before events go at my school. If a prayer must be said, I believe it should be a universally accepted prayer to "God" (i.e. No "In Jesus Name I Pray" kind of thing)

[joan_30]

That is exactly what the students would do here if we had the same situation.... in fact the whole audience would sing along.. are they going to arrest the parents and families of the 1000 graduating class.. enough is enough...

[RightOnline]

"Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between man and his God; that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship; that the legislative powers of the government reach actions only, and not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should `make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof," thus building a wall of separation between church and State."

Yep, and thanks for making the key point that eludes too many no-minds in this country.

This ISN'T the Constitution; it's a private letter. Secondly, Jefferson is clearly talking to the concept of the formal establishment of a religion by the government.

Letting some kids sing hymns or pray in a school is ANYTHING but the "establishment of a government religion". To assert same is the worst kind of lunacy and idiocy. In fact, those who assert such are merely doing their damnedest to attack Christianity. That's a fact.

[LarryLied]

It's easy to see that he was refering to the same or similar language as the constitution. Since the constitution did not exist at the time of 'constitution' you quoted, his remark would not apply.

Joining in the games? Millburn Drysdale wrote:

Every state constitutiondating from the Colonial period contains the same or similar language (as found in the first amendment). .

"Dating from the colonial period." Get it?

I posted the Constitution of South Carolina of March 19, 1778 which declared Protestant Christianity the official state religion. Drysdale was wrong. Check some other state constitutions. Many states had official religions. Until the mid 1830s, the Congregationalist and Unitarian churches in Massachusetts were funded by state taxes. They did not have a separation of church and state clause in their constitution. Universalists and others tried to revise the MA state constitution around 1820 to put that clause in but were defeated. Daniel Webster, a Unitarian himself, argued for state funded religion in that debate.

[MEGoody]

Well, it's nice that you quietly abstain rather than whining like a spoiled child as this mother and her girls are doing.

[MEGoody]

Exactly. So Jefferson was not saying that there should never be a religious expression in public or on public lands or in public schools, but that they cannot REQUIRE someone to participate in it.