Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt has sent a letter to public school superintendents across the state vowing to defend religious freedom amid “veiled legal threats” over the distribution of Bibles on campus…. “Few things are as sacred and as fundamental to Oklahomans as the constitutional rights of free speech and the free exercise of religion,” Pruitt wrote Tuesday. “It is a challenging time in our country for those who believe in religious liberty. Our religious freedoms are under constant attack from a variety of groups who seek to undermine our constitutional rights and threaten our founding principles.”
It’s bad enough when those who really should know better ignore the separation of Church and State because it’s inconvenient. It’s downright tragic when an Attorney General- a state’s chief law enforcement officer- decides that the majority religion isn’t subject to the rule of law. It’s all about “free exercise of religion” and “free speech” and “religious liberty”…until someone decides to flip the script. Then it becomes crystal clear that “religious liberty” is held to apply only to the majority religion. Non-Christians don’t have the same rights because…well, because they clearly aren’t enlightened enough to believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and thus don’t deserve the same free speech rights.
DUH….
The issue in Oklahoma is the organized effort of local Christian groups looking to distribute Bibles in public schools. This is the answer to the question: “When does indoctrination trump edumication?”
Attorney General Pruitt has seen fit to wade into the debate, offering that Oklahoma law protects the “distribution of religious literature in public schools.” Except that in this case the intent is clearly to protect the distribution of CHRISTIAN materials. You’d think that a state Attorney General would understand the law- particularly when it comes to the separation of Church and State. Courts have never said that specific groups nay have access to public schools in order to pass out religious materials while others are excluded. They HAVE said that if schools are to be opened to those wishing to distribute religious materials, then ANY and ALL groups wishing similar access must be granted it. This is truly inconvenient and upsetting to Christians who believe that by virtue of being the majority (and, in their minds, the One, True, and ONLY) religion, they should have sole and unfettered access to public schools.
Except that America ISN’T a Christian nation. It’s a secular nation with a Christian minority, meaning that Christians don’t get to do whatever they want in whatever manner they’d like to do it…as inconvenient as that might seem.
The details in cases like these make all the difference: courts have never said schools can give specific outside groups special access to children to promote Bibles or any other materials. What is legal, however, are open forums - if a school is going to allow distribution of one group’s materials, it has to open the door to everyone.
In a practical sense, that means if an Oklahoma public school allows the distribution of Bibles, it can either (a) also allow the other groups, including Satanists, the same access; or (b) face an expensive lawsuit the district is guaranteed to lose, bombast from the state Attorney General’s office notwithstanding.
That’s right; either no one gets in…or EVERYONE gets in. This isn’t a matter of “religious liberty,” but it IS a matter of religious tyranny. The separation of Church and State is meant to prevent the commingling of religious doctrine and governance, or in this case public education. If you can’t understand the potential problems created by mixing politics and religion…well, I hear Iran, Pakistan, and Somalia are beautiful this time of year.
Christian groups don’t have the right to have open and unfettered access to public schools unless other groups are granted the same option. If the decision is made to allow such groups to distribute religious literature, the same access must be granted to any and all religious groups wishing to avail themselves of the opportunity. Yes, that means even Satanists or Pastafarians…or anyone who’d like to spread their Good News.
If you’re going to begin caterwauling about protecting “religious liberty,” you need to be careful to ensure you’re not engaging in your own flavor of religious tyranny. Attorney General Pruitt could stand to read the Constitution and associated case law. He’s certainly free to claim that “Our religious freedoms are under constant attack from a variety of groups who seek to undermine our constitutional rights and threaten our founding principles.” Those who actually understand the Constitution- including the separation of Church and State, which yes, IS a real thing- understand that Pruitt’s words are just so much posturing from someone who really should know better.
