A Colorado school district that allowed Gideon Bibles to be distributed to students wants to remove religion from its schools after it was forced to also make atheist and Satanic literature available. The Freedom From Religion Foundation (FFRF) explained earlier this month that it had asked the Delta County School District to begin handing out “freethought materials” after the district refused to stop distributing Bibles to students…. “The School District is not required to maintain this open forum and is free to close it rather than allow FFRF to distribute materials,” FFRF attorney Andrew Seidel wrote in a March 3 letter to the Delta County School District. “We do not think schools should be a battleground for religious ideas. But when schools allow the Gideons to prey on children, their message of eternal damnation for any who don’t believe in their God must be countered.”
It’s a part of the Constitution often conveniently forgotten or deliberately ignored by Social Conservative Christians who believe their God should be our government. It’s called the Establishment Clause, the part of the 1st Amendment which forbids Congress from elevating the interests of one religion over that of others. It’s what the separation of Church and State is based on, and it’s what prevents hyper-Christian zealots from turning our public schools into public-funded religious indoctrination warehouses.
Yeah…it’s kind of a big deal.
FFRF wasn’t arguing that the school district couldn’t hand out the Gideon Bibles. What they did point out is that the Establishment Clause proscribes favoring one faith tradition over others- so, either every religious group that wanted to hand out material to students should be allowed to do so, or no group should.
A public school is funded by tax dollars coming from the pockets of Americans of all walks of life- and not all Americans are Christian. That a group like FFRF is even necessary to highlight the meaning and importance of the separation of Church and State is a sad commentary on those willing to ignore the Constitution in order to establish the supremacy of their religious beliefs. Such is the stuff tyranny is made of.
All Americans should be appreciative of FFRF’s efforts to ensure that the public space remains free from the pressure to conform to the dictates of the majority religion. Their vigilance is one of the things that help prevent religious tyranny and unconstitutional coercion.
It’s not about proscribing the practice of religion. It’s about ensuring that public life and taxpayer-supported educational institutions remain free from the pressures associated with having to conform to the teachings of the majority religion. There’s certainly a time and place for the practice and expression of religious faith. Public schools should and must remain theologically neutral; maintaining the strict separation of Church and State is the right thing to do.
