PUBLIC SCHOOLS BAN FREE EXERCISE

     The First Amendment provides that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion,   nor the free exercise thereof.” 

 Modern courts have interpreted the Establishment    Clause to mean that the Congress shall make no law establishing an official religion.  The prevailing thinking of Progressives in general and judges in particular regarding public schools is that no reference to religion can be made in a school setting because it might infringe on the Establishment Clause.  That is that any such reference allegedly tends to “establish” an official state religion.  This interpretation ignores the words  “respecting an”.   The more logical and plain meaning of the language would be that Congress shall make no law respecting a religious establishment.   Thus the Constitution actually requires that the Congress make no law that attempts to regulate legitimate religious establishments.

The meaning of the second phrase is self-evident: Congress shall make no law respecting the free exercise of religion.  Note that the Constitutional protection of free exercise extends only to the free exercise of “religion”.  It offers no protection to atheists or anti-religious organizations. Courts today, however, routinely misinterpret this clause as well to give standing to atheists to oppose free exercise of religion by others.  As can be plainly seen by the actual language of the constitution, these people have no standing.  Their beliefs are not protected.  In fact, the Constitution protects practitioners from harassment by just these kind of folks, atheists who claim to be offended by the free exercise of religion by others.  

The “right” to an education does not appear in the constitution; yet progressives regularly speak of education as a “right”.  The right to an education, they assert, is paramount and the Free Exercise clause must yield to this overriding public policy of free public education.   Actually this right appears in the communist manifesto, not the U.S. Constitution.  On the other hand, the Free Exercise and Establishment clauses are in the constitution and they guarantee that the government will pass no law, which interferes with the individual’s free exercise of their religious beliefs or in respect to a religious establishment.  Nevertheless, the problem we have today is that the invented “right” to an education is given precedence over the actual express “right” of religious freedom.

Consider the public school system in this light.  Public schools teach the theory of evolution and prohibit teaching the theory of divine creation.  In fact, the creationist theory is not only not taught, it is ridiculed as a standard part of all public school curriculum; even though creationism is a fundamental belief of all major religions in the United States, Christianity, Islam and Judaism.  This is so because the “right “ to an education of what the government believes is the truth is held by progressive courts to be paramount to the expressed right in the Constitution of Free Exercise.   Following this line of reasoning, the Ten Commandments are prohibited, but moral-relativism may be freely taught in its place.  The big bang theory and the resultant conclusion that there is no God are  taught by public schools.  Extra-marital sex is promoted through sex education and by the distribution of birth control and promotion of abortion regardless of the religious beliefs of the parents.  Religious thought in general is characterized as backward, ignorant, anti-science and on the wrong side of history.  Religious displays are prohibited including group prayer, mention of god in speeches, assemblies, sporting events and the like.   The pledge of allegiance is prohibited because it references “one nation under God;” (except in Barack Obama’s version).

Any child forced to go to public schools gets the very clear message that religion is out of date, square and just plain dumb.  This is so because the Courts have created a legal construct whereby public schools, which are government institutions, are entitled to teach anything as long as it is not affirming religion or fostering religion.  Thus, under the progressive view, public schools are freely entitled to teach things that contradict and even ridicule religious thought and religious practices, but may not in any way affirm religious beliefs.

I do not here attempt to argue that Creationism or Darwinism is correct or not.  I simply argue that these are all matters that are the subjects of religious beliefs and, as such, the government is prohibited from forcing its opinion on these subjects on the children of its citizens.  The Establishment and Free Exercise clauses specifically prohibit this.

The excuse of progressives for this overt repression of free exercise is that the religious can go to private schools if they like.  But, of course, by in large, only the wealthy can afford private education.  The law requires parents to provide an education to their children; and, as a result, most Americans are forced to send their children to a government run school where religious ideas are routinely and consistently denigrated as wrong.  The other excuse is that public schools are locally run; and, therefore, local ideas of what should be taught prevail.  As we have seen, this argument is and always has been, just Sophistry.  Through Court challenges to local curriculum, increasing state and federal control (No Child Left Behind, Common Core, etc.) the local control idea has become nothing more that window dressing.  Note that, by in large, the attacks on local control have been initiated by progressives who made the argument for local control in the first instance when they were pitching public education back at the turn of the 20^th century.  Progressive Courts, National organizations and unions now control the pubic school agenda and it is overtly hostile to religion and moral based thinking.

We have been so convinced by the secular progressives that public education is a necessity that we have accepted the routine persecution of religion and the resultant violation of the Free Exercise clause by public schools.   In fact, the very concept of the government requiring the people to attend its schools is antithetical to the constitution.  Although perhaps a noble idea in the first instance, history has shown that public mandated education is unconstitutional as applied in actual practice.