Imagine a Christian-Themed City Proposal in the American Redoubt

The mainstream media are fussing about anti-Muslim bigotry.  4/12/25 Newsweek:

"Texas Governor Greg Abbott and Attorney General Ken Paxton were spreading "hateful misinformation" regarding proposals for a new Islamic themed settlement in the state, the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), the largest Muslim advocacy group in the United States, told Newsweek."

The First Amendment's prohibition on establishments of religion applies to all governments, even in very abstract cases such as aid to private religious schools.  Even ignoring the establishment of religion question, a city that had any clearly stated religious or ethnic them would certainly be considered to create a discomfort for people not members of that group.   Does anyone doubt that the ACLU would sue to stop establishment of a white-themed or Jewish-themed city as violating antidiscrimination laws?

Who Else Received Funding?

11/16/23 Washington Free Beacon:

"California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D.) has awarded millions of dollars in taxpayer funds to mosques whose leaders have preached anti-Semitic hate and called for violence against Israel....

"Newsom, considered a future Democratic presidential contender, said last month he will double funding in his state for its nonprofit security program, citing the "unconscionable terrorist attacks in Israel." Funds will be awarded to both synagogues and mosques, Newsom’s office said."

Considering that many terrorist attacks have been against churches and church-affilistrd schools (the attack on that black church in South Carolina, churches in Sutherland Springs, White Settlement, Colorado Springs, the school in Nashville, the West Nickel Mines school in 2006) and other non-profits (the Family Research Council in 2013) I would love too see a list of beneficiaries.  I suspect if this list is narrowly focused on mosques, or even mosques and synagogues there is a First Amendment challenge available.

Separation of Church and State

 The ACLU should have filed this suit, but realistically, they were never concerned about the mixing of religion and state, just Christianity and state. 1/17/21 Christian Post:

The California Department of Education said it's removing two religious chants to Aztec gods from its ethnic studies curriculum in response to a lawsuit filed by parents.

As part of a settlement in the lawsuit, the California Department of Education and the State Board of Education have voluntarily agreed to officially remove the prayers from the state-approved Ethnic Studies Model Curriculum, according to the conservative legal firm Thomas More Society.

The curriculum included a section of “Affirmation, Chants, and Energizers,” including the “In Lak Ech Affirmation,” which invoked five Aztec deities. Although labeled as an “affirmation,” it addressed the deities both by name and by their traditional titles, recognized them as sources of power and knowledge, invoked their assistance, and gave thanks to them.

“The Aztec prayers at issue — which seek blessings from and the intercession of these demonic forces — were not being taught as poetry or history,” said Paul Jonna, partner at LiMandri & Jonna LLP and Thomas More Society Special Counsel, in a statement shared with The Christian Post.

 

Not Just Virtue Signaling

10/11/19 NBC News:

Former Rep. Beto O’Rourke said Thursday that churches and other religious institutions that oppose same-sex marriage should lose their tax-exempt status, taking the Democratic presidential debate into uncharted — and controversial — territory.

This isn't just virtue signaling.  I think O'Rourke is trying to gin up hatred of LGBTs among evangelical churches.  A bit late for that?  No.  I have attended churches that are more fundamentalist than with which I feel intellectually comfortable for more than 40 years now.  I have heard one sermon attacking homosexuality.  Generally, evangelicals regard homosexuality as equivalent to adultery, fornication, racial hatred, greed, lust, gluttony, gossiping, and all the rest of the sins prohibited in the New Testament.  The only difference is that there are no Adulterer Pride parades, no lawsuits demanding cakes be baked celebrating greed, no demands that the grossly overweight (5'11', 400 pounds) be given the benefit of antidiscrimination laws. 

My guess is that most LGBTs in America do not care that some churches and faith-based institutions disapprove of their preferences.  But if enough churches get upset about this discriminatory change in status to provoke real anger, the LGBT activists who care passionately about suppressing disapproval will manage to radicalize the LGBTs that simply want to be left alone.

The Liberal Refrain: "Why Can't We Be More Like Europe?'

When they are talking about guns, gasoline prices, and sex, but not when talking about abortion, or now Islam.  11/18/16 The Local Austria:

Austria’s Interior Minister Sebastian Kurz has called for an immediate ban on Islamic fundamentalists who distribute copies of the Koran, saying that the law needs to be changed to crack down on “Salafist campaigns - an expression of political Islam which we can no longer tolerate”....

Cities in Switzerland are now also considering a ban on the radical Salafist groups distributing the Koran.

Obviously banning distribution of the Koran would run afoul of the First Amendment, but we know progressives believe in a living, breathing, constantly mutating Constitution.

The Comments Are A Riot

Australia's atheists are upset that many Australians list their religion as "Jedi."

Here’s the problem: On the 2011 census (it takes places every five years) 64,390 Australians put “Jedi” down as their religion, an increase of from 58,053 on the 2006 census, according to The Brisbane Times. Numbers like that put “Jedi” right behind Sikh on the list of religions in the country. It seems unlikely that all these people truly believe themselves to be actual Jedi, and most of them make the claim as a harmless way to declare theirStar Wars fandom and give the government the middle finger at the same time.

However, a group called the Atheist Foundation of Australia is leading a campaign to get people to stop making this joke. Their reasoning is, that when officially counted, Jedi gets classified as a “Not Defined” religion instead of “No Religion.” When that happens, they believe “it makes Australia seem more religious than it really is.” Which, again, doesn’t sound like a problem, but “data on religious affiliation is used for public policy, city planning, community support facilities and more,” according to this cute infographic.

Is there anyone besides me who finds the notion absurd that government resources are going to be allocated based on religion?   The comments on this at Instapundit are a riot.  It appears that Yoda is posting:

Hmmmm, atheists, no humor have they.

Atheists: Sad pathetic creatures who spend every moment of the day fearing and loathing a supernatural entity they claim doesn't even exist. 

"God doesn't exist and I'm very angry with Him!" 

I think you have a point. There's this harmless old guy in our town who thinks the Confederacy won the war. And yet, I don't find myself terrified of anti-carpetbaggers. I don't think about it much at all, to be perfectly frank. 

But... wouldn't it be better if the Atheists marked themselves as Jedi? Then the government could spend their money on cool stuff like light sabres and space ships. By coming down on the Jedi like this, all the Atheists are likely to get are Jedi safe spaces and public debates on whether or not robes are appropriate school clothes. 

A long time ago, in a galaxy far away there were those who, well, not to put to fine a point on it, were really really gullible. It seems it's not so long ago and not so far away. 

The stupid. Burns it does. 

I thought I felt a disturbance in the Farce. Mate. 

As for the Atheists, "I find their lack of faith disturbing" 

From Mandatory Christian Prayer to Mandatory Multiculturalism

If you have read William J. Murray's My Life Without God, you know that the mandatory Christian prayer with which Maryland schools opened their day was into the 1960s really quite stupid.  Murray, who is now a Christian evangelist, points out that it was very perfunctory, and done only because the law required it.  While where this led the courts seems positively mad, at least they were taking a consistent position: removing religion from public schools.  Now I see that progressive sorts are busily putting prayer back in public schools, in Quebec.  Quebec, like many American states into the 1950s, until the 1990s had religion classes in its schools. There were classes for Catholics and classes for Protestants--and once upon a time, there were so few of any other religion to be an issue.

Now, Quebec has an Ethics and Religious Culture curriculum (ERC) that runs from elementary school through graduation that appears to be an attempt to teach children about all religions.  In some abstract sense, this is a good thing: you should have an awareness of what other religions believe.  But a number of Catholic parents were concerned both about the substance of the class, and the likely effect it would have to be teaching about other religions to seven year olds, while attempting to raise them as Catholics.

In light of the dominance of anti-Christian sentiment among school teachers and curriculum writers, I can certainly see why there might be some reluctance to have their kids put into what was likely to be a propaganda campaign directed against Christianity, apologistics for Islam, and enthusiasm for New Age ideas.  So the parents asked to have their kids exempted from these classes.  Nope!  And the Supreme Court of Canada has upheld the requirement that they send their kids to these classes.

For those liberals who find this reasonable, ask yourself what your reaction would be if, in an alternate universe, your public school system had a curriculum called Love & Sexuality taught by people who promoted the idea that while there were many expressions of sexuality, some were clearly better than others: and you get one guess which deviance forms would be treated as worthy of contempt.  Now, imagine that your children had to take this class if they went to public school, and there was no way to remove them.

The Ministerial Exception

A 9-0 ruling from the U.S. Supreme Court in Hosanna-Tabor Evangelical Lutheran Church and School v. EEOC (2012).  Even the concurring opinions by Justices Thomas and Justice Alito (with Kagan) are only making very minor additions to the core argument by Chief Justice Roberts.  The teacher who filed suit against her employer was considered a minister of the Evangelical Lutheran Church, and her employment contracted required her to resolve differences through the mechanism of 1 Corinthians 6:1-7, rather than suing in the courts. For the government to interfere with a church's internal decision making process concerning ministers would violate both the free exercise clause and the establishment clause.  These take precedence over any federal laws concerning disability discrimination claims.

I found Roberts' decision quite interesting to read.  In particular, he mentions Madison's veto in 1811 of a Congressional bill chartering a Protestant Episcopal Church in Alexandria (at the time, still in the District of Columbia).  A reader commented a while back, asserting that Madison's veto (upheld by Congress) indicated that the establishment clause prevented any action at all even slightly supportive of religion:

During his presidency, Madison vetoed two bills, neither of which would form a national religion or compel observance of any religion, on the ground that they were contrary to the establishment clause. While some in Congress expressed surprise that the Constitution prohibited Congress from incorporating a church in the town of Alexandria in the District of Columbia or granting land to a church in the Mississippi Territory, Congress upheld both vetoes.

 Yet Roberts' explanation, which matches what I can find at 22 Annals of Congress 982-3, is that Madison's concern was not that Congress was incorporating a church, but the level of control that it provided over that church:

The bill enacts into, and establishes by law, sundry rules and proceedings relative purely to the organization and polity of the church incorporated,  and comprehending even the election and removal of the Minister of the same; so that no change could be made therein by the particular society, or by the general church of which it is a member, and whose authority it recognises.”  Id., at 983 (emphasis added)

 In addition, Madison was concerned that the charter provided that the church was given authority to provide for poor relief and education for poor children.  The language of his veto message is not abundantly clear, but it seems as though his concern is that the charter made this church effectively an arm of the government, presumably because it would receive some legal status associated with poor relief or education.

Zambia's Operating Principles

I mentioned a few days ago Zambia's new president being sworn in on a Bible.  Now we see where this leads!  (For Democrats, cue the scary theme music.)  From September 25, 2011 Voice of America:

The new president of Zambia, Michael Sata, says his government will be governed by the Biblical 10 Commandments.
Mr. Sata pointed specifically to the commandment “thou shall not steal” during a speech at a Roman Catholic church in the capital, Lusaka, on Sunday.

The president, who is Catholic, also said the government will have closer ties with the church.

The article indicates that the Zambian constitution declares Zambia a Christian nation.  This appears to be the provision in question in the 1996 Constitution:

DECLARE the Republic a Christian nation while upholding the right of every person to enjoy that person's freedom of conscience or religion;

Unsurprisingly, foreign governments think that they know better:

Pressure from overseas governments and NGOs to drop the “Christian Nation” clause in Zambia’s constitution, has drawn sharp protest from church leaders in the Central African country.

The former Executive Director of the Evangelical Fellowship of Zambia, Bishop Paul Mususu, told the Times of Zambia last week that it was wrong for foreigners to dictate the terms of the constitution and promote a secular state that would support gay rights.

“It is not proper for us to get rid of what we have cherished over the years. We shall be sinking so low if we allow things like homosexuality and pornography in the name of freedom of expression,” Bishop Mususu said.

Sweden and a number of NGOs working in Zambia have urged lawmakers to adopt a secular constitution and Bill of Rights that would grant civil protections to homosexuals.  

Establishment of Religion Clause Violation?

A reader's comment pointed to this well done video pointing out that the Obama Administration has given special treatment to one religion over all others--something that by the ACLU's standards would qualify as an establishment of religion violation.



Now, there is a case that what the government is doing here in treating Islam with such sensitivity--while not doing so for other religions--is not really a sign of Islamic preference by our government.  It may be more accurate to describe it as diplomacy: "The art of saying, 'Nice doggie,' while looking for a rock."  (It is, by that reasoning, a sign that we consider Muslims temper tantrum tendency toddlers who can't control themselves.)  But it is quite astonishing how many people will go positively thermonuclear over prayers before a football game, and ignore such an obvious disparity in how our government treats one religion relative to others.