What would James do?
That’s the WWJD query best posed by the “Right to Pray” constitutional amendment that will be presented to Missouri voters on August 7.
I refer to President James Madison, author of the Bill of Rights, the first 10 amendments to the U.S. Constitution, whose legislative prose of 1787 would be both enshrined and twisted by the legislative doodles of some less-enlightened political descendants two-and-a-quarter centuries hence.
On the bright side, the Right to Pray measure would require that Madison’s Bill of Rights be posted in every public schoolhouse in Missouri. That would have to make any Founding Father feel proud.
On the not-so-bright side, the rest of the measure suggests that its 21st-century adherents either don’t understand—or simply reject—what Madison and his not-so-Christian colleagues were trying to say. Their measure is full of the very sort of melding of church and state that the Bill of Rights was specifically crafted
to prevent.
Madison was focused on keeping government as far removed as possible from religion. That’s why the First Amendment included that troublesome phrase about Congress making “no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.”
The Founding Fathers’ idea of preserving the “right to pray” was to build what President Thomas Jefferson labeled a “wall of separation” between church and state.
In Missouri, 21st-century legislators have apparently channeled the ghost of President Ronald Reagan and vaguely heard him say, “Tear down this wall!” So next month, Missouri voters will hoof it to the polls to enact a “right to pray” that contains in its fine print such church–state wall-bashers as this:
“No student shall be compelled to perform or participate in academic assignments or educational presentations that violate his or her religious beliefs.”
Or this:
“That any person shall have the right to pray individually or corporately in a private or public setting so long as such prayer doesn’t result in disturbance of the peace.”
Or this:
“The state shall ensure public school students their right to free exercise of religious expression without interference, as long as such prayer or other expression is private and voluntary, whether individually or corporately, and in a manner that is not disruptive.”
As the Bible would say, this is a wolf in sheep’s clothing. Voters will see just a few innocent lines about not infringing on religious beliefs and protecting the right for kids to pray, and it’s hard to imagine many taking offense.
What they won’t see is the fine print, designed to bring God into the town square and creationism into the classroom.
Politically, it’s an all-out dare to anyone who would stand in the way of a cause so benign, so moral, and so righteous—especially in an election year.
No one wants to argue against prayer or simple expression of faith, especially if it’s voluntary: The Right to Pray amendment explicitly says, “The state shall not coerce any person to participate in any prayer or other religious activity.” It isn’t campaign-stump material to chastise “a citizen’s right to pray or express his or her religious beliefs.”
Only some antireligious extremist would have a problem with this, the kind of guy who voted against the simple establishment of a congressional chaplain as a “palpable violation of equal rights as well as of Constitutional principles.”
And what socialist radical did that?
James Madison did.
Yes, the same James Madison whose Bill of Rights would be posted in all public schools by order of the Right to Pray amendment. (Admittedly, even Madison was a bit extreme on that one in his own day, having been outvoted in Congress on the chaplain issue.)
Can you just imagine how Madison’s antichaplain stance would be viewed on FOX News today? Sure, it was true to his philosophy that “the civil government functions with complete success by the total separation of church and state.” But we’re talking a real war on religion here, aren’t we?
Madison and his colleages hadn’t rebelled against the Church of England to replace it with another theocracy. They were intense about protecting religious freedom by insulating it from the government.
We aren’t so intense today. In Missouri, it’s hard to imagine that the Right to Pray measure won’t pass easily, even though it will certainly reduce religious freedom—especially for non-Christians—in the name of protecting it.
This, quite simply, is about rejecting Madison’s notion of a fiercely non-sectarian state.
Religious conservatives will be mightily motivated to turn out for this crusade, which is one of the main reasons it was originally intended for the 2012 general election. Gov. Jay Nixon deftly took the wind out of those sails by moving the vote up to August, so the turnout wouldn’t hurt him and other Democrats in November.
Nixon’s political agility is impressive. But his real achievement was keeping a straight face while explaining that he moved the bill up to August so that its disciples could see their measure go into effect sooner.
Only time will tell what the impact of the measure will be. Will it withstand inevitable legal challenges for cracking the church–state wall? Will it effectively diminish the ability of educators to teach evolution in public schools? How many schools and other entities of government will be dominated by public prayer, and how far will proselytizers’ religious expressions go?
And might gay and lesbian children refuse to participate in political-science classes—citing their private religious beliefs—if the curriculum states that all marriage must be between one man and one woman?
That last one might not be what the Right to Pray folks had in mind.
No less than 95 percent of people affiliated with a religious congregation in Missouri are Christians, and about half of those are evangelical. So this much is clear: As religion dominates the town square, so will Christianity.
That definitely isn’t what James Madison had in mind.
For those who see no harm in a little expression of faith in public schools and other institutions of government, try substituting Muslim for Christian.
If a Christian child happened to have a Muslim teacher and he or she led a daily Muslim prayer, facing Mecca and praising Allah, and the majority of kids followed, would the parents be good with that, even if it made the child feel uncomfortable and ostracized?
That’s how Muslim or Jewish or Hindu kids—or (God forbid) the kids of atheists or agnostics—can feel after a Christian prayer.
There’s no reason for that to happen to a child any time at a public school. Conversely, no one of any faith has a right—or for that matter, a reason—to use the nonsectarian setting of a public place for private, secular purposes.
That’s what homes and churches and synagogues and mosques are for.
The same principle applies to public buildings. The government equally belongs to people of all faiths, or no faith. It is not antireligion to keep this space free of religious expression: It is pro-religion.
Why? Because as the Founding Fathers had learned from their experience with England, the best way for religious freedom for all people to flourish is to keep it removed from the influence of the government.
“Religion and government will both exist in greater purity the less they are mixed together,” said Madison.
Today’s religious right flatly rejects that notion, arguing that the separation of church and state is trumped by the free-speech rights of Christians to use any forum they wish for any religious message they see fit to make.
It all sounds so benign when presented in terms like “right to pray.” But after one kid innocently proclaims his love for Jesus, let another one stand up for sharia law and another one promote a little atheism, and you’ll see how benign and tolerant we can all be.
There was arguably no more important reason for the American Revolution than a desire for religious freedom. The Founding Fathers were as divergent in their spirituality as people are today, and they argued ferociously on the subject, but ultimately they settled on a non-sectarian model as a grand new experiment in human affairs.
God isn’t referenced one time in the U.S. Constitution. Do you really think that was an oversight? Were the Founding Fathers a bunch of immoral, godless liberals?
One more time: The way to protect religious freedom is to insulate it from big government, not include it in big government.
The men who wrote the Bill of Rights thought it protected the right to pray from measures like Missouri’s Right to Pray amendment—the one now advanced in the name of the Bill of Rights.
Perhaps if their amendment passes, state legislators will want to honor Madison as an honorary Missourian with a bust in the state Capitol, next to one of Rush Limbaugh.
If they do, it should depict him spinning in his grave.
SLM co-owner Ray Hartmann is a panelist on KETC Channel 9’s Donnybrook, which airs Thursdays at 7 p.m.
