Something important happened in recent weeks that didn’t make headlines. It came to my attention only as a passing mention in one of the many e-mails I receive at work.
Between the U.S. Supreme Court’s controversial decisions on Ten Commandments displays and the announcement of Justice Sandra Day O’Connor’s coming retirement, and the news of terror bombings in Great Britain and in Israel, there came this item:
Rep. Ernest Istook (R-Oklahoma) has introduced to Congress a “Religious Freedom Amendment” to the U.S. Constitution. Or, more accurately, he has reintroduced it, for he apparently has been working on this project since the mid-1990s, and so far — fortunately — he has gotten nowhere with it.
And why, according to Istook, does the Constitution need this when it already has the First Amendment? Because, as he said in his statement at a June 30 press conference, “Unfortunately, the First Amendment is being misused by intolerant people who claim that it should suppress religious expression rather than to protect it.”
“That effort,” he continued, “begins with their efforts to get you as reporters to claim that the issue is ‘separation of church and state,’ as though those words appear in the Constitution. They don’t. … Unfortunately, when media or judges think that the actual test is ‘separation of church and state,’ then they conclude that the presence of government requires the absence of religion. And because government is so big today, that philosophy pushes religious expression off the stage.”
So to solve this “problem,” Istook wants to add the following words to the Constitution:
“To secure the people’s right to acknowledge God according to the dictates of conscience:
“The people retain the right to pray and to recognize their religious beliefs, heritage, and traditions on public property, including schools.
“The United States and the States shall not establish any official religion nor require any person to join in prayer or religious activity.”
And Istook is not alone. He announced that more than 100 members of Congress have joined him in sponsoring this amendment.
The American Jewish Committee and Americans United for Separation of Church and State issued statements opposing the amendment; but few other groups appear to have even noticed it. Perhaps this complacency reflects Istook’s earlier failures with the idea during the Clinton administration.
But it’s a different America today under the rule of the conservative Bush administration and Republican Party, many of whose members in fact want to destroy separation of church and state in this country.
One would think such people would learn something from the enemies we’re supposed to be battling. The Muslim extremists that claimed credit for the bombs in London and Netanya, as well as Sept. 11, 2001, are people who do not recognize or accept the idea of separation of mosque and state.
As Amir Taheri, an Iranian columnist for the Times of London, wrote on July 8, these are people who seek “to convert humanity to Islam, which regulates Man’s spiritual, economic, political and social moves to the last detail.”
This country is supposed to stand for something different. True, the words “separation of church and state” do not appear in the Constitution, but neither does the word “God.”
And as one learns from Susan Jacoby’s excellent recent book “Freethinkers: A History of American Secularism,” that omission was deliberate. As the U.S. Supreme Court put it in the Kentucky Ten Commandments display decision:
“[The] government may not favor one religion over another, or religion over irreligion, religious choice being the prerogative of individuals … The principle has been helpful simply because it responds to one of the major concerns that prompted adoption of the Religion Clauses [in the First Amendment].
“The Framers and the citizens of their time intended not only to protect the integrity of individual conscience in religious matters … but to guard against the civic divisiveness that follows when the Government weighs in on one side of religious debate….”
But Istook’s amendment opens the door to the federal government favoring “religion over irreligion” by inserting a “right to acknowledge God” into the Constitution. And invariably, despite the disingenuous last sentence of Istook’s proposed amendment, that will mean favoring majority over minority religions.
O’Connor herself, in her concurrence to the Kentucky decision, expressed best why Istook’s amendment must be watched closely and opposed:
“At a time when we see around the world the violent consequences of the assumption of religious authority by government, Americans may count themselves fortunate: Our regard for constitutional boundaries has protected us from similar travails, while allowing private religious exercise to flourish…. Those who would renegotiate the boundaries between church and state must therefore answer a difficult question: Why would we trade a system that has served us so well for one that has served others so poorly?”
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