Making faith public


Faith works to govern individuals, it fails when it governs publicly

Jason Pitzl-Waters comments on this Marci Hamilton article on the Christian "equality" movement and two recent court decisions. While both are interesting, I believe that both Mr. Pitzl-Waters and Professor Hamilton have missed an important point.

One case dealt with a public school refusing to allowed evangelistic literature to be handed out. Another dealt with an "approved" list of religious leaders who were allowed to at meetings of the Board of Supervisors. Professor Hamilton points out that these decisions are mutually exclusive, and I am not going to spend time examining the legal details.

Instead I want to concentrate on the assumptions that made these cases.

Yes, I am concerned with the political power that some of the so-called "Christian right" are gathering, but I am equally concerned with the power that their opponents are gathering.

Take the public school case. It is about who will control what is presented to children in public schools.

Yes, it is about control. Both sides want to deny the other any chance to give their opinion.

This is only an issue because we have public schools in the first place. The fact that we have government funded and government controlled schools means we have fights over who gets to call the shots. Government has taken the power of choice away from the citizens and insulated the public schools from the very pressures that would make the schools responsive to the demands of the citizens.

This isn't an issue in a Catholic school, parents know what religion the children will be taught there. The parents made the choice to place their kids there.

If you look at the history of public education in America, part of the justification was to wipe out unapproved alternatives. Especially Catholic schools.

When it comes to public education, answers that limit the role of one religious movement while encouraging others are really false answers that will just prolong the conflict. The real question isn't about religion at all, it's about deciding how all those nice government dollars will get spent. The real issue is public education, the rest is just the symptoms.

I do not think it is an accident that as government has increased it's role in schools, the literacy rate has dropped. Or that more and more schools have failed. I do not think that it is right that textbooks are mostly tailored to satisfy Texas or California, but are sold all over the United States. All of this results directly from central control of schools. And that is what the fight is over.

Control, not equality or opportunity.

When it comes to the prayer at a public meeting, I don't believe that there should be any. Not because my faith would be overlooked, but because religion is a personal issue, not a public one. If some government board votes to increase my taxes or regulate my water use, I really don't want that decision "sanctified" by carefully chosen clergy.

The issue that ties these two cases together is religion in the public sphere. I no more expect to give some half-hearted mouth service to the Christian god during a public meeting than I would expect an Orthodox Jew to praise Hekatate.

My issue isn't with the faiths. It's with the imposition of personal faith in the public matters, and in making education public when it should be private.

So yes, the Christian "equality" movement should not be allowed insert Christianity into the public sphere. But neither should any other faith group.

— NeoWayland

Posted: Mon - August 28, 2006 at 04:43 AM  Tag


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