Dr. Joan Bushwell's Chimpanzee Refuge

With the distribution of flyers and parents going into classrooms to talk about praying for the kids (i.e., proselytizing), this is such a clear-cut example of a First Amendment violation that the only people who could compain about it are those who admittedly and unabashedly "welcome a return of God to public classrooms." One parent even admitted a big reason her family moved to Mt. Juliet:

"As far as the curriculum and the environment and the staff, it's as close to a private school as you can get," she said. "I believe that goes along with the Christian theme they have."

Small problem: This is a public school, supported by taxpayer funds that cannot legally be diverted to advancing the agenda of one bunch of worshippers over that of another. There's nothing vague or complicated about this.

Here's your litmus test, Nathan, for whether it's really a violation or not: Were this a group of Hindus or Wiccans, would you be so adamant about the ACLU being misguided in bringing a lawsuit?

Nathan wrote:

"Religious proselytizing. Coercive. Highly offensive. If you hear these words, you would think the child was thrown into a dark cold room with Amazing Grace blaring in his ears for hours at a time and no food given until he recites John 3:16."

Red herring. This behavior would be wrong as well, obviously, but what was actually occurring was nothing more than a bunch of Christians trying to recruit little kids into the fold, with cute stickers, praise and the rest of it.

Nathan wrote:

"The ACLU's accusation of the school endorsing religion and even a particular kind of religion is, as the ADF commented, absurd. The school would have to be forcing children to believe in the tenets of Christianity in a classroom for that to apply."

Wrong. "Endorsing a religion and a particular kind of religion" is just that, regardless of whether the effort is successful. If the ACLU needed to show evidence that its plaintiffs' minds were under control of religious aggressors, they never would have won a First Amendment case.

Nathan wrote:

"The school could easily get by with teaching creationism and Christianity in a classroom, as long as any 'offended' child is not forced to believe."

This is just colossally ignorant. Have you never heard of Edwards v. Aguillard (U.S. Supreme Court, 1987)?

Nathan wrote:

"But hey, it's a free country, and the offended can move to another school, city, county, state, or France if he continues to be offended."

Non sequitur. By the same token, those enamored of rule by government-religion admixture are free to relocate to a warm, cozy place like Beirut or Lagos. Neither my suggestion nor yours, however, is relevant to your complaint.

I think you chose a bad example of a case you feel the ACLU is likely to lose.

Additionally, you seem to believe that quotes of the various Founders that indicate their well-documented yen for a metaphorical wall between religion and government are taken out of context, while those that seem to favor Christianity meld nicely with the language of the Constitution. While expecting you to immediately bring yourself up to snuff on early American history would be an excessive demand, I do encourage you to read Article 11 of the Treaty of Tripoli, which was ratified by the United States Congress in 1797 and begins:

"As the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion;"

Not in any sense. Even the zaniest of interpretations does not allow for the claim that anyone pointing to this passage as evidence of the Founders' beliefs on the matter is taking it "out of context."

As for the Constitution not being a "breathing document," it is difficult to explain why slavery seems to have gone out of vogue (Thirteenth Amendment) and why women have started showing up to vote in federal elections (Nineteenth Amendment). But suppose, Nathan, that a bill were introduced that would amend the Constitution to explicitly favor Christian interests. Would you remain so passionate about the need for a "static" Constitution under these circumstances?

9/30 2:55 p.m. EDT UPDATE: Nathan has updated his post in response to the above, largely reproducing what he wrote in the comments to the post. (He also created a cached version of this page, perhaps anticipating that I might delete something.) Although I've addressed some of his bizarre arguments in a comment below, I'll say more here.

Nathan wrote:

"You have hung you entire argument on an irrelevant test. It is, however, a typical "breathingist" question. The Constitution is NOT living, therefore we go with what it says and the context under which it was written. Not today's context. Therefore, religion, to the Founders, was Christianity. I've already laid that out clearly. Since the First Amendment is only meant to prevent a specific denomination from being declared by the federal governmentt, these other religions/cults you've mentioned would be rejected. They are not Christian - the obvious religion of the Founders."

This is absurd on its face. Many of the Founders were Deists, meaning that they believed only in a god that created the universe and then withdrew from human affairs. Their god didn't hear or answer prayers or concern itself with sexual conduct, and was certainly not the mouth-breathing, misogynistic, anti-science bigot envisaged by so many Christians today. Jefferson and Adams, among others, had some pointed and especially ugly things to say about Christianity. So to roundly equate 18th-century religion with Christianity is untenable.

More importantly, regardless of the Founders' religious beliefs, they were secularists when it came to governance of the nation. Their motivation (to escape a re-enactment of what had occurred in Europe) was plain, and their intent in this area has been documented so thoroughly in so many places that only a stoically ignorant champion of Christian theocracy could believe otherwise. Unfortunately, many such people exist in America today.

Nathan wrote:

"No one is endorsing a religion, but that would be ok if they did. It's the denomination only that we have to watch out for. This falls under the "free excercise thereof" portion of the First Amendment. I know, you breathingists omit that portion and NEVER argue for it."

I believe that Nathan is both denying that Lakeville Elementary School was specifcally promoting Christianity (lie number one) and claiming that such an endorsement is not illegal anyway (lie number two). He seems to interpret a private citizen's right to "free exercise" of his or her religion as a green light for Christians and Christians alone to ignore the part of the First Amendment concerned with church-state separation, which is certainly a creative take and would have outraged the Founders. I'm not sure what distinction Nathan is making between "a religion" (italics mine) and "demonination" since these appear synonymous as used, but on the whole I believe Nathan is simply stating that the Constitution implicitly embraces Christianity whether it actually says so or not.

In reply to what I wrote about the Treaty of Tripoli, Nathan wrote:

"Mr. Beck, a fine writer and avid runner he is, is either ignorant or just blatently refuses to leave the humanist realm of the breathingists. It is my pleasure to inform you, Mr. Beck, that yes, that phrase, as you intend to use it, is out of context. Please go here and see # 2, as this post is already quite lengthy."

Follow the link and you'll find an extraordinarily clumsy attempt to weaken the language used by George Washington in the treaty. Nathan is claiming that because the agreement was made with a Muslim nation, its inclusion of the opening portion of Article 11 was intended only to emphasize that America, though still a Christian nation, was not upholding the barbaric, anti-Muslim version of Christanity active in Europe in past centuries. (Fittingly, this is just the sort of nonsensical, bend-over-backward bullshit Christian "literalists" and apologists use to shield the Bible from well-deserved criticism of its various inaccuracies and internal contradictions.)

Even were this true, the treaty could have employed far less sweeping language to convey such a meaning to the citizens of Tripoli. The treaty, exactly as written and read aloud on the Senate floor, was signed by both President Adams and Secretary of State Timothy Pickering and passed the Senate with nary a whimper. Everyone knew exactly what it said: that the U.S. is not in any sense founded on Christianity. It truly gets no more explicit than "in any sense," yet blindly stubborn proponents of theocracy don't want justices to do their jobs and interpret the Constitution on the basis of its language; they want them to interpret it based on their own naked agenda, and when this doesn't happen they complain of activism, liberalism, and misinterpretations. If these were elementary school children, this whiny behavior might be almost cute, but Nathan and those who think like he does (he's already had a few people offer garbled comments in his favor) are adults who can vote.

It is worth noting that those so gratingly insistent that the Constitution be interpreted exactly as written and not be subject to the cruel whims of "breathingists" are hilariously demanding that people read carefully between the lines and look for nuance with respect to both the Constitution the Treaty of Tripoli. If you squint hard enough (never a problem for religious Righters) at these documents, apparently the words "Jesus" and "Christianity" magically appear all over the place.