The latest school battle over the separation of church and state may not feature prayers at football games, after-school Bible clubs or even a moment of silence.
Actually, there’s no prayer at all.
The newest battleground could be a church building itself ”” and whether it’s a proper venue for public school graduation ceremonies. In school districts searching for ever-bigger venues at bargain prices, churches are an appealing (and weatherproof) alternative to civic centers, high school gyms and athletic fields.
An advocacy group that monitors church-state disputes says it has intervened in nine proposed church commencements in seven states over the past two years.
This is the latest example of the strong drive to eliminate any vestige of Christianity from the public square. In Europe that same tendency leads to the extreme of wiping out traces of its Christian past from the historical record, and I fully expect that same fanatical tendency to manifest itself on this side of the Atlantic too.
It’s as if segments of our society had developed an allergy to Christianity, so that any contact with Christian symbols in any form was considered as toxic as exposure to second-hand cigarette smoke. This kind of nonsense, seeking to prohibit any possible use of church property for secular events of any sort, is a symptom of the grave challenge posed to the Church today, but especially to so-called “mainline” groups with a state church heritage, by our increasingly post-Christendom culture. The American priniciple of the “separation” of church and state is rapidly degenerating into the outright [b]divorce[/b] of Christianity (in any form) and public life. Freedom OF religion is being confused with freedom FROM religion.
David Handy+
Passionate advocate of facing that momentous challenge headon and developing a post-Constantinian style Anglicanism
I wonder what they’d say about Catholic schools which hold their graduation ceremonies in Catholic churches?
Oh, but that’s not Church and State mixed, is it?
What about the use of churches as polling stations?
Here you can squarely blame the federal Courts for misinterpreting the establishment clause and eviscerating the the free exercise clause.
Constitution void where prohibited by law.