Religious rights: 2 steps forward, one step backward

Religious rights in America took two steps forward and one step backward this week. In a very pleasant surprise yesterday, the United States Supreme Court unanimously allowed the city of Pleasant Grove City, Utah, to choose which donated monuments, including a Ten Commandments monument, belong in a city public park. The Supreme Court, in a 9-0 decision, ruled that the city could refuse to display Summum's Seven Aphorisms in its public park.

This means that cities and state governments around America will no longer be forced with threats by the ACLU to include displays devoted to atheism just because the city or state government wants to display a Nativity scene. Most Americans will recall the anti-Christian bigotry which Democrat Governor Christine Gregoire displayed in Washington state last Christmas when she allowed a hateful anti-Christian display to be so prominent in the Washington state capitol building next to a Christmas display.

Politicians like Governor Gregoire will no longer have any legal leg to stand on in arguing that atheist displays must be nearby whenever Christmas trees or Nativity scenes are displayed. This decision deals only with speech by governments and will not affect private displays or individual speech on public property.

Justice Samuel Alito Jr, writing for the unamimous majority said in his opinion: “Just as government-commissioned and government-financed monuments speak for the government, so do privately financed and donated monuments that the government accepts and displays to the public on government land … [T]hroughout our Nation's history, the general government practice with respect to donated monuments has been one of selective receptivity.”

In another step forward for religious rights in America, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, which normally issues the most left-wing decisions of all appeals courts in the United States, issued a decision yesterday which reversed a federal district court's ruling upholding as constitutional a Montana commissioner's determinaiton that a church had violated state law by not registering as an "incidental political committee."

The Alliance Defense Fund had filed a lawsuit in June 2004 after that Montana commissioner investigated the Canyon Ferry Road Baptist Church of East Helena, Montana. He had received a complaint from a homosexual activist group. The homosexuals complained that the church had spoken out in favor of the state's constitutional amendment protecting traditional marriage between only one man and one woman. The federal district court should have seen that the church was exercising its First Amendment rights.

9th Circuit Court of Appeals Judge, John T. Noonan, wrote in his concurring opinion that: “An unregulated, unregistered press is important to our democracy. So are unregulated, unregistered churches. Churches have played an important--no, an essential--part in the democratic life of the United States.... Is it necessary to evoke these historic struggles and the great constitutional benefits won for the country by its churches in order to decide this case of petty bureaucratic harassment? It is necessary. The memory of the memorable battles grows cold.

"The liberals who applaud their outcomes and live in their light forget the motivation that drove the champions of freedom. They approve religious intervention in the political process selectively: it’s great when it’s on their side. In a secular age, Freedom of Speech is more talismanic than Freedom of Religion. But the latter is the first freedom in our Bill of Rights. It is in terms of this first freedom that this case should be decided.”

Unfortunately, religious rights in America also took a step backward at the state level in Virginia on Monday when a state Senate committee voted against a bill which would allow state police chaplains to pray in the name of Jesus Christ. The bill was sponsored by Virginia Republican Delegate Charles W. Carrico. His bill had passed the House of Delegates overwhelmingly earlier this month by a margin of 66-30.

Delegate Carrico introduced the bill when six police chaplains resigned after the state police superintendent's order to deliver only non-denominational prayers at official events (no prayers to Jesus Christ allowed) was issued. Democrat Governor Tim Kaine suggested that he would veto the bill if it gets to his desk. On the other hand, the state's attorney general who is running for Governor, Bob McDonnell, said that he would sign Delegate Carrico's bill into law if he becomes governor.

So all in all, it was a good week for religious freedom in America. Christians need to be diligent to ensure that religious rights are protected in all areas of life in this nation.