Unrighteous Dominion

We have learned by sad experience that it is the nature and disposition of almost all men, as soon as they get a little authority, as they suppose, they will immediately begin to exercise unrighteous dominion.—Doctrine and Covenants 121:39

Why do we limit government’s powers? Because governments are made up of individual humans, some good, some not so good. None perfect. Many are petty tyrants. So we limit government. We must.

But what about when there’s an emergency? Like now?

Governments have ordered people to stay home as much as possible. Lose their livelihood for the time being. Lose businesses, some of them permanently. Lose many of our basic freedoms. But we have been going along with the restrictions—for now. Assuming there is a greater good we are doing it for. And assuming it is temporary, and damages might be mitigated later.

But, as petty tyrants do, they step further than necessary. And they have to be swatted back.

A good swat happened this past weekend, in Kentucky. 

On Thursday, Louisville Mayor Greg Fischer ordered a prohibition on churches—but particularly on a single local church that had made plans—to have drive-up services, including for Easter.

The church, On Fire, pushed back. And quickly, District Court Judge Justin R. Walker issued a temporary restraining order, Saturday afternoon—before the prohibition could take effect on Easter Sunday.

On Fire Christian Church, Louisville, Kentucky
image from On Fire Facebook page, found here

I’ve been binge-watching the Viva Frei Vlawg—a law-related video blog, with Canadian lawyer David Frei, for some months now, since impeachment. Even though he’s in Canada, he often covers American issues, and is a serious student of our Constitution. My son Political Sphere told me Frei had posted yesterday morning, out in his car, with his wife texting him to get back in the house, because he just had to share this ruling—about the Kentucky case. 

So I went and looked for it. Of this ruling Frei says, “Some judgments, however long or short, are just tedious to read, while other judgments are just things of beauty.” And he's right; this is a thing of beauty in written thought.

Frei says he’s often asked about the constitutionality of these restrictions during the pandemic. He says, “The questions is not, ‘Are these measures unconstitutional?’ The question is whether the unconstitutionality of these measures can be justified by the circumstances.” The measures must be “proportionate to the urgency of the situation.”

So he goes through the TRO (temporary restraining order) written by Judge Walker. 

Here’s the introductory paragraph of the opinion:

On Holy Thursday, an American mayor criminalized the communal celebration of Easter.

That sentence is one that this Court never expected to see outside the pages of a dystopian novel, or perhaps the pages of The Onion. But two days ago, citing the need for social distancing during the current pandemic, Louisville’s Mayor Greg Fischer ordered Christians not to attend Easter services, even if they remained in their cars to worship—and even though it’s Easter.

The Mayor’s decision is stunning.

And it is, “beyond all reason,”[i] unconstitutional.

Introductory paragraph of the opinion
from here

The judge said the Church would suffer irreparable harm, because missing Easter services is not something that can be made up to them. Saying, “Oh well, you can try again next Easter” won’t do.

And he said the government would be substantially burdening the believers, preventing them from practicing their religion on one of the most important religious holidays.

He said the temporary restraining order was necessary because of the urgency of the timing. A hearing is to happen on Tuesday, April 14. (In the TRO, he suggests how to get the contact information for the virtual hearing—which includes allowing the public to listen in.[ii]) Waiting until the hearing would mean the irreparable harm—of missing Easter—would be done. So this was urgent.

Further, he did not require the plaintiff, On Fire Christian Center, to put up security; that is, a possible payment amount set aside in case they lose. The judge said there would be no damage done to the city of Louisville if On Fire were to lose; its right to prohibit public gatherings to prevent the spread of the virus would be intact. He also waived notice of judgment because of the timing and urgency—but he was likely pretty sure the Mayor got the message in time to rescind the order to have police at the church taking license plate numbers.

In his reasoning Judge Walker spends some time introducing the history of Easter, to explain why it is seen as important to a Christian. And he also makes some comparisons that show the Mayor and Louisville what category he puts them in:

Of course, pockets of society have not always lived up to our nation’s ideals. Slaveowners flogged slaves for attending prayer meetings.[iii] Murderous mobs drove the Latter-day Saints into Utah.[iv] Bigotry toward Roman Catholics motivated a majority of states to enact Blaine Amendments.[v] Harvard University created a quota system to admit fewer Jewish students.[vi]

And now we have Louisville’s mayor preventing the celebration of Easter.

Frei tells us there are four criteria for a TRO:

1.       Plaintiff (On Fire) has strong likelihood of success on the merits.

2.       Plaintiff would suffer irreparable injury without a TRO.

3.       The “balance of the equities” tips in Plaintiff’s favor.

4.       Injunction is in the public interest.

On Fire satisfies all four requirements for a TRO. And the judge lays out why for each one.

What was Mayor’s Fischer’s side? What was his justification for the prohibition? He claimed it wasn’t “practical to accommodate drive-up services in our community.” But he does not prohibit drive-through restaurants or liquor stores. He claimed what the church was planning was “clearly a very, very unsafe practice.”

But on what basis? The cars were going to be parked six feet apart. People were going to remain in their cars, with windows no more than halfway down throughout the service. The only people out of cars would be the pastor and the videographer, who would be well separated from the cars (and presumably from each other). The church had every intention of abiding by CDC guidelines for social distancing.

Why would it be unsafe to be in a car away from others in a church parking lot, but not at a drive-thru restaurant or a liquor store? Or any other type of parking lot, for that matter?

It’s true that the mayor could fulfill his own religious convictions from home on Easter Sunday; many people would. (We did.) But that doesn’t mean it has to be true for everyone. People believe differently. The judge says, quite beautifully,

It is true that On Fire’s church members could believe in everything Easter teaches them from their homes on Sunday. So too could the Pilgrims before they left Europe. But the Pilgrims demanded more than that. And so too does the Free Exercise Clause. It “guarantees the free exercise of religion, not just the right to inward belief.”[vii] That promise is as important for the minister as for those ministered to, as vital to the shepherd as to the sheep. And it is as necessary now as when the Mayflower met Plymouth Rock.

The mayor’s threats actually violate both the First Amendment and Kentucky law. Still, government is not always and necessarily in the wrong. Judge Walker concedes that, in an emergency such as an epidemic, a state may implement emergency measures that curtail constitutional rights. But these measures must be:

·         Proportionate.

·         Justified.

·         Necessary.

·         Effective.

Frei explains that even very minimal measures would not be justified if they didn’t relate to the public health crisis—or whatever the crisis might be, or if they were ineffective in addressing it. And the most massive, sweeping, draconian measures could be effective—"such as making everyone stay at home in their bathroom,” he suggests—but those measures would be too overly burdensome to be justified.

Viva Frei Vlawg: "Louisville Mayor Tried to Cancel Easter"
screenshot from here

So there must be a balance. The Judge recognizes that Louisville shows a compelling interest—the public health, saving lives. But government must show it lacks other means of achieving its desired goal.

The measures are both underinclusive and overbroad. Louisville does not narrowly tailor the measures to avoid unduly burdening the right of Freedom of Religion in this case. Nor does it include other similar non-religious circumstances. Together, this looks pretty clearly like infringement of religious rights specifically.

After laying out all the legal views, here is the Judge’s final paragraph:

But for the men and women of On Fire, Christ’s sacrifice isn’t about the logic of this world. Nor is their Easter celebration. The reason they will be there for each other and their Lord is the reason they believe He was and is there for us. For them, for all believers, “it isn’t a matter of reason; finally, it’s a matter of love.”[viii]

Judge Walker is a recent Trump appointee, only 38 years old. We’re going to need judges who can both see the legal issues, but be sensitive to the philosophy underlying what our founders put in place.

Frei ends with this:

Health emergencies, even if they are most legitimate emergencies, do not give the government carte blanche to take all one fundamental rights and liberties. Even in the context of health emergencies, violations to one’s fundamental rights and liberties have to be justified; they have to be proportionate; and they have to be reasonable. They have to be properly and narrowly crafted in order to achieve the desired result without unduly infringing on rights and freedoms.

And if we don’t have judges like Judge Walker holding the government to task, it is not long before we have no rights at all.

My own Church has been very well set up for worship from home, and for now I’m comfortable with that—trusting that it’s only for this special time.

There have been other churches who have looked at the social distancing guidelines and tried to find ways to abide by those within their buildings. They offer hand sanitizer. They seat people with each family separated from others by at least six feet. They’re trying to find a balance. It doesn’t look different from social distancing at a grocery store. So, whoever is telling them they can’t ought to be proving it’s somehow less safe than in the grocery story. I think there’s likelihood in-person is more dangerous than drive-thru, but it may not be more dangerous than other working conditions that are allowed.

I heard of a place deciding that people shouldn’t be allowed to shop for non-necessities when they do go out to shop. No clothing, for example. Only food. But who is to say that the family with a growing toddler doesn’t absolutely need more clothing—which they can see the size and feel of in person, and which they may not have the resources to buy with shipping costs online?

And then there was the closing of parks—for fear people would use them inappropriately, not because they had been misused and causing danger. So this means that people who have no other outdoor choice (and outdoors is supposed to be good for us, and safe) can’t go to the park for a walk or run.

Police in Colorado arrested a dad who was playing catch with his young daughter—away from everyone but their nuclear family. The ones who violated the social distancing were the police. They had to release him almost immediately, with an apology—and investigation coming. What violation did they even think they saw?

A friend of mine was walking with her husband and son—away from all others. A car drove by and yelled at them to get home and stay away from people. Why? Wouldn’t you assume a family walking together also lives in the same house together?

Petty tyrants pop up in times like this, when our usual freedoms are suspended. We’ll need to reassert our rights as soon as we can, and repeatedly. We can thank judges like Judge Walker. But we also need to do more than trust the courts.

If we want our world back, as we begin to open back up, we will need to do whatever we can that is safe enough, and insist on our rights to do those things.

Frei ended with this quote on the screen:

“Those who deny freedom to others deserve it not for themselves; and under the rule of a just God, cannot long retain it.”—Abraham Lincoln

---

[i] The “beyond all reason” quote is from Cf. Jacobson v. Massachusetts, 197 U.S. 11, 31 (1905).

[ii] Point 8 in the TRO reads: “The Court GRANTS On Fire’s request for Oral Argument. The Court will hold a

telephonic hearing on the preliminary injunction motion on April 14, 2020 at 11:00 A.M. Counsel

shall email Ms. Megan Jackson at Megan_Jackson@kywd.uscourts.gov for the hearing’s call-in

number and access code. Members of the public interested in listening to the hearing may also

email Ms. Jackson.”

[iii] Footnote in the TRO: Albert J. Raboteau, The Secret Religion of the Slaves: They often risked floggings to worship

God, CHRISTIANITY TODAY https://www.christianitytoday.com/history/issues/issue-33/secretreligion-of-slaves.html (last accessed Apr. 11, 2020).

[iv] Footnote in the TRO: See Mormon Pioneers, PIONEERS, https://www.bbc.co.uk/religion/religions/mormon/history/pioneers_1.shtml. (last accessed Apr. 11, 2020).

[v] Footnote in the TRO: See Jane G. Rainey, Blaine Amendments, THE FIRST AMENDMENT ENCYCLOPEDIA,

https://www.mtsu.edu/first-amendment/article/1036/blaine-amendments (last accessed Apr. 11,2020).

[vi] Anti-Semitism in the U.S.: Harvard’s Jewish Problem, JEWISH VIRTUAL LIBRARY, https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/harvard-s-jewish-problem (last accessed Apr. 11, 2020).

[vii] Judge Walker refers to Trinity Lutheran, 137 S.Ct. at 2026 (Gorsuch, J., concurring).

[viii] In this last phrase, Judge Walker is quoting from Robert Bolt, A Man for All Seasons 141.

Freedom of Religion Is a Founding Principle

The phrase “separation of church and state” is not found in the Constitution. 

Danbury Baptist letter
from Thomas Jefferson
image found here

As I mention toward the end of the Civilization section of the Spherical Model, Jefferson wrote this phrase in a letter to the Danbury Baptists, 

to assure them that the “free exercise of religion” mentioned in the First Amendment was not a declaration that the right was granted by government, but that it was inalienable, and that there would not and could not be a religious sect favored by the US government to the exclusion of the others.

Unlike most other countries they were aware of, America would not have a state-sponsored, or favored, religion. That is what was meant by “establishment of religion” in the First Amendment. Rather than favor a particular sect—by taxing citizens to support it or favoring people who belong to it—the Founders wanted freedom of religion, and religious belief, to flourish. They did favor belief in God, and they favored people living religion-inspired lives.

Unfortunately, that idea has been twisted to practically the exact opposite of what the Founders envisioned. Somewhere along the line, government that would neither establish religion nor interfere with the free exercise thereof morphed into government that might override religious freedom whenever someone objected to something religious appearing in public view.

I’ve heard this called a couple of things: the dissenter’s veto, or offended observer status.

Let’s start today by clarifying what the Founders thought about religion in America.

A couple of weeks ago, in time for the 4^th of July, Ben Shapiro had historian David Barton on his Sunday Special interview show. Shapiro has written a book on the impact of religious thought on the American founding, and that’s something of a specialty for Barton, so it was a fun hour-long conversation.

David Barton with Ben Shapiro
screenshot from here

Barton points out that the Founders had no problem with religion. In fact, in the Northwest Ordinance, signed by George Washington in 1789, which allowed new states to join the US,

That law specifically says, Article III, “Religion, morality, and knowledge being necessary to good government and the happiness of mankind, schools and means of education shall forever be encouraged.” So, to this day, if you look in constitutions like the current North Carolina constitution; you look in Iowa, Kansas, etc.; it says, “Forever in the public schools of this state, religion and morality shall be taught, as well as knowledge.” So, they saw that as a mandate, that you can’t be a part of America if your schools don’t promote religion and morality.

Barton talked about the sources for many of the Founders ideas. Many of their phrases come from other writers: John Wise, John Locke, Charles Montesquieu—but more from the Bible. He recommended a book that actually tracked down the sources:

It’s called The Origins of American Constitutionalism. This is done by professors at the University of Houston, poli-sci professors; it’s published by LSU Press. And these guys said, you know, when you look at the American documents, we’re different from every other nation. We have ideas that other nations never implemented. Where’d our founders get those ideas? And they said, “We think that if we can go back and read what they wrote and see who they quoted, we’ll know where they got their ideas.”

So they collected 15,000 representative writings out of the founding era. They went through all 15,000. They found 3154 direct quotes. It took them ten years to document every quote back to its original source. At the end of ten years they said, “We now know where the founders got their ideas.”

So, the number one most cited individual—and when you’ve got 6,000 years of writings, and you’ve got tens of thousands of nations that have come and gone, you’ve got a lot of people you can choose from—they said the number one most cited individual was Charles Montesquieu. Bear in mind, Montesquieu out of France, The Spirit of the Law, 1750, 8.3%. That’s a lot for one guy, when you’ve got thousands to choose from.

Number two was William Blackstone, his four-volume Commentary on the Laws. That was number two at 7.9%. Number three was John Locke at 2.9%, particularly this book by Locke: Two Treatises of Government. Those were the top cited individuals.

But what they found that was really kind of shocking was, the single most cited source in the American founding was the Bible: 34%. That’s twelve times more than Locke, four times more than Montesquieu, four times more than Blackstone. The Bible.

And then they said, “Which Bible verse is recorded most often? And which books?” And Deuteronomy is the number one most quoted book—where Israel is building its nation. Moses is setting up the nation. And then Isaiah was next most quoted.

And so, even the secular academics have documented that the Bible was the primary source in the ideas that shaped the American founding. So it’s not like it’s in the atmosphere and it’s in the culture; these guys really did think according to specific Bible verses, and they applied them.

And so that, and between the Founders’ Bible, it’s pretty compelling that it was just not the atmosphere or the culture; it was the thinking that went behind it.

What were some of the ideas they got from these sources? Things like government needing the consent of the governed, and all men are created equal, and we’re endowed by our creator with certain inalienable rights.

Meanwhile, presidential hopeful Beto O’Rourke went to meet some immigrants and refugees in Tennessee and told would-be Americans that he’s ashamed because America was "founded on white supremacy." That’s what he said. It’s hard to be that wrong; he must work at it.

As Barton said, “If the government were at least not hostile, it would be helpful.” He talked about how Kentucky schools had a problem with a picture of the Ten Commandments being included among other art, such as George Washington and the Cape Hatteras Lighthouse, hanging in the school halls. The question went to court as to whether it was constitutional for a student to voluntarily read the Ten Commandments on a piece of art at school. In that case the court ruled no.

And to quote the Court, it said, “If a student were to see the Ten Commandments, they might be induced to read them. If they read them, they might venerate, respect, and obey them. And that would be unconstitutional.” Oh yeah, things like don’t steal and don’t kill and don’t perjure yourself. So legally we can’t even put in front of kids what is hanging in more than 50 locations in the Supreme Court. US Supreme Court has more than 50 depictions of the Ten Commandments in it. Some of are in stone.

Barton refers to this situation—the removal of religion from public places—as the dissenter’s veto:It’s a ridiculous situation we’ve put ourselves in—or we’ve allowed the legal system to do to us:

if somebody objects to everybody else sharing their faith, we’re going to make everybody else stop so this this guy won’t object. Nonsense. You don’t let one person veto everyone else.

Barton is hopeful that, with new justices—and I think he means the US Supreme Court as well as many new conservative, law-reading justices in lower courts as well—things are looking up.

We’re starting to win some things we haven’t won in 50, 60 years. We’re seeing a turn.

Courts are no substitute for the people learning their history and purposefully living good, religious lives. But at least the courts can prevent some official hostility toward religion.

He’s not the only one to think things are looking up. On July 10th, on The Blaze’s The News and Why It Matters,^* one of the guests was Lathan Watts, Director of Communications, First Liberty Institute, with some good news. The story that he highlighted was from last week, a policy change issued by the Secretary of Veterans Affairs, allowing the inclusion of religious content in publicly accessible displays at VA facilities.

Lathan Watts, with First Liberty Institute,
on The News and Why It Matters, July 10, 2019
screenshot from here

Here’s the story behind it. In Manchester, New Hampshire, at a VA hospital, the Northeast POW/MIA Network (First Liberty’s client) had received permission to put up a POW/MIA remembrance table, as is done in many VA hospitals around the country:

Every item on a POW/MIA table is symbolic. There’s a yellow rose. There’s an empty chair for the POW. And one of those symbols is typically a Bible that symbolizes the strength gained through faith, of the POW and his family while they wait.

Well, the Military Religious Freedom Foundation—which is an Orwellian named group, because they hate religious freedom—[started by a guy name Mikey Weinstein]. And he sent a letter to the VA facility in Manchester saying that it was illegal to have this Bible, and that it was somehow an establishment clause violation, threatening to sue them. So we sent a letter to the VA explaining what the law actually is, and what the current VA policy was, that this is a private display and it’s perfectly acceptable to have it there. And that director made the right decision, and it’s going to stay.

In the process of defending against Weinstein’s attack, First Liberty sent a letter to the Secretary of Veterans Affairs, asking for a nationwide policy, to prevent this anti-religious group from attacking one VA facility after another, since the current policy was to leave such decisions to the facility directors, who may not be aware of their rights and could comply needlessly. And that led to the Secretary’s issuing the new policy.

There’s more good news attached:

And the great thing about their press release is, right at the end they say, “The US Supreme Court recently reaffirmed the important role religion plays in the lives of many Americans, and it’s consistency with constitutional principles.” That’s a direct cite of the recent case that we just won about three weeks ago, the American Legion v. American Humanist Association. So it was great to see almost an immediate impact of that decision. And a new policy’s going to protect these types of displays all over the country.

We hadn’t spent much time on that case, but we did mention it, as a bit of good news, at the end of Monday’s post. In that case, the Bladensburg WWI Veterans Memorial, a large cross that has been standing for close to a century, was found offensive by the American Humanist Association for “establishing” a religion—in other words, forcing nonbelievers to participate in an established government-approved religious sect—simply because they can view the memorial. Finally, we have a court that doesn’t buy that.

Watts comments,

The constitution protects your rights, not your feelings. It’s as simple as that. And that was one of the great things in the American Legion decision. Justice Gorsuch, in his concurrence that Justice Thomas joined… said now that we’re returning to the original text of the First Amendment in analyzing these cases, we should also completely do away with the offended observer status. And Thomas agreed with him and said these types of cases should be dismissed for lack of standing. Just because you’re offended by seeing an object should not provide you standing to go into court and have that object removed or torn down.

About that offended observer status—what David Barton referred to as the dissenter’s veto, the supposed loophole that gives a single individual the right to overrule everyone else’s religious freedom—he says he thinks such cases will be more easily dismissed. He adds that offended observer status is

only present in establishment clause cases. It’s the only place in the law where we recognize this right to go to court and have something torn down because you don’t like it. It’s only in establishment clause cases.

And so, hopefully this is the indication that it’s morning in America again.

Let’s hope so. Let the light dawn once again on those Founding ideas that made America exceptional in the first place.

________________________________________________

* This link may require a subscription. But the segment is available on Facebook here. 

Perceiving What Is Real

Sunday morning, while I was getting ready for church, I had BYU Radio playing, and there was a short clip of a 2014 talk by Dieter F. Uchtdorf. I looked up the whole thing later, but here’s the transcript of the clip I heard[i]:

It was less than a century ago that most astronomers assumed that our Milky Way galaxy was the only galaxy in the universe.[ii] They supposed all that lay beyond our galaxy was an immense nothingness, an infinite void—empty, cold, and devoid of stars, light, and life.

screenshot from here

As telescopes became more sophisticated—including telescopes that could be launched into space—astronomers began to grasp a spectacular, almost incomprehensible truth: the universe is mind-bogglingly bigger than anyone had previously believed, and the heavens are filled with numberless galaxies, unimaginably far away from us, each containing hundreds of billions of stars.[iii]

In a very short period of time, our understanding of the universe changed forever.

Today we can see some of these distant galaxies.[iv]

screenshot from here

We know that they are there.

They have been there for a very long time.

But before mankind had instruments powerful enough to gather celestial light and bring these galaxies into visibility, we did not believe such a thing was possible.

The immensity of the universe didn’t suddenly change, but our ability to see and understand this truth changed dramatically. And with that greater light, mankind was introduced to glorious vistas we had never before imagined.

He then introduces the main question of his talk:

It seems to be a trait of humanity to assume that we are right even when we are wrong. And if that is the case, what hope is there for any of us? Are we destined to drift aimlessly on an ocean of conflicting information, stranded on a raft we have poorly pieced together from our own biases?

Is it possible to find truth?

He then uses the earlier telescope observation as a metaphor:

Scientists were struggling to understand the breadth of the universe until instruments became sophisticated enough to gather in greater light so they could understand a more complete truth.

The Apostle Paul taught a parallel principle regarding spiritual knowledge. “The natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God,” he wrote to the Corinthians, “for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned" [1 Cor. 2:14]

In other words, if you want to recognize spiritual truth, you have to use the right instruments. You can’t come to an understanding of spiritual truth with instruments that are unable to detect it.

That got me thinking. Because I am able to perceive spiritual things even when many in the world don’t—and further, claim that I don’t.

I was thinking of another analogy. We had some books when our children were young, called Magic Eye. There would be a picture of apparently chaotic color. But if you stared at it long enough, and relaxed your eyes a certain way, suddenly a three-dimensional image appeared.

It took some practice. For us,, in our family after we’d figured out how to see the image on one page, we’d get quicker at seeing it on the next.

Not everyone can manage to see the image. But it’s there, whether a person perceives it or not. As an aside, there’s a half-decade-old lecture by Jordan Peterson, called “Reality and the Sacred,” in which he discusses how miraculous it is that we can perceive anything. Sight, for example, is so far impossible for artificial intelligence; there’s too much complexity involved in perceiving and understanding what we see. 

Anyway, it’s hard to explain the process of seeing that extra-dimensional picture exactly. You stare. You relax your eyes a bit, let go. And it happens. That’s not very exact. And it’s not very helpful to those who are struggling to see and cannot.

Those of us who have spiritual experiences, who can see the metaphorical additional-dimension image, encourage the non-see-ers. There are methods and steps that work for many of us:

·        Suspend disbelief and be open to the possibility of something beyond your five senses.

·        Pray.

·        Read spiritual texts that have record others’ spiritual experiences and lead many to have spiritual experiences from reading them.

·        Listen to the thoughts, ideas, impressions, or feelings that come in answer to prayer, or as inspiration even in between prayers.

·        Act on these promptings.

·        Record the promptings and results.

I’ve spent a fair amount of time listening to debates between believers and atheists. The atheists are not persuasive to me, because they dismiss my experience simply because they have not had those experiences. [Writing on this theme is adding up. See here, here, here, and here, for example.] 

I don’t know why they don’t get them and I do. Sometimes it might be due to willful blindness on their part. Sometimes they’re decent people just not looking at things in a way that allows them to see the extra dimension that I see. But their not seeing something I’ve experiences doesn’t convince me that I’m somehow mistaken. The evidence is in my favor.

image from Wikipedia

Remember the children’s story Horton Hears a Who, by Dr. Seuss? This elephant, with enormous ears and excellent hearing, and a kind heart, hears the sounds of the people on a world that exists on a dust speck on a clover. He knows they’re there, and so he protects them. But the non-hearers all around him, while they could simply ignore him and let him do his thing, are determined to stop him from believing he hears something. They threaten, and connive, and work to destroy. Why? Does Horton’s belief (knowledge that they can’t perceive) harm them?

In the end, Horton is able to convince the Whos down in Whoville, the people on the speck, that they need to rally and make enough noise to be heard. The final addition of one small child is enough to make them heard by the ears of all the others in Horton’s world—similar to the development of telescopes so we could see distant galaxies.

What if the Whos hadn’t been able to muster enough noise? Would they have still been there? Yes, Horton knew it, whether the others knew or not. (It’s fiction, I know, and therefore not actually real. I’m talking within the realm of this story.)

The inability to perceive does not determine whether something exists. This is particularly evident among believers in God and those who don’t.

It is not limited to our day; this has happened many times in history. But today, again, there is a vocal segment of nonbelievers that act like those conniving bullies in the Horton story. If believers commit to live better lives than they otherwise would—more honest, more committed to family, more hardworking, getting rid of corruption and trying to remove evil tendencies from their hearts—why should that garner the ire of nonbelievers?

Yet that’s what is going on when the attack companies like Chick-fil-A, or Hobby Lobby, or small business owners like florist Baronelle Stutzman or baker Jack Phillips.

Then there’s this story about a Christian charter school in Maryland that was eliminated from the voucher program for holding biblical views on sexuality. 

There’s this story about Amazon discontinuing selling books by a Catholic psychologist, with a large body of work spreading over decades, because of pressure from LGBT lobbyists. 

This isn’t confined just to America. Canadians, a supposed freedom of religion nation, just passed a law prohibiting public employees from wearing religious symbols or clothing at work—no Christian crucifix, no Jewish yarmulke, no Sikh turban. 

Further in that same story, the Ontario Court of Appeals has ruled that all doctors must give up their religious beliefs or get out of medicine:

Doctors must abort, euthanize, provide transgender interventions or any other legal medical procedure—or find a doctor who will, called an “effective referral.” In other words, Ontario forces doctors to take human life or provide services he or she might consider mutilating, even if the doctor considers it an egregious sin—either that, or be ghettoized into areas of practice such as podiatry in which no such requests are likely to be made. And if they don’t like that, as one judge put it, they can get out of medicine altogether.

Elsewhere in the world, such as Syria, Christians are persecuted to the brink of extinction, making everything I talk about here seem minor. Still, I believe we need to address the relatively minor attacks while that is what they are.

We mentioned Chick-fil-A above. They’ve been persecuted for years. Recently, during a gay pride parade in New York, a Chick-fil-A restaurant was vandalized, and the vandals ironically accused Chick-fil-A of being the haters. 

There are sparks of goodness, still, because so many people want to be good and are trying to figure that out for themselves. One man tweeted this response to the Chick-fil-A attack: "I’m gay. I eat Chick-Fil-A. I love Chick-Fil-A. They have different beliefs than I do. We can agree to disagree on things. Doesn’t mean I hate them. Not seeing tolerance. Not seeing love."

Another good story is that the near-century-old Bladensburg WWI Veterans Memorial, in the shape of a cross, is being allowed by the Supreme Court to stand.

Bladensburg WWI Veterans Memorial
image from here

The odd question is why there would be so much hatred against a religious symbol in a country that is founded and dedicated on Godly principles—including, and maybe especially, the freedom to believe as we choose.

Like those bullies in the Horton story, I’d like them to stop with their screed long enough to explain why they are so desperate to stamp out the possibility that other people perceive something they have not.

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[i] The entire talk is here, with both video and transcript. There’s an additional video within the text of a shorter clip, with illustrations, which I used for screenshots.

[ii] See Marcia Bartusiak, The Day We Found the Universe (2009), xii.

[iii] See Moses 1:33,35 in The Pearl of Great Price, and note that this was revealed in June 1830, nearly a century before Edwin Hubble announced his discovery of distant galaxies.

[iv] See, for example, the Hubble Heritage Image Gallery at heritage.stsci.edu/gallery/gallery.html.

Time to Pray

It’s always time to pray. And this political season makes the need even more urgent.

But today I’m talking about a specific threat to religious freedom.

I got word yesterday from a friend about a situation at our local school district board meetings. These meetings have begun with prayer since the school district began. All of the board members (mostly not conservative, or not as conservative as the population in our area) want to keep the prayer. But they have been contacted by the Freedom from Religion Foundation with the threat of a lawsuit if they continue to allow the meetings to open with prayer. The district lawyer has recommended that they change from prayer to a moment of silence, in an effort to avoid spending taxpayer money (that should go to educating students) on defense against the lawsuit.

image from here

My friend is recruiting people to attend the meeting and recite The Lord’s Prayer (Matthew 6:9-13) during the moment of silence.

For local readers who might be interested, the meeting is this coming Monday, September 12^th, at 6:00 PM at the Instructional Support Center, 10300 Jones Road, Houston, Texas.

There has been some back-and-forth on an email loop, which I’m finding enlightening. I have a few overarching questions:

·         What religion is being established by the US Government when a local independent school district in Texas has a prayer, offered by citizens of various religions, to begin their public board meetings?

·         Why is the threat of a lawsuit treated as a lawsuit lost?

·         Why are people who are so intolerant that they organize and sue to stamp out any vestige of religion in their country—even in a place where they are not present and have no interest—not held accountable and thrown out of court for their attack on the Constitutional rights of law-abiding citizens?

From my friend’s email, here is what we know so far (edited to omit names):

At the last school district Board Meeting, the traditional prayer was replaced by a Moment of Silence. When I asked why the change, I was told that the school district was contacted by the Freedom from Religion Foundation and that they threatened the school district with a lawsuit if they did not discontinue the prayer at the Board meetings. Speaking with the Superintendent and the Board Chairwoman, I was told that the Board was unanimously in favor of keeping the prayer; however, the CFISD attorney recommended that the Board not put the taxpayers at risk, therefore the Board decided to end the traditional prayer at the Board meetings.

As a result of that decision, I have contacted several organizations that specialize in religious liberty and found one, the American Center for Law and Justice (Jay Sekulow’s Group), that was interested in the issue, but needed to speak with someone from the Board, and I forwarded that information to the school district attorney.  So far, I have gotten no update from the Board on this situation.

My friend explains how this foundation could even know whether we have a prayer at these meetings:

In the State of Texas, School Boards in cities with a population over 10,000 people are required to video their Board Meetings and make them available to the public.  This makes it easy for groups like the Freedom from Religion Foundation to target school districts even through the group doesn’t represent anyone within those districts.  The Superintendent told me that our school district was the largest ISD [independent school district] in the state that still had prayer as a part of the Board meetings.

I believe it is time that we stand up to liberal organizations like the Freedom from Religion Foundation before they systematically remove all mention of our nation’s religious heritage from our schools.

There has been some communication since the first email with the district lawyer. She says,

I will give the caveat that I think proliferation of a discussion about planning to pray during the moment of silence could possibly be used against the school district in the future unfortunately. 

Another friend in the loop offered additional suggestions:

It would seem to me that if a group of citizens wish to speak, as is always available on the school board agenda, at an open Board meeting, and that speech is a prayer supporting the students, teachers, and leaders of our community, that is a positive action for all.

The courts have routinely affirmed that if prayer or other expressions of faith is student initiated, that is a clear First Amendment right.

A group of us doing the same, expressing our faith in support of the community at a Board meeting, is a parallel—citizen initiated. A simple, routine traditional event in our culture.

Then if the Freedom from Religion Foundation wants to stop it, they need to take action against our group and not waste tax payer money. Obviously, they become the aggressor against first amendment rights. The Board can be passive as the courts have repeatedly declared.

I think this writer has a good point. There is more that can be done in future meetings. And there’s something to be said for citizen-led action.

The lawyer does later respond to our current plans, with due lawyerly concern:

The audience reciting a prayer during the moment of silence gives me legal concerns for two reasons.  First, there is case law that invalidates moments of silence if they are a pretense to prayer.  If citizens audibly pray during the designated silence, this could call the practice into question and give rise to a challenge to its constitutionality.  Second, the meeting of the Board is a meeting in the public and not of the public.  As such, we routinely admonish audience members who interject during the meeting.  If we allowed audience members to recite prayers during the moment of silence, but did not allow other types of speech to be interjected during the meeting, I am concerned this could be challenged as an endorsement/establishment of religious speech.

The first, about case law: I think that means the way previous cases were ruled determines what the law is considered to be—rather than what the law actually says. Our supreme law, in case you’ve forgotten (apparently some judges have forgotten), says, as the first point in the First Amendment, that the Congress shall make no law that establishes a national religion, and Congress shall make no law prohibiting the free exercise of religion. Courts, in theory, can only rule on what the law is; they do not make it. So, of course the judicial branch of the federal government can make no law prohibiting the people in northwest Houston, Texas, from opening a public school board meeting with prayer, as they have always done.

As to the second point, the public does have a process for speaking at the meetings. It may require coming early enough to sign up to be put on the agenda. A person could sign up, ask to be placed first on the agenda, and then offer a prayer as their contribution to the meeting. Some out-of-state group observing only online (and only for the purpose of finding something to sue about) would have a hard time proving that the Board was complicit in the supposed sin of allowing prayer, since the Board doesn’t know what anyone is going to say until they get up to speak. Even if someone did that meeting after meeting, to disallow that person to do it would be to presume the person planned religious speech and disallow it on that basis, which would clearly violate the First Amendment.

Another email from the group reminds us that the US House has an Office of the Chaplain, and the House still opens its proceedings with prayer.

It simply is not illegal to pray in a public setting in America. It cannot even be claimed to be offensive to non-religious people who aren’t present and don’t belong to the community.

So why give in to the threat?

Because justice in America is expensive. Deep pockets often win over justice.

But we have a lawyer. I am making assumptions here about this lawyer’s daily workload, but isn’t this what we already pay her for?

Plus, my friend has already been recruiting nonprofit experts, such as ACLJ, who take on just this kind of case. They are able to do their pro bono work, because concerned citizens donate to the cause. (Just like concerned atheists donate to the cause of trying to eliminate religion from America.) We might be able to win justice without sacrificing taxpayer dollars intended to educate students.

This Freedom from Religion Foundation has spent exactly nothing threatening a lawsuit. The least we can do is let them spend their hard-begged-for donations on an actual lawsuit. We shouldn’t get the vapors at the first breath of a threat to our most essential basic freedom of belief.

image from here

Maybe we should use that belief, and trust that our God is a mighty God. We will honor Him. We will ask for His guidance in our Board meetings and other public gatherings. And maybe He will help us fight this battle.

It starts with a prayer, this coming Monday.