What if it was Church of The Lukumi Babalu Aye instead of Riverdale Baptist trying to build a school in Bristol? Or what if it was Burger King who wanted to put up a 250-square-foot electronic sign in Lutherville? What if an incoming president wanted to kill a chicken as the inauguration prayer?
Would anybody cry government suppression or establishment of religion? Probably not. And that cuts to the heart of our nation’s two-century debate over exactly what our Founders meant in our First Amendment.
Riverdale Baptist is suing Anne Arundel County over denial of the 92,000-square-foot, 250-student school planned for a narrow winding road.
Trinity Assembly of God sued Baltimore County to avoid the same sign ordinance the rest of us must obey.
And a professed atheist is suing all of us to forbid a citizen from mention of God merely because he is being inaugurated.
Casting the school, the sign and the inaugural tradition as church/state issues is worse than ludicrous. It undermines our eternal struggle for freedom of faith.
Before our Founders — who beseeched “Nature and Nature’s God” in our Declaration of Independence — made faith the first freedom guaranteed in our
www.archives.gov/exhibits/charters/bill_of_rights.html Bill of Rights
Faith-based conflict soaking Europe with blood for centuries was recent history at the birth of our nation. In much of the world now it’s current events. So our Founders wisely included strong protection against this ancient scourge.
Thomas Jefferson referred to the First Amendment “building a wall of separation between Church & State” in his 1802 letter of support to Danbury (Conn.) Baptists who complained about being taxed for the Congregational Church. At the time the Congregational Church in Connecticut was the established faith and was supported through taxes.
Yet our Founders never intended that wall to hide illegal acts or bad public policy under camouflage of religious freedom. The First Amendment obviously should not protect embezzlers, scofflaws or murderers. Neither should it overturn the greater common good of zoning.
Nor should it block any citizen who happens to become president from reference to faith, nor prohibit otherwise legal actions merely because they are faith-based.
Which brings us to
Church of the Lukumi Babalu Aye Inc. v. Hialeah. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled unanimously that the city could not prohibit animal sacrifice as long as it’s done in accordance with laws for all.
That should apply to development clogging rural roads or huge signs or prayer on the Capitol steps.
Those who cry First Amendment on such inappropriate and mundane issues distract us from serious quandaries of church and state, and undermine the wall of separation our Founders intended.
