Fighting for God in court
Their offices are in Washington, across the street from the Supreme Court. And for some reason, this story wound up on the front page of the Chicago Tribune yesterday about the American Center for Law & Justice. They successfully bring cases you usually don’t hear about.
These cases cover a broad range of religious issues, from defending a Texas high school’s practice of prayer at football games to an Illinois pharmacist’s right not to dispense drugs that violate his religious beliefs. Most aim at establishing precedent and all revolve around the conviction of the ACLJ and its colleagues that religious freedom, particularly that of Christians, is under attack by those who want to expunge all religious reference from public life.
Have you seen CNN’s three-part series recently on religious fanaticism?
In many ways, the ACLJ represents the conservative mirror image of the American Civil Liberties Union, the 87-year-old non-profit group that many on the political and religious right love to hate for its rigorous insistence on the separation between church and state.
“Love to hate”? This is a tipoff to the reason this story has appeared on the front page.
When are we going to get the Establishment Clause guaranteeing the constitutional separation of church and state….straight?! It’s a false argument by those who want to drive religion out of all public forms of expression, while failing to note the second half of that clause, that the government will not prohibit the free exercise of religion.
The drumbeat of “separation of church and state” is intended to form public opinion against that free expression.
Although those words do not appear in the Constitution, that is the common interpretation of the 1st Amendment’s clause banning government establishment of religion. Many conservative Christians take issue with that, including Bill Saunders, human-rights counsel at the Family Research Council, which promotes conservative family values and a Judeo-Christian view of the world.
“Free expression means the government should accommodate religious expression, not be hostile to it,” said Saunders, who believes that groups like the ACLJ are needed to defend religious freedom.
We’re going to be hearing a lot more of these arguments in the next year leading up to the presidential election. This is a decisive time for America.