The Church and the State

                I live in Douglas County in the great state of Colorado.  Quite recently the ACLU and others have sued my county in regards to the Choice Scholarship Program.  This program would provide parents a voucher which would allow them to pay for private schooling if they so desired.  One of the major issues which has caused the influx of interest in my county is the separation of church and state debate and that too will be my focus here.

                John Locke’s work laid the inspirational groundwork for Thomas Jefferson who agreed that religion should not and could not be impinged upon by the state as it was an exercise of the interior life of men and women.  Government could not govern the individual’s conscience; that governance was between the individual and his or her God. 

                In Jefferson’s letter to the Baptists of Danbury, who were concerned that their expression of religion was not an exercise of religious freedom but rather given at the discretion of the majority, he stated that they should not fear because there should be “a wall of separation between church and state.”  He affirmed that government should not attempt to interfere in the individual’s ability to express themselves to their God.

                Honestly though citing this letter is no slam dunk and should not be seen as extended to all expressions of an individual’s religion.  If this were the case people would try to prove religious expression in court rather than disprove their sanity.  The one obvious example of a religion which has tried to sight religious expression and tested the limitations thus far has been the Mormons.   In 1879 in Reynolds v. United States of America the Supreme Court upheld the Morrill Act, which outlawed Polygamy; the courts claim being that a government cannot interfere in religious beliefs but can interfere in its actions.  In 1890 a decree by church president Willford Woodriff suggested that Mormons not enter into marriages which were illegal and that was that.

                I believe that this was prudent action by the government, and I also believe that it’s a stretch to compare polygamy to vouchers for private schools.  I believe that “separation of church and state” has become a sound bite which implies so much more to a secular culture than it is willing to examine justly.  They wish to portray the church and state as competitors vying for influence.  The church has every right to be as suspicious now as the Baptists who wrote to Thomas Jefferson, as separation of church and state has been used to attack every expression of faith aired in the public sphere from nativities to the Pledge of Allegiance. 

                The position which has emerged, not in small part to these litigations, is not a neutral position but depending on the school distinct or the state could be very anti-religion.  I am looking at you California.   It seems the more pluralism is espoused the more the church’s position is washed out of consideration; creating not a true pluralism but a very distinct point of view.

                The point of view pushed is not only secular, meaning void of God, but void of positive moral direction or “worldly.”  An obvious example one could point to is teaching only the mechanics of sex to grade school students and then providing condoms to further their education which is not a good idea in the eyes of many parents.  Teaching contraception may seem like a good idea if one does not teach that the logical expectation of sexual intercourse is child bearing and that the only emotionally safe place to have sex is in the most secure of relationships, a healthy marriage.  Sex with idiots will make you feel used and anyone who pursues sex outside of marriage is that idiot and he is an idiot because he is using you; these are not in the lesson plans of teachers but they must be to properly teach sex.  What’s taught in school is not neutral, not complete, and harmful to the souls of the impressionable.  It undermines the practice of faith in the family by promoting mortal sin as the prescribed rational action in today’s world.

                The schooling of a young mind helps form them.  If the secular school becomes more than secular but worldly, if not overtly but practically, then the environment is not conducive to the perpetuation of religious freedom in the individual.

Because Public Schools are funded through taxes, anyone who wishes to send their child to a private school gets to pay twice for a single education.  This places an undue burden on those who are least able to pay for a private education for religious reasons or any other reason since the vouchers are not limited to religious schools.   These parents may also be the least able to get elected to school boards, due to time and monetary considerations.

Though the school may feel sorry for the children of the crazy religious parents; what they really are going to miss is the money the voucher spent elsewhere would entail.  Though they would have to teach the body attached to the check, overhead is such that if you are paying for one, it pays to do ten.  Nobody wants to run a half-batch, even if it’s more like a batch and a half.  So test scores may slip, it’s all about the Benjamins.    

                It’s not all about the Benjamins for the many families who have good reasons not to send their children to public schools but will be forced to.  It’s about their children.