Eh, you might be surprised. Google freedom of religion cases that the ACLU has defended. But if the ACLU is involved it’s probably a pretty egregious violation / a case that they will win.
The city council deciding to stop displaying a nativity scene as the city has displayed for decades also feels like a loss to people and feels like an attempt at freedom from religion. The city council clearly has the right to make this decision. But if they are pressured into it without broad support then that will upset people who enjoy the display.
My Dad lives in a very Jewish area and despite being Christian vocally supported the city continuing their annual Hanukkah display when it was brought up that maybe they should stop. Because he sees that as freedom from religion. Walking past a Hanukkah display isn’t threatening to him.
Personally I enjoy seeing displays of other faiths. I don’t think it makes me less Christian to attend a Diwali celebration or light the Hanukkah candles. Disavowing Christ would make me less Christian, not seeing another faith’s religious symbols or learning about other faiths. I’d rather have more religious displays in the town square, not less.
While it’s dangerous to guess what another person means, I suspect he’d like to return to the era when school prayer and Bible study was a thing.
I don’t know when the courts ruled on reading the Bible in school, but I recall my fourth grade teacher commenting that she missed being able to do that. She used to read from the Bible after recess and said it was a great way to calm the kids down.
I suspect Mike Pence would like school teachers to be allowed to do that once again. How he’d feel about them reading from the Quran is a different question, of course. I dunno, maybe he does want to return to state religions / civil rights only for Protestants.
I would argue “yes” in the case of a teacher reading the Bible to school children. I would argue “no” in the case of walking past a menorah in the town square.
That said, there are standards of public decency. Most religious symbols would not fall afoul of these, but if some “Religion of Sadomasochistic Practices” emerged then their religious symbols may well be inappropriate for the town square.
Anyway, if you’re not being forced to participate then it should be allowed IMO.
There was a post-ww2 surge of religious feeling. That translated into an effort to put more god into government. For example “under god” was added to the pledge. and add prayer to school.
but then the supreme court decided it was illegal to force children to pray.
and religious leaders by and large supported that decision. this was partially on the grounds that non denominational prayers had to be so gutted to make everyone happy that they didn’t mean much.
i think we now see the empty religious experience that comes from a mass media fueled orthodoxy. it is one so hollow that it sees trump as a delivering christ figure, when if anything he much more closely resembles the other one.
I think it was started in the 1950s or something. I can try to look it up.
ADDED- i was remembering wrong. It seems to have been in the 1950s that a national movement started to encourage schoolchildren to pray. For example, a group started to give out free bibles to school children.
Before that, whether or not school should include religion was considered a local concern. I’m not sure how often there actually was prayer or bible study.
When I did that, 10 of the first 10 hits were about displays on public property or public school programs.
That didn’t surprise me at all.
I will repeat: There is plenty of visible evidence that religions exist. I don’t know of any cases where governments have told private citizens they can’t have manger scenes on their front lawns, for example.
Sure, it will feel like a loss to people who are accustomed to their particular religion or religion in general getting explicit support from the government. The decision is probably the gov’t respecting the rights of people who believe government should not promote any particular religion, or maybe not promote religions in general. I would call the second case “people looking for freedom from religion”. Or, more accurately, “freedom from government promotion of religion”.
Sometimes, people expect too much from government and they are upset if they don’t get what they want.
Consider the gov’t giving explicit financial support to one or more churches, but not requiring that anyone actually attend services. Does that count as “being forced to participate”?
Assuming that “town square” is property owned by a government entity . . . there are questions that would need to be addressed of how gov’t money is being spent for that display and how “equal access” is being carried out.
That is, to the extent that tax-payers money is used for such displays, there is an element of “forced participation” that could be argued.
You’re essentially describing the Church of England and established churches in a number of other European countries.
No, it’s not (currently in Europe) forced participation, but certainly your tax dollars are forcibly going to the church. And certainly in some cases in the past there was forced participation.
