Hey Wiccans, welcome to what it's like to be a Christian. We've been getting unfair rulings against Christianity for years now. Now that you're part of the club, lets go out and get a drink sometime. ;)

Seriously though, this assault on people of faith (even faith in Wicca) is getting really annoying. This country wasn't necessarily founded as a Christian country, it was founded as a religious country, a refuge for believers of all kinds. That's why our very first amendment protected free exercise. For years, Christians have been getting the shaft and now even Wiccans are being abused. This has to stop.

I just don't know how to stop it.

The ruling is definitely wicca-di-wicca-di-wack (say it fast).

Could you cite some of the (apparently many) cases in which Christians have gotten the shaft?

Please, nothing like Roe v. Wade - that's just silly, because you don't have to be Christian to oppose abortion.

I'm more interested in something like (for example) a case where an atheist and a Christian parent divorced, and the Christian parent wasn't allowed to discuss his/her religion around the child, similar to other blatantly discriminatory cases like the one above, or in which a homosexual divorced parent is not allowed to acknolwedge his/her sexuality around the child.

I think one could make a decent case for Locke v. Davey, but I confess that you've got to stretch it pretty far, and it applies to all religions in any case.

In all seriousness now, this case probably doesn't represent the most obvious violation of Free Exercise rights ever. Attorney Cohen makes a fair point in her quoted reaction, but I'd be shocked if Judge Bradford's defense in the appeal hinges on whether a judge can decide what constitutes a valid religion. The true question should be whether the state can limit a parent's right to direct the religious upbringing of his child. Bradford has a much stronger argument at his disposal on that issue.

In Prince v. Massachusetts, 321 U.S. 158 (1944), the state's authority over children's activities was broadened to include activites that the child's guardians attempted to protect by use of the Free Exercise clause. In Prince, a woman had her minor niece selling religious magazines with her on the street. SCOTUS upheld the aunt's conviction for violating child labor laws. In doing so, SCOTUS set forth the ability of the state to regulate the religious activities of children more than it may regulate those same actions when performed by adults.

As Justice Rutledge stated in Prince:

"[T]he state has a wide range of power for limiting parental freedom and authority in things affecting the child's welfare; and that this includes, to some extent, matters of conscience and religious conviction."

In Wisconsin v. Yoder, 406 U.S. 205, 233-34 (1972), a more famous SCOTUS Free Exercise case dealing with Wisconsin's requirement that all children, including Amish, attend formal school until age 16, the majority stated that the Court would limit a parent's right to conduct the religious upbringing of a child if it appeared that the parent's decisions in that area would jeopardize the health or safety of the child, or have a potential for significant social burdens.

Unfortunately, Judge Bradford didn't issue an opinion in this matter, so we have no way of knowing his rationale, and I don't want to speculate too much as to what he was thinking, but it seems feasible that Bradford, who is the Marion County Juvenile Division chair, and a respected judge in Indianapolis, 1) knows his knows his Yoder, 2) found that the child's parents' religious practices would have a negative effect on the child's welfare, and 3) ruled in accordance with that finding. This ruling would comport with the holdings in Prince and Yoder. Again, without a written opinion, we have no way of knowing what Bradford's reasoning was, and we will have to wait for the appeal to get any further elucidation on it, but Bradford appears to have at least two Supreme Court decisions on his side in defense of a Free Exercise challenge.

Adam-

I don't think either Yoder or Prince applies very well in this case at all. In both cases, the issue was whether a religious belief gave a particular individual or group a loophole in a generally applicable law, the child labor laws in Prince and the education laws in Yoder. But in this case, there is no generally applicable law that they are in violation of on religious grounds. There are also cases where the courts have deemed it reasonable to interfere with free exercise, such as when it puts a child's life at risk (refusing blood transfusions, for example, or church-mandated beatings). But none of those things are present in this case either.

The question at issue is whether the judge has the authority to determine that a given religion is bad for a child solely on the basis of it causing "confusion" with the more dominant religions in his social contexts. Clearly, no such authority could be justified without a very compelling interest. The exceptions to the free exercise clause should be drawn very narrowly. To make an exception solely on the basis of such alleged confusion would justify all sorts of intrusions into the private religious decisions of parents. Given that both parents are of the same religion, that it is entirely legal to be wiccan, and that parents are rightly given enormous leeway to raise their children in the religion they choose with only very narrowly tailored exceptions involving a direct harm to the child, I have a hard time imagining even a hypothetical justification for such a ruling in this case. Unless there is something truly crazy going on that hasn't been noted in the press - naked orgies in front of the children, or something like that - it seems obvious to me that the judge is going far past his authority in this case.

They are not court cases in the manner Nick asked for, but the interested reader might be surprised at some of these stories from the fabulous Tongue Tied blog.

In case the links don't work, they are, in order:

http://tonguetied.us/archives/cat_god_forbid.php
http://tonguetied.us/

Phil Aldridge wrote:

Seriously though, this assault on people of faith (even faith in Wicca) is getting really annoying. This country wasn't necessarily founded as a Christian country, it was founded as a religious country, a refuge for believers of all kinds. That's why our very first amendment protected free exercise. For years, Christians have been getting the shaft and now even Wiccans are being abused. This has to stop.

I think this is far too casual a grouping of wiccans and Christians as "people of faith" whose freedom has been assaulted. The assaults on the freedom of Wiccans have generally come from those very "people of faith" that you're grouping them in with. In 1999, for instance, Congressman Bob Barr got up in arms over the fact that the military allowed Wiccans to hold rituals on military bases and tried to insert a provision into a military authorization bill to ban that practice. A coalition of about a dozen religious right groups got together then to have the Wiccans not only barred from holding rituals on bases, but thrown out of the military completely. Paul Weyrich, one of the least known but most powerful religious right power brokers in the country (founder of the Free Congress Foundation, the Moral Majority and about 25 other advocacy groups) actually urged Christians to stop joining the military as a way of taking a stand for Christianity and damaging the military as punishment for the apostasy of allowing Wiccans to serve their country:

"The official approval of satanism and witchcraft by the Army is a direct assault on the Christian faith that generations of American soldiers have fought and died for," Paul Weyrich added. "If the Army wants witches and satanists in its ranks, then it can do it without Christians in those ranks. It's time for the Christians in this country to put a stop to this kind of nonsense. A Christian recruiting strike will compel the Army to think seriously about what it is doing."

Short of committing treason, it's hard to imagine anything more unpatriotic or un-American than this kind of lunacy. But what was true 225 years ago remains true today - the main threat to religious liberty comes from religious establishments. In colonial and revolutionary America, it was Puritans who turned the Quakers into outlaws in Massachusetts, Quakers who made Catholics into outlaws in Pennsylvania, and Anglican who threw Baptists in jail in Virginia. The primary threat to the liberty of "people of faith" is from other "people of faith" who are zealous to have their faith be declared the official truth and all other faiths heresies.

Josh just emailed me a link to this post by Eugene Volokh on the same subject. He writes:

If the order is as reported, then it's a blatant violation of the Free Speech Clause (because it's a speech restriction), the Free Exercise Clause (because it singles out religion for special restriction), the Establishment Clause (because it prefers some religions over others, and requires the court to decide what's a "mainstream" religion), and likely the Equal Protection Clause (because the order discriminates based on religion) and the Due Process Clause (because of the order's vagueness) as well.

Courts sometimes do issue these sorts of orders when there's a battle between the parents; as I argue in this article, I think even those orders are generally unconstitutional, and especially when it comes to religious teachings, most courts have concluded that they can't be issued unless there's some evidence of likely harm to the children (rather than just abstract speculation, as seems to be the case here). But orders restricting what both parents can say to the child, issued on the court's own initiative and without either parent's support, are nearly unheard of, and would seem to be even harder to justify constitutionally.

Quite so.

Ed wrote:

"the main threat to religious liberty comes from religious establishments."

That just isn't so. It’s not even in the ballpark. I think most Christians would say that their biggest threat comes from radical secularism, the growing French-like crusade to strip all references to God from any aspect of public life, and in some cases to criminalize (via hate-crimes legislation) religion free speech.

Another counter example: Anti-Semitism in this country is less than in, for example, Europe --because of the strong Christian presence, not in spite of it.

Want to increase anti-Semitism in America? Get rid of all the Christians.

David Heddle wrote:

They are not court cases in the manner Nick asked for, but the interested reader might be surprised at some of these stories from the fabulous Tongue Tied blog.

What is interesting about that page is that most of the cases seem to involve school teachers or administrators making dumb decisions because they're ignorant of the law. What is even more interesting is how often, in such cases, the ACLU intervenes on behalf of the students to fix the situation. Contrary to the fevered rhetoric of so many religious right demagogues, this is quite common, and those men often to go great pains to avoid saying so because they rely on demonization of the ACLU to keep the money flowing in.

For instance, Jerry Falwell wrote a column in the Worldnutdaily a few months ago about a group of students in Massachusetts who were told they could not hand out candy canes with bible verses on them at Christmas time in a public school. He said:

The fact is, students have the right to free speech in the form of verbal or written expression during non-instructional class time. And yes, students have just as much right to speak on religious topics as they do on secular topics – no matter what the ACLU might propagate.

What he failed to mention, quite conveniently, was that the ACLU had intervened on behalf of those very students and forced the school to reverse their decision. Even after the reversal, the families decided to sue the school to get a court order barring any future actions that might violate the rights of students and the ACLU filed a brief on their behalf in that suit. For that matter, the ACLU has twice filed briefs on Falwell's behalf to get state laws in Virginia overturned that prevented his church from owning more than a certain amount of property.

The same thing happened in the Lamb's Chapel case, where I actually watched Jay Sekulow (who argued the case before the Supreme Court) go on the 700 Club and declare to Pat Robertson and all their viewers that the case was a victory against the ACLU. There was just one slight problem with that - it was a baldfaced lie. The ACLU was on the same side in the Lamb's Chapel case and filed a brief on behalf of the group arguing that it was unconstitutional to not give the Lamb's Chapel access to school facilities. This is rank dishonesty and demagoguery and it is very common.

All I have to say is this: It's the exact reason why in these matters, government should be limited to deciding who is the parent best-suited to care for the child's physical and emotional wellbeing; if both parents are physically or emotionally abusive (something that can be clearly defined) then the court should step in.

And if the parents have already made those arrangements beforehand and placed them in writing, then the court's job is to simply certify it. Unless the child is clearly being physically or emotionally abused, of course.

David Heddle wrote:

That just isn't so. It’s not even in the ballpark. I think most Christians would say that their biggest threat comes from radical secularism, the growing French-like crusade to strip all references to God from any aspect of public life, and in some cases to criminalize (via hate-crimes legislation) religion free speech.

I don't think your argument here supports your conclusion. First you say I'm wrong, but your argument for why I'm wrong is that you think most Christians would say I'm wrong. That has no bearing whatsoever on whether my statement was true or not. Nor did you respond to the specific example I used, which was the threat to the freedom of Wiccans from groups who truly believe that Christianity is the official religion of the US and therefore any other religions can be discriminated against (the quote from Weyrich could hardly be more clear, could it?).

I also think your language is too loose to apply to the real world. There is no "French-like" radical secularism in the US of any real threat, despite the occasional overreaching of glory hounds like Michael Newdow, nor is there an attempt to "strip all references to God from any aspect of public life." What secularists oppose are official endorsements of religion, not religion in "any aspect of public life." I agree that sometimes this zeal goes a bit far; the removal of a tiny cross from the LA county seal was beyond trivial, in my view. But every day, public officials speak of their faith in public settings and no one attempts to stop them (nor should they, as public officials are as free to speak of their religious faith as you and I are). Every day, thousands of bible clubs and prayer groups use public facilities in schools, on military bases, and in government buildings to hold their meetings - and again, no one tries to stop them, nor should they.

You are missing a critical distinction between governmental endorsement or sponsorship of religion on the one hand, and religious speech in the public square on the other. Advocates of church/state separation are opposed to the former, but not to the latter. The public square, in its various forms, is full of religious speech every day and groups like the ACLU have often defended the right to engage in this type of speech. For many examples, see my essays here and here. What the French did in banning all religious clothing from public schools would be deemed unconstitutional here and those "secularists" you deride would be right there fighting it (I've written many essays hammering the French policy as a clear violation of religious liberty). The ACLU has a very clear position in favor of allowing students to wear religious clothing and symbols and they have gone to court to fight for that position.

As far as the claim of "many cases" of hate crimes legislation banning religious speech, this is mostly paranoia (though hate speech codes on college campuses, which both I and those evil secularists in the ACLU are strongly opposed to, do sometimes infringe on such rights. There have been cases in Canada and in Scandinavia of pastors being brought up on charges for preaching against homosexuality, but those nations don't have a first amendment as we do. If that should happen here, you would find that those very secularists that you are against would be by your side battling those laws. I'd be the first one on the front lines against them.

"Anti-Semitism in this country is less than in, for example, Europe --because of the strong Christian presence, not in spite of it." Hogwash. The vast majority of antisemitism in this country still comes from Christians. What there is, in Europe, is a bigger problem with radical Islamists, who are one of the major sources of acts of anti-semitism. But I don't see how you can even remotely motivate the claim that somehow the fact that there is a greater concentration of Christians in this country is causally responsible for the difference.

Others have saved me the time and trouble of pointing out the issues with the cases mentioned at Tongue Tied - as such, I still wait for examples.

Ed:

If Christians do not feel they are being threatened by other religious groups, but instead feel threatened by growing secularism, why is that not relevant to counter you claim that "the main threat to religious liberty comes from religious establishments."

Unless you are saying that what we feel threatened about is not really a threat, we just feel it. But we can't trust our feelings.

Basically the entire set of tongue tied links are real cases of our religious free speech being violated, not by another religious establishment, but from secularists.

Maybe Wiccans are threatened by Christians. However, you would have to arbitrarily exclude Christians from the equation to support your statement that "the main threat to religious liberty comes from religious establishments." You would have to argue that Christians face no threat to religious liberty at all.

What is your opinion of this case:
http://www.covenantnews.com/repent041012.htm

Ed also wrote, regarding the Tongue Tied links:

"What is even more interesting is how often, in such cases, the ACLU intervenes on behalf of the students to fix the situation. Contrary to the fevered rhetoric of so many religious right demagogues"

Nice tactic. Take a hundred or so posts about Christians facing illegal restrictions on religious speech and spin it into an attack on those dumb bumpkin fundies.

philosopher:

"The vast majority of antisemitism in this country still comes from Christians"

You have some data to back that up? Oh, and please do not include the groups that use Christian symbols--e.g. the KKK. (Even if it is true, which I doubt, the "vast majority" of anti-semitic incidents in the U.S. will be a small number compared to post-Christian Europe.)

Then you'll have to deal with all those rabbis and Israeli leaders who acknowledge that their best friends in the world are American Christians.

Nick: are you from Panda's Thumb by any chance?-- that's what they like to do. Ask for examples and then complain, "oh, but those don't count."

Ed:

In colonial and revolutionary America, it was...Quakers who made Catholics into outlaws in Pennsylvania.

That is inaccurate, as far as I can tell, and it casts doubt on the veracity of the rest of your claim about who persecuted who in colonial America. This page explains that "[William] Penn's guarantee of religious freedom and the rights of conscience attracted other dissenting groups ... to Pennsylvania. For much of the 18th century, Penn's colony was the only place under British rule where Catholics could legally worship in public."

Wikipedia's entry on William Penn also says that freedom of religion in Pennsylvania was "complete freedom of religion for everybody who believed in God."

I'm sure your larger claim that religious freedom has mostly been infringed by other religious groups throughout the course of history is generally true. Of course, the vast majority of people throughout history have ascribed to one religion or another. It is only in recent times that atheism (or even secularism) has gained any significant following. What is also notable, though, is that in the past century some of the most frightening repressions of people of faith has occurred under the state-imposed atheism of communist regimes (e.g. Stalin's Russia and Mao's China).

David Heddle wrote:

If Christians do not feel they are being threatened by other religious groups, but instead feel threatened by growing secularism, why is that not relevant to counter you claim that "the main threat to religious liberty comes from religious establishments."

Unless you are saying that what we feel threatened about is not really a threat, we just feel it. But we can't trust our feelings.

I am saying that the mere fact that some Christians feel like they are threatened by secularism does not mean they actually are threatened by secularism. To establish that it is a genuine threat requires actual evidence, not mere feelings. Feelings are easily manipulated by the kinds of lies I specifically documented in my message above.

Basically the entire set of tongue tied links are real cases of our religious free speech being violated, not by another religious establishment, but from secularists.

I disagree. Let's take a look at just the first few. The first one is about a girl whose school told her that she couldn't sing a religious song in a school talent show. The school is wrong, and groups like the ACLU (those "secularists" you're so concerned about) have often defended rights like this. For example, they defended the students who wanted to hand out candy canes with religious messages; they also defended a student in Michigan who wanted to use a bible verse for a quote under her yearbook picture. In 2002, they defended a group of students in Iowa against a school policy banning the distribution of religious literature on school property. I could cite dozens of such cases around the country where they have defended voluntary religious expression such as this in public schools. So when the Worldnutdaily declares that, "The American Civil Liberties Union is engaged in a long-term, relentless and well-funded campaign to remove every vestige of Christian expression from America's government, schools and public property", they are simply lying. They have often defended Christian experssion in schools and on public property as long as that expression is not sponsored or endorsed by the government.

The second item is about a controversy in North Carolina where the county commissioner had "In God We Trust" mounted in 18 inch high letters on the county building and a group there is suing to have it removed. Now we can certainly argue back and forth over the question of whether that should or should not be considered a violation of the establishment clause, but it certainly is not a case of religious freedom being violated. You don't have a right to have your religious beliefs emblazoned across a county building and not allowing such a display does not violate anyone's right to free exercise of religion, any more than not putting "In Allah We Trust" on the building violates religious rights.

The third story is about a student who voluntarily changed a mural that depicted a stairway to heaven because of complaints. There is nothing in there to indicate that he was forced to do so, only that he chose to do so because he didn't want to be offend anyone. Now I'll agree that it's silly to be offended by that, but here again the reality is that if the student chose to paint something religious on his own, or as an assignment for art class, and the school told him he couldn't, the school would be wrong and those very "secularists" you say are such a threat would, again, be defending that student as they have defended numerous other students' right to voluntary religious expression.

There are lots of similar stories of school officials who are ignorant of the law and who think that even voluntary student expression of religious faith is banned in public schools, but it's not because "radical secularist" groups have tried to stop them. As I showed with several examples, those secularist groups often defend those very rights against such clueless school administrators. Could it be that those administrators and teachers are confused about what the law really says because the Falwells and Robertsons and Worldnutdailys of the world continually claim that the courts have removed all religious expression from public schools, as in the quote I offered above? Groups like the ACLU have more than done their part to correct those lies. In 1995, at the request of President Clinton, the ACLU got together with a wide range of organizations including some conservative Christian groups and "radical secularist" groups like Americans United and issued a joint statement about what the law does and doesn't say about religion in public schools. That statement was sent to every single public school in the United States to help educate the teachers and administrators on what the law actually says and where the lines are drawn between avoiding establishment of religion and not violating students' rights. A prominent portion of that statement addresses exactly the kind of situations listed above:

Students may express their religious beliefs in the form of reports, homework and artwork, and such expressions are constitutionally protected. Teachers may not reject or correct such submissions simply because they include a religious symbol or address religious themes. Likewise, teachers may not require students to modify, include or excise religious views in their assignments, if germane. These assignments should be judged by ordinary academic standards of substance, relevance, appearance and grammar.

It's just not reasonable to blame "radical secularist" organizations like the ACLU or Americans United for the ignorance of the law that they themselves have tried to fix. And it's an outright lie to accuse them of being responsible for crushing the religious liberty of students when they so often have defended that liberty against such administration decisions.

ME: "What is even more interesting is how often, in such cases, the ACLU intervenes on behalf of the students to fix the situation. Contrary to the fevered rhetoric of so many religious right demagogues"

David Heddle: Nice tactic. Take a hundred or so posts about Christians facing illegal restrictions on religious speech and spin it into an attack on those dumb bumpkin fundies.

That isn't what I said. I said that religious right leaders like Falwell and Robertson often lie about what the ACLU and other "radical secularist" groups actually do. I provided two excellent examples in my first reply to you, and a third one from the Worldnutdaily in this reply. I pointed out half a dozen or so cases where the ACLU has defended students rights to do the very same things you claim they are working so diligently to prohibit, and could easily have cited dozens more. It's certainly true that most of their followers accept their lies uncritically, but that is precisely my point - the fact that they "feel" like that big bad ACLU and those horrible "secularists" are a huge threat to their freedom doesn't mean they actually are a threat to their freedom. The facts are on my side in that regard, as I have documented thoroughly in this exchange so far. The lies are being told by religious right, again as I have documented.

The fact is that there is a major cottage industry that has developed for the purpose of exaggerating and distorting this issue. The sheer nonsense one reads in the right wing press regularly on such issues proves my point. For example, you may recall the headlines blaring last fall Declaration of Independence Banned From Classrooms, involving the Stevens Creek schools in Cupertino, California. That was the title of a press release from the Alliance Defense Fund who filed suit on behalf of the teacher, Steven Williams. Guess what? It was a flat out lie. The Declaration of Independence was not banned from any classroom. In fact, a copy of the Declaration hangs in the very classroom from which it was allegedly banned, and the full text is printed in the textbook used by the very teacher claiming to have been censored. The truth of the matter is that Mr. Williams handed out a large number of supplemental handouts, one of which had statements from the Declaration, but most of which were intended purely to establish that the founding fathers were Christians, which was not germane to the lesson being taught. And many of those handouts contained outright fraudulent quotes attributed to the founding fathers, and referenced at least one entirely non-existent document. And that the school had gotten numerous complaints from parents about his relentless proselytizing of his 5th grade students, many of whom said that he couldn't stop talking about Jesus even when teaching math, for crying out loud. The headlines were a lie, the lawsuit was nonsense and the courts rightly dismissed all of the substantive causes of action in the case.

The internet is full of the sort of fevered rhetoric I mentioned above. Last year's absurd hysteria over those evil secularists "taking away Christmas" is a textbook example. Right wing webpages far and wide went out of their minds over this story, all because a department store decided to use "Happy Holidays" in its advertising rather than "Merry Christmas". And here again, the lies and distortions and exaggerations were thrown out at a breathtaking pace. The American Daily declared:

If a store puts up a simple “Christmas tree�, not to mention one with an angel at the top, the ACLU threatens to sue and the owner (or company) usually cowers under the legal threat and removes the “offending� object (be that a tree, a baby Jesus, a crèche, or even a “Merry Christmas� sign).

This is just a baldfaced, 100% pure lie. The ACLU has never threatened to sue any private business for putting up a Christmas tree or anything of the sort. Pat Buchanan declared that the decision by Macy's to use "Happy Holidays" instead of "Merry Christmas" - a decision that had nothing to do with "radical secularists" threatening mythical lawsuits but was made entirely on their own for the perfectly understandable reason that a large portion of their clientele was Jewish, Muslim, or otherwise non-Christian - was a "hate crime against Christianity." No, I'm not making that up. With this kind of ridiculous hyperbole piled on top of the outright lies told by the Falwells and Robertsons of the world, it should hardly come as a surprise that so many of their followers feel that they're being threatened by the groups their leaders are dishonestly demonizing precisely for the purpose of scaring them into sending money. But when such feelings conflict with the facts, the facts ought to win out.

Eric Seymour wrote:

That is inaccurate, as far as I can tell, and it casts doubt on the veracity of the rest of your claim about who persecuted who in colonial America. This page explains that "[William] Penn's guarantee of religious freedom and the rights of conscience attracted other dissenting groups ... to Pennsylvania. For much of the 18th century, Penn's colony was the only place under British rule where Catholics could legally worship in public."

You're right, Pennsylvania was the wrong state to mention in this regard, as they and Rhode Island were, for a very long time, the only colonies that had religious freedom for Catholics. Catholics were certainly persecuted in many other colonies by Protestants, of course, and did plenty of their own persecution in other countries.

Regardless, jurisprudence on religion has been fouled up since about 1940. The bobbing and weaving by the SC has brought it sneers, disrespect, and it has fueled a desire to dump the sort of judging we have endured since then.

Ed wrote:

I am saying that the mere fact that some Christians feel like they are threatened by secularism does not mean they actually are threatened by secularism. To establish that it is a genuine threat requires actual evidence, not mere feelings. Feelings are easily manipulated by the kinds of lies I specifically documented in my message above.

Sorry, it sounds to me that regardless of what is presented you'd say: That's not being threatened. You're not being threatened until I say you're being threatened.

The last three churches I've been in (not one "fundamentalist"), going back 12 years --there would be virtually unanimous agreement that we were threatened, with a very common complaint being state intrusions and ever-increasing hoops to jump through when it comes to home schooling. (Over on Panda's thumb, some of the commenters recently suggested that it should be illegal for parents to teach their kids ID and call it science. Would that constitute a threat if it were ever actually pursued?)

Ed wrote:

There is nothing in there to indicate that he was forced to do so

True, no guns were held to his head. Nothing except a petition going around objecting to the image. I guess he should have waited until everything played itself out, although I don't think that would have changed your position. Personally I think a petition being drawn up against one's artwork could be viewed, by a reasonable person, as threatening.

Do you have a comment on this case:

http://www.covenantnews.com/repent041012.htm ?

Ed wrote:

That isn't what I said. I said that religious right leaders like Falwell and Robertson often lie about what the ACLU and other "radical secularist" groups actually do.

My point was that it was a non sequitur.

I have to wonder, to take Richard Dawkins' point, why it is that the state or the parents explicitly discuss religious upbringing. Nobody specifies that a child should be protected from Randites or Chomskyists....

I also wish we could put the whole 'atheism=totalitarian rule" thing to rest. Are we to discount the religious tyrannies of, say, Calvin, the Aztecs, or the Himalayan kingdoms just because they occurred in centuries in which the slaughter of millions was impossible?

Paul,

I think your comment about religious tyrannies applies more to Zwingli than to Calvin. Calvin allowed heretics to leave Geneva, and he commiserated greatly over the execution of Servetus. (He had exiled the Spaniard, but he returned nonetheless.) Calvin married an Anabaptist (converting to, essentially, Presbyterianism), and the Anabaptists were not under a decree of death as they were under Zwingli. Geneva wasn't a true theocracy--the city council was often in opposition to Calvin. (It was the city council that demanded the brutal form of Servetus's execution.)

Then again, I have to admit to being very biased when it comes to Calvin. Kind of ironic that he was French. Kind of like Bobby Fischer being one of the greatest chess players of all time.

The first issue of constitutional analysis is what analytical framework applies to the situation. The fact that Bradford's decision is a ruling on a divorce decree is the key fact in this issue. Family law controls, therefore the interests of the child are given the highest consideration. This strikes a cognitive dissonance with people who assume that anything that abridges a constitutional right must be analyzed under strict scrutiny, but Yoder and Price explicitly authorize the state to limit parental rights when the welfare of the child is in the balance, even if those parental rights include religion. These cases authorized the limitation of parental rights even though they were not family law cases, so this limitation should be allowed a fortiori in a family law matter.

Certainly, Yoder and Price are distinguishable on the facts, but that is far from fatal to the principles of law expressed in the decisions from being applied to other cases. Imagine the hodgepodge of jurisprudence we'd have if we were prevented from using legal rationale in cases with similar legal issues just because there were some factual differences between the cases. I would not line up to take that bar exam.

At any rate, Bradford had the authority to consider the child's welfare above all other considerations, including religious freedom of the child's father. Of course, a court must also take the Free Exercise clause into consideration, and is required to narrowly tailor its order so as to result in the least possible intrusion
upon the constitutionally protected interests of the parent, but the welfare of the child is the top consideration, and if Bradford found Wicca to be hazardous to the kid's health, it is hard to figure a less intrusive way of protecting him from it than banning its practice in his presence.

Some courts would even say that Bradford had a duty to consider whether the parents' religious beliefs threatened the well-being of the child, and rule accordingly. See, e.g., Morris v. Morris, 271 Pa.Super. 19, 412 A.2d 139 (1979); Munoz v. Munoz, 79 Wash.2d 810, 489 P.2d 1133 (1971). Again, without a published opinion containing Bradford's findings of fact and rationale for his decision, we won't know exactly what he considered until the appeal opinion is published. But the existence of this line of legal rationale certainly raises the likelihood that this is not as open-and-shut a question of a 1st Amendment violation as some are saying.

Nobody specifies that a child should be protected from Randites or Chomskyists...

Somebody should :-) Seriously, the government has no business telling parents what to teach their children. (See if I ever get invited to speak at a National Education Association functon.)

I also wish we could put the whole 'atheism=totalitarian rule" thing to rest.

I hope that's not directed at me, Paul. (I haven't followed the entire Ed/David debate here, so maybe it's directed at one of them.) Certainly the majority of atheists desire to "live and let live," as do the majority of theists.

My previous comment was primarily intended to show that there is a modern precedent for people of faith to be concerned about repression at the hands of secular or atheist regimes. (And secondarily, to counter the meme that religion is to blame for most of the violence in the world. On the contrary, irreligious people have shown themselves to have equal propensity for violence and repression.)

If fundamentalist Christians are so unhappy with Godless America, I will resort to that old conservative canard about our country: love it or leave it. There are some remote regions of the Earth, albeit few, where territorial claims are not generally recognized by the international community. Why not pack up a big ship or two and colonize those lands? Megachurches would need central heating, something residents of the Sun Belt might not like, but think of the opportunities! No liberal activist judges. No elite media. No evolution. Nothing so licentious as "freedom" of religion or of much else. Nothing, in fact, but seals, penguins, fish, bacteria, and the comfort self-righteous delirium.

David Heddle wrote:

Sorry, it sounds to me that regardless of what is presented you'd say: That's not being threatened. You're not being threatened until I say you're being threatened.

Close. I'm saying you're not being threatened just because you feel like you are. The mere feeling that you are is not sufficent to prove your case, actual evidence is required. So far, the specific instances you've cited were all cases where those "radical secularists" like the ACLU and Americans United - the very groups you think are hellbent on taking your rights away - are on the same side you are and have frequently gone to court to stop. So what are we left with? We're left with ignorant school administrators ignoring the legal advice of those very same "radical secularists". The ACLU has told the schools that they must respect the voluntary religious expression of students; the religious right, on the other hand, has been claiming for years now that the ACLU will sue you if you allow students to engage in voluntary religious expression, so you better not allow them to mention anything about God or the bible or you'll get sued. In other words, the ACLU has been telling the truth, while the religious right leaders have been exaggerating, distorting and often outright lying about what the law says. So where does the blame lie for this sort of thing? The one group it can't possibly lie with are those who have consistently defended the students' rights of voluntary religious expression, yet that is exactly who you're blaming it on.

True, no guns were held to his head. Nothing except a petition going around objecting to the image. I guess he should have waited until everything played itself out, although I don't think that would have changed your position. Personally I think a petition being drawn up against one's artwork could be viewed, by a reasonable person, as threatening.

But again, those "radical secularists" you're trying so hard to pin the blame on are on this kid's side. I quoted you verbatim the ACLU's position that the constitution protects the right of students to create art with a religious theme to it for school projects. What he should have done is stood up for his own rights and called the ACLU in to defend him.

Do you have a comment on this case: http://www.covenantnews.com/repent041012.htm

Not only do I have a comment on it, I wrote about it months ago. The charges should never have been filed in the first place, and the judge rightly dismissed them. And I hope those who were arrested win their civil suit against the prosecutor's office for filing the charges in the first place. And yet again, the ACLU was also on the same side. Larry Frankel, the head of the ACLU of Pennsylvania, came out against the charges being filed, but also noted that the group had not been asked to intervene. But even in cases like that, the ACLU can't win. Even when they're on the same side, they get blamed for it. Joseph Farah, owner of the Worldnutdaily, wrote a column wondering "why is the ACLU not filing amicus briefs in Philadelphia where four Christians are facing 47 years in jail for expressing their free-speech rights?" Well Joseph, because it was still only a pending criminal trial at the time. Amicus briefs are filed on appeal. But hey, even if they had filed amicus briefs on the right side, the demagogues like Robertson would still blame them for it, as he did in the Lamb's Chapel case.

I find it odd that you continue to insist that the mere claim or feeling that one is being oppressed by a group is evidence of actual oppression, especially in light of the numerous instances I have documented where either A) the people you're listening to on this issue have exaggerated, distorted and lied about what really was going on, or B) the very people you blame for the oppression have in fact fought on your side. Given the documented cases of religious right leaders lying and distorting the truth in order to make the case that the ACLU and other "radical secularists" are out to destroy the freedom of Christians - not one of which has been denied or responded to in any way - isn't it plausible that the "feeling" you are referring to is at least partially based upon the misinformation that they so often spread on this issue?

In addition, you have the fact that some of the very same people making the "those secularists are trying to oppress us" argument have in fact been busy trying to oppress other religious groups. As I noted above, Paul Weyrich's Free Congress Foundation joined with the Traditional Values Coalition, the Christian Action Network, the American Association of Christian Schools and half a dozen other religious right groups to attempt to get Wiccans thrown out of the military. They even went so far as to urge Christians to boycott the military and stop joining. Apparently, they think it's okay to weaken national security as long as it serves their desire to oppress Wiccans. It rings just a bit hollow for an idealogue like Weyrich to complain about secularism as a threat to religious freedom given that he himself believes that religious freedom applies only to Christians. If you're a Wiccan, you have no freedom in his universe.

"You have some data to back that up? Oh, and please do not include the groups that use Christian symbols--e.g. the KKK. (Even if it is true, which I doubt, the "vast majority" of anti-semitic incidents in the U.S. will be a small number compared to post-Christian Europe.)"

An obvious initial response here would be: well, where's your data? You're the one who initially offered a bizarre claim about Christianity (or the lack thereof) having causal consequences with regard to antisemitism, to which my comment was a response. If I'm in need of data for my merely statistical point, surely you're in much greater need of it for your causal one. So it's pretty lame of you to have responded to my request for the (still rather obscure) motivations for your claim, with an insistance that I pony up the data.

Nonetheless, I'll do some of your homework for you. Here's a bit of relevant data, to evaluate your claim -- some recent surveys of antisemitic attitudes in Europe:
http://www.adl.org/PresRele/ASInt_13/4483_13.htm
and in the US:
http://www.adl.org/PresRele/ASUS_12/4680_12.htm

One thing to notice about it is that the US's rate of antisemitism (14%), though rather better than some European countries (e.g., France's 25%), is not as good as the best European country surveyed (The Netherlands, at 9%) and is very comparable to several of the European nations surveyed (Austria, Switzerland, Italy, Denmark). You can look at that data in the light of data on church attendance, e.g.,
http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/0222/p01s04-woeu.html
and it doesn't look like there's any particular relation between churchiness and antiantisemitism. (Note in particular that the Netherlands, with the lowest rate of antisemitism in Europe, also has one of the lowest rates of church attendance; and Denmark, where there's only 3% regular church attendance, has an antisemitism rate almost identical to the US. Also, although the survey didn't include Poland, that country is well-documented to be both very Christian and very antisemitic.)

So the data that's easily googlable do not speak at all in favor of your initial (rather silly) conjecture. Also, if you look up the data, also available on the ADL site, on actual incidents of anti-semitic vandalism or violence, although Europe (especially France and Germany) have a greater rate of such incidents per capita, it comes nowhere near your claim that the US rate is "a small number compared to post-Christian Europe".

What about my claim that the vast majority of antisemitic acts in this country are performed by Christians? Well, I probably do need to retract the "vast", given that at least some major neo-nazi or right-wing extremist groups are indeed themselves anti-Christian, like the National Alliance. So I'll retract that initial claim, and just defend the weaker claim that a large percentage of such acts are committed by Christians; and that almost all such acts are committed by 'persons of faith'. (Interestingly, even the anti-Christian groups always seek to ground their twisted ideology in some other sort of religious trappings -- if you read about their beliefs, they are in no way secular or humanist.)

That having been said, I have to firmly reject your contention that somehow the KKK and similar groups just don't count as Christian. I can see where for some argumentative purposes, this might be so -- e.g., if we were trying to argue something silly like whether somehow Christianity itself is intrinsically antisemitic, you would be well justified in saying, look, these people are not very good Christians. (Note that the same kind of move must be made available to use against those who would argue, e.g., that there's something intrinsically terrorist-producing about Islam.) But the central thesis under consideration, from Ed, is: does most oppression of people of one faith come from other people of faith? And there's no reason to rule out the KKK, and groups like the Christian [!] Identity movement, as counting relevantly as both people of faith and indeed as people of Christian faith. Bad people of Christian faith, but people of Christian faith nonetheless.

Once the no-white-hoods-here side-stepping move is itself put aside, it becomes not too hard to claim that a large bulk of antisemitic acts in this country are perpetrated by Christians. I could not find any hard data that would speak directly to such claims, but we have the following:
-- the general incidence of antisemitic attitudes in this country, which obviously includes a large number of Christians (note, e.g., in the ADL report, the high rate of antisemitism in the Hispanic population, which is rather overwhelmingly Christian demographic);
-- the entire history of antisemitism in this country (and, indeed, in Europe) until very recently is a history of Christians attacking Jews;
-- Most of the main antisemitic hate groups, such as the KKK, Christian Identity, the League of the South, and many skinhead groups, are indeed explicitly Christian in their ideologies;
-- I will also offer, supplemental to such claims, my own personal experience, in which all acts of antisemitism that I have ever observed (in my home town of Memphis) were committed by Christians; and this is also consonant with my father's experience growing up as a Jew in the northeast, too.

Given all that, the burden of evidence would seem to be on anyone who would deny that Christians are heavily involved in the acts of antisemitism that persist to this day.

Finally, again in the context of Ed's initial claim, note that here as in Europe, when it isn't Christians committing the antisemitic acts, it is almost always members of yet some other religious group, from the completely insane (like the 'Church of the Creator') to the offshoots of other respectable religions (like radical Islamists). You just don't find secular groups on any of the anti-semitic watch lists.

Ed wrote:

So far, the specific instances you've cited were all cases where those "radical secularists" like the ACLU and Americans United - the very groups you think are hellbent on taking your rights away - are on the same side you are and have frequently gone to court to stop.

There are some flaws here. First, at no time did I write (either here or on my blog) anything about the ACLU and Americans United. A more serious flaw, it seems to me, is if the ACLU comes to the support of Christians, if they are, as you suggest, our champions, is it not evidence that they agree that the freedoms of Christians are threatened? If we are only "feeling" threatened as you seem to believe, why doesn’t the ACLU tell us to stop whining and get a life?

You seem, it is now clear, to have assumed I meant the ACLU when I mentioned "radical secularists." No, I meant school boards, city councils, people like Chuck (see his comment above), and intellectual elitists (Chuck, I suspect, is not in that category) --little Napoleons who declare that any public reference to God amounts to state sanctioned religion and any but a Bishop-Sprong or Bishop Robinson style Christianity is homophobic.

the very people you blame [the ACLU] for the oppression have in fact fought on your side.

Since you repeat, I'll repeat. The only person to have mentioned the ACLU (until this comment) is Ed Brayton. I agree that they, at times, help Christians whose rights are threatened. The ACLU must also agree that the rights of Christians are threatened, or they wouldn't help. So the point that you are making over and over about the ACLU I now submit as evidence that the problem goes beyond our feelings.

Why bring up the Wiccans again? Granted some religious groups may be threatening them. But remember, my reason for arguing with you was never that the Wiccan's claims were basesless, it was your statement:

the main threat to religious liberty comes from religious establishments.

At best, all you have shown, is that the main threat to Wiccan religious liberty comes from Christian religious groups.

philosopherI have a lot of data. More if you need it, but let's start with a nice chart of 2003-2004 anti-Semitic incidents (as opposed to attitudes) from Tel Aviv University:

http://www.tau.ac.il/Anti-Semitism/asw2003-4/graph-7.jpg

You will note that if you add up Western Europe, you get 10 times as many incidents as in the US. Canada, much more secular than the US, has more incidents than the US in absolute numbers, let alone on a per-capita basis. Oh, the ADL believes that anti-Semitism is unerreported in Europe, so the results may be more dramatic than the chart indicates.

Normalized to the US population, the number of incidents in the Netherlands would have been 114, compared to 19 in the US. Normalized, it would have been 320 in France compared to 19 in the US.

So the data support my (silly) conjecture.

Of course the KKK groups don't count as Christian, any more than they counted as Democrat when they were Democrats or Republican now that that seems to be the their party of choice. The Nazis used Christian trappings and claimed to be Christians, we now know they in fact had plans to persecute Christians. Groups are allowed some self-identification, are they not? If every Christian organization, both liberal and conservative, would argue that the KKK is not Christian, that means something. Although it is convenient for your argument to say the KKK are Christians, in truth they are rejected across the board by Christians who agree on little else.

David Heddle wrote:

There are some flaws here. First, at no time did I write (either here or on my blog) anything about the ACLU and Americans United. A more serious flaw, it seems to me, is if the ACLU comes to the support of Christians, if they are, as you suggest, our champions, is it not evidence that they agree that the freedoms of Christians are threatened?...
You seem, it is now clear, to have assumed I meant the ACLU when I mentioned "radical secularists." No, I meant school boards, city councils, people like Chuck (see his comment above), and intellectual elitists (Chuck, I suspect, is not in that category) --little Napoleons who declare that any public reference to God amounts to state sanctioned religion and any but a Bishop-Sprong or Bishop Robinson style Christianity is homophobic.

Do you really think that school boards and city councils are just filled with people who want to destroy the freedom of Christians? I would make a bet that close to 90% of all school board and city council members in the country ARE Christians. You're standing a familiar complaint on its head to get out of the silliness of your original complaint. The standard line is that school boards and city councils are the ones who are beaten down by those well-funded and dogmatic "radical secularists" like the ACLU, who threaten them with federal lawsuits if they dare to allow Christians a forum to speak their faith. Sound familiar? It should. It's the claim we hear constantly from the religious right, from Falwell to Dobson to the Worldnetdaily to Free Republic. Now you want us to actually believe that you're disagreeing with them, and you think the real "radical secularists" are on the school boards and city councils themselves, and that's what you really meant all along. Right. I, for one, would love to hear the names of some of these "radical secularists" who inhabit the nation's school boards and city councils and would like to hear some details on their feverish efforts to destroy the freedom of Christians.

Why not be honest, David? Why not just admit that when you said "radical secularists", you were referring precisely to the ACLU, Americans United, People for the American Way and similar organizations? A google search shows that a couple dozen blogs that link to you have all taken that position, and you've never said, "No guys, you're wrong. It's not the ACLU and Americans United, it's those radical secularists on the school boards and city councils who are a threat to us!" I suspect that's because you didn't discover that unusual position until you needed it to get out of not being able to answer the evidence against your position.

If in fact you really meant those school boards and city councils, your position is further undermined by your current admission that groups like the ACLU are on your side. For crying out loud, you've got all of the right wing on your side. You now admit that even predominately left wing groups like the ACLU are on your side defending you against those anonymous "radical secularists". You've got the entire Federal government on your side, with firm control over all three branches. Yet somehow this unnamed group of radical secularists, whose identity is entirely contrary to the claims of every single person who agrees with you that the rights of Christians are under assault - constitutes a grave threat to the freedom of Christians? David, exactly how naive do you think I am?

This thread is a little too long but I'll merely comment on

...You will note that if you add up Western Europe, you get 10 times as many (anti-semitic) incidents as in the US. Canada...

Acknowledged, regarding reported incidents. But not all incidents are reported. Certainly not in the American national media.

But, let's see. Who are committing these incidents? Christians? Muslims? Arabs? I'll let you know, Western Europe, particularly, France, Netherlands and the UK, have a horrendous problem with unassimilated Arab Muslims mostly from north Africa. (I'm not referring to the Turks in Germany.)

I'm not exactly sure what is going to happen there, but they'll have to do something, otherwise the place is going to go to hell in a handbasket.

BTW, I have more than a bit of familiarity with the issue, since we have a "Ferienwohnung" outside of Munich (Germany) and I've been following it for years.

Adam-

I still maintain that Yoder and Prince are not on point. Yes, they both made reference to the fact that the government may intrude on the religious rights of parents in order to protect the well-being of the child. But that doesn't mean that all one has to do is invoke the well being of the child to justify such an intrusion. There is an entire ALR annotation full of cases involving religion in divorce cases and child custody issues, and as Marc Stern noted in an email to me this morning, almost all of them go against intrusion into the rights of parents to teach their children religious beliefs without very compelling evidence that it will harm the child directly. Indeed, look at the text of some of the decisions you cited above. In Munoz v. Munoz, the court said:

The courts are reluctant to interfere with the religious faith and training of children where the conflicting religious preferences of the parents are in no way detrimental to the welfare of the child. The obvious reason for such a policy of impartiality regarding religious beliefs is that, constitutionally, American courts are forbidden from interfering with religious freedoms or to take steps preferring one religion over another.

Thus, the rule appears to be well established that the courts should maintain an attitude of strict impartiality between religions and should not disqualify any applicant for custody or restrain any person having custody or visitation rights from taking the children to a particular church, except where there is a clear and affirmative showing that the conflicting religious beliefs affect the general welfare of the child.

That sounds a lot like the strict scrutiny you don't think applies in such cases. And this is referring to cases where the parents disagree on what religion their child will be taught. If in those much more difficult circumstances the government must be very careful not to restrain the religious liberty of the parents without a clear and compelling case that the child will be damaged, surely it would be virtually impossible to make a credible case that a conflict between what both parents believe and what the school their child attends teaches is enough to warrant banning the parents from teaching their religious views to the child. For that matter, if the judge was really concerned about such confusion, why not instead tell the parents not to send the child to a Catholic school? Clearly because the judge is deciding that the teachings of Catholicism are better than the teachings of Wicca, something he may not constitutionally do.

The fact is that the judge here has to make a serious and compelling case that allowing the parents to teach their mutually-held religious views to the child will be sufficently damaging to the child that it warrants violating their parental rights. The courts have set a high standard for such demonstrations, and the only indication of any possible reason for the decision in this case is the advisory report saying that it could lead to "confusion" because it clashes with what he is taught at Catholic School. But if the courts are reluctant to tell one parent they cannot raise their child in their religious faith even when the other parent has a conflicting religious faith, surely the standard will be much higher for telling both parents they may not raise their child in their mutual religious faith because it conflicts with society. This is, as Eugene Volokh stated clearly, a violation of not one but several constitutional provisions and there's no way this decision doesn't get struck down by a higher court unless there is very clear and convincing evidence of damage to the child. In the absence of the sort of direct damage that is present in cases where parents refuse medical care on religious grounds, I can't imagine even a hypothetical argument that could provide such a justification.

BTW, let's get something straight. Nobody owns the "Christian" trademark. Anyone can call himself a Christian if he wants to. Others might reject the notion that someone is a Christian. Example: it is not atypical for conservative Christians reject the notion that gays who call themselves Christian are in fact Christian.

Let's get something else straight. Courts make determinations as to whether an "establishment" is a "religion" quite frequently. If memory serves, a number of years ago, there was a controversy about whether the church of scientology was an establishment of religion for tax purposes. We could argue whether or not they should do so, but the fact appears to be that they do so. Of course, if US law didn't give special rights to establishments of religion, there wouldn't be much of an issue, would there be?

If I'm oppressing Christians by telling fundamentalists who advocate giving Christianity a special place in the American public sphere that they are free to settle in Antarctica and found a theocracy without the obstacles of the First Amendment, then oppression isn't so bad as it once was. Grow up. Take a vacation. Read the Sermon on the Mount and stop standing on the street praying loudly for all to see, as the hypocrites do.

More from Volokh on this issue, from the religionlaw listserv:

What makes this injunction unusual is (1) that neither party sought it, so the order can't be defended on the grounds that the judge
is just deciding which parent's preference should prevail, and (2) the supposed conflict isn't parent-parent, but parent-school. I know of no cases in which the judge has concluded that it's psychologically harmful for a child to learn different things at home than at school; and my
sense is that conventional wisdom strongly suggests otherwise -- I take it that all of us can anticipate (or remember) times when we tell
children "Yes, I know that Teacher says X, but we don't agree; don't fight with the teacher in class, but understand that sometimes even teachers can be mistaken." I realize, for instance, that many deeply religious teachers are reluctant to send their kids to a school where secular values that are inconsistent with the family's are taught; but I doubt that we'd say such parents are psychologically harming the children by teaching them differently than the secular school does -- or that the parents could be ordered to stop teaching their children views that are inconsistent with the public school's.

Finally -- and this flows from both the above points -- in the typical religious conflict case, there's at least a plausible argument that the judge is being impartial with regard to religion, and that he'd rule the same way if the religions were different. In some cases, for instance, a judge ordered a visiting parent to stop teaching the child (say) Catholicism because the custodial parent was teaching the child Judaism, and the state rule was to give the custodial parent control over the child's spiritual upbringing. It's plausible, though not certain, that if the visiting parent were Jewish and the custodial
parent Catholic, the custodial parent would win. It's less clear in cases involving some less mainstream religions, but even there the judge
can credibly say that he's just acting neutrally, without passing a value judgment on the merits of either religion.

But I find this hard to imagine here; as I said, I highly doubt that the judge would order parents to stop teaching the child views that
are inconsistent with the school's if the parents' views were (say) mainstream Christian, Jewish, and so on. The judge's tolerance of the parents in this case teaching the child "mainstream" religions helps demonstrate it -- mainstream Judaism is inconsistent with the parochial school's religion, too, but that's allowed. So it's hard to see this as anything but judicial hostility to Wicca.

I agree completely.

Ed, you have a really bad habit of putting words in my mouth and making demonstrably false assumptions.

Do you really think that school boards and city councils are just filled with people who want to destroy the freedom of Christians?

Didn't write that. What I wrote is consistent with this: Those groups contain (not filled with) people who are over zealous in there suppression of the freedom religious expression, as evidenced by all the Tongue Tied posts.

It's the claim we hear constantly from the religious right, from Falwell to Dobson to the Worldnetdaily to Free Republic. Now you want us to actually believe that you're disagreeing with them, and you think the real "radical secularists" are on the school boards and city councils themselves, and that's what you really meant all along. Right.

Here is the evidence.

1) Search the archives of my blog and you'll find a recurring theme: anytime I mention Falwell it is to disagree with him. In fact, the only time I recall you commenting on my blog is on this post

http://helives.blogspot.com/2005_03_01_helives_archive.html#111220549733519413

regarding Falwell, when he was ill, which if you read closely--and it was a sympathetic post -- alludes to my not seeing eye-to-eye with him. But of course I am quite used to the clueless painting all conservative Christians with the same fundamentalist brush.

2) I made no mention of the ACLU, or Falwell, or Dobson, and used none of their materials to support my argument.

3) All of my examples were from the Tongue-tied blog, which are not of the see-what-the-atheist-ACLU is doing, but of the look at what this school or city council or college administration is doing.

Everything I have done demonstrates that your assumption that I am of the Falwell Christian-Right Moral Majority mode is wrong. And anyone familiar with my blog would back that up.

Why not be honest, David? Why not just admit that when you said "radical secularists", you were referring precisely to the ACLU, Americans United, People for the American Way and similar organizations?

No, I cannot say something that is not true (that I meant the ACLU, etc.) just to save you the embarrassment from having made an incorrect assumption. And I almost cannot not fathom the weakness of this argument:

A google search shows that a couple dozen blogs that link to you have all taken that position, and you've never said, "No guys, you're wrong. It's not the ACLU and Americans United, it's those radical secularists on the school boards and city councils who are a threat to us!"

I link to ITA and vice-versa, but we do not police one-another. I'm sure I write many things that Josh or Paul disagree with. They have never said: retract that or remove the link to ITA. Are you really saying, really now, that because some bloggers who might be paranoid about the ACLU and have a link to me, that proves your point? Oh brother.

Raj:

BTW, let's get something straight. Nobody owns the "Christian" trademark. Anyone can call himself a Christian if he wants to.

If I shave my head an call myself a Buddhist, does that mean any act I've violence I commit should be allocated to the Buddhist column?

If I were to say the gay bishop of NH, Bishop Robinson, was not a "real" Christian, you would have a point. More than half those calling themselves Christian would say I was wrong. But no Christian would say the KKK is Christian. Only those who are anti-Christan would argue, for obvious reasons, "if the KKK claims to be Christian, then who are you to say they are not real Christians, yada yada yada." Like the Nazis, they co-opt and distort various ideas to fit their vile ideology. But they are not Christians.

Chuck wrote:

Read the Sermon on the Mount and stop standing on the street praying loudly for all to see, as the hypocrites do.

Oh Chuck, that's right out of the standard playbook. All atheists, agnostics, etc., look here: here is a set of biblical sounding comments that can be parroted to try to make Christians look like hypocrites. Just take one and use it when needed! Guaranteed to work!

Next time, be sure to tell me to remove the plank from my eye.

A few thoughts brought up by the discussion here:




About Anti-Semitism: What nobody has mentioned yet is that Christians take the cake for anti-Semitism. Christianity depends on Judaism for its very foundation; and yet Jews by and large fail to recognize Christ as the Messiah. Which give Christianity one hell of an inferiority complex. Even the Romans largely allowed Jews plenty of religious leeway until Roiman political power was threatened(the destruction of the Temple was a political act, not a religious one; it was intended to crush a political rebellion agains Roman rule).




The rise of anti-Semitism is closely linked to the rise of Christianity as Christianity and not as a Jewish fringe group, which it initially was. You could say that the Muslims learned anti-Semitism from Christians; on the other hand, Jews and Christians in the Holy Land were generally well-treated by Islam until the Crusades arrived and made a mess of things.




The charge that Christianity actually lowers the rate of anti-Semitism I find laughable since Christianity's idea of the end of the world and Christ's return is predicated on Judaism accepting Christ as the Messiah or being bloodily wiped out. This is a basic ontological assumption at the root of Christianity that seems diametrically opposed to any sort of tolerance for Judaism.




About "Christians Under Attack": Christianity is the most successful, well-funded, and widespread religion in America- and yet the fundie theocons bray all the time about being "oppressed". This is not because they are actually oppressed or because our society is not conducive to Christianity. It is simply because that in order for the fundie theocons to continue raking in the donations and exercising their political clout, they must create a climate of fear and "us-vs.-them". It is basic group psychology. Without the persistent brainwashing shouts that Christianity is under attack, a critical component of fundie theocon cohesiveness will be lost- as well as the justification for "holy wars" of all stripe, whether cultural or actual. This is so apparent to me that I wonder it's not remarked on more often.




There, my two cents to the discussion at hand. Hope they're useful.

David Heddle at May 27, 2005 03:08 PM |

I'll be charitable and suggest that you were probably under the influence of an "adult beverage" when you posted this. The post makes no sense whatsoever.

Let's get a few things straight.

First, query, who died and left you to determine who is or is not a Christian? You? You? I've dealt with issues like this over the internet for at least a decade. People would respond "blah, blah, blah, but you're not a christian" Or they would respond "blah, blah, blah" and you're a christian. You know, at some point it gets to be--stupid (pardon any misspelling, but my sight is going). Nobody owns the "Christian" trademark.

Um, let's not get into the Nazi thing. I could expound at length about that. My same-sex partner's grandfather was interred in Dachau. And I have biked up there more times than you might know. Dachau is a nice town. About an hour bike ride from our Verienwohnung. You know, I hate the fact that the Nazis ruined the reputation of what was a nice little city by putting their first concentration camp there. I really do. But what is done is done. What are the Dachaurer supposed to do about it?

Quite frankly, they have done the best that they probably could have done. They put in an amusement park for the Americans (the KZ Denkmal) and they ignored the rest.

I doubt very seriously that you would want to go further with this. If you want to, feel free.

Liz

The rise of anti-Semitism is closely linked to the rise of Christianity.

This is true, and a sad chapter of Christianity. But we are talking about now. What groups are committing acts of anti-Semitism today.

The charge that Christianity actually lowers the rate of anti-Semitism I find laughable since Christianity's idea of the end of the world and Christ's return is predicated on Judaism accepting Christ as the Messiah or being bloodily wiped out.

I have no idea what you refer to here. Maybe you could explain? I think it might be the "Left Behind" eschatology. i.e., dispensationalism. That is, by no means, universally accepted. It's that single brush thing again. On the other hand, your statement is kind of silly, because Christianity is predicated on the belief that anyone, Jew or Gentile, who doesn't accept Christ as the Messiah, will ultimately be "wiped out" in the sense of being lost. So you are really criticizing Christians for being Christians. And it's the dispensationalists, (I'm not one of them) who are the most ardent supporters of Israel (that, I am), because they believe that God still has much work left with the Jews as a nation.

Again, like others, you also neglect the fact that many Jews, especially those in Israel, view American Christians as their best friends. I wonder, if forced to make a choice, how many Israelis would opt to live in the Christian U.S. over secular France or secular Germany? If Christianity is (today, in 2005) the leading cause of anti-Semitism, then they would flock to France and avoid the U.S., would they not? I somehow doubt it. It would be an interesting survey.

Raj
Did you read what I wrote? This is not a "oh he's not a real Christian" issue, like a fundamentalist might say of Gene Robinson. Then there would be a valid argument. But if virtually all members of a group say that what X does is not in line with our teaching, then that carries some weight. True, I cannot say who is a "true" Christian. On the other hand, merely calling oneself a Christian, or a Moslem, or a Buddhist does not make it so,

I doubt very seriously that you would want to go further with this. If you want to, feel free.

I feel free.
Rutgers university (that hotbed of fundamentalist Christendom) has a Nuremberg project

http://www.camlaw.rutgers.edu/publications/law-religion/nuremberg/nuremberg.htm

where they are investigating new documents. They found that one major part of the Nazi Master plan was "The Persecution of the Christian Churches."
The editor of the project, Julie Mandel, said

A lot of people will say, 'I didn't realize that they were trying to convert Christians to a Nazi philosophy.'-- They wanted to eliminate the Jews altogether, but they were also looking to eliminate Christianity. --(the Phildelphia Inquirer, Jan. 9, 2002.)

And from a 1945 OSS report (on the site):

Important leaders of the National Socialist party would have liked to meet this situation [church influence] by complete extirpation of Christianity and the substitution of a purely racial religion.

In light of these, it is clear that Nazis "quote mined" Christianity for their own purposes, that they treated some misguided Christians as "useful idiots" for their own purposes, and that ultimately they would institute a plan of persecution against the church. They were not Christians, unless you think they were planning to persecute themselves.

David Heddle wrote:

Didn't write that. What I wrote is consistent with this: Those groups contain (not filled with) people who are over zealous in there suppression of the freedom religious expression, as evidenced by all the Tongue Tied posts.

So let's have some specific examples of school boards and/or city councils being "zealous in their suppression of the freedom of religious expression." I bet that for every example you can give of a school board trying to squash the religious freedom of Christians, I can find you multiple examples of school boards trying to either get Christianity in one form or another into schools (putting creationism into science classrooms, bible classes, etc) or trying to get rid of anything that might offend conservative Christian sensibilities (gay student clubs, comprehensive sex education, etc). I've worked with lots and lots of school boards in my work on science education. I can tell you that they are almost always more conservative and more likely to be on your side politically than the general population, and the last thing on earth you could reasonably call the vast, vast majority of them would be "radical secularists". In fact, there has been a huge push in the last 25 years to get conservative Christians elected to school boards and it has been very successful all around the country. Indeed, it is on school boards that you will find a large percentage of them agreeing with you and pointing the finger at outside groups of "radical secularists" who keep stopping them from doing the things I listed above.

So by all means, let's have examples. And remember, we're talking about school boards, not just a teacher or principal who doesn't understand what the law says, which is what almost all of the examples on Tongue Tied involve (and almost all of which are resolved with nothing more than a letter from an attorney with the ACLU or any of the dozen or so conservative Christian legal organizations to set them straight on what the law actually says. Those stupid decisions are almost always reversed within a couple weeks because the teacher or principal who makes the decision isn't really a "radical secularist" out to destroy the freedom of Christians, they're just normal everyday people who don't understand the law (and who often think that the exaggerated rhetoric of the religious right about how God has been "thrown out of the schools" is accurate).

You just aren't going to find much support for the notion that school boards are out to destroy the freedom of Christians in the US. Every day in American public schools there are thousands of bible clubs and prayer groups that use school facilities. Why aren't those "radical secularists" you claim are on our school boards trying to stop them? The few times that they've been challenged, the ACLU and other such groups have come to the defense of such bible clubs and their right to meet on school grounds, distribute religious literature, wear clothing with religious messages, and so forth. The same is true of churches wanting to use school facilities to hold meetings and services, show movies, and the like. So where are these anonymous "radical secularists" who inhabit our school boards and what exactly are they doing to crush the freedom of Christians?

You won't find much better luck on city councils either, but I'll certainly ask for some examples. I can give you lots of examples of city councils (and county boards and other similar groups) trying to get some sort of official recognition for Christianity - trying to get "In God We Trust" emblazoned across a county building, trying to keep non-Christian religions from putting up displays in public parks, only allowing Christian clergy to deliver invocations at the beginning of their meetings and denying all other groups the right to do so, trying to get displays of the Ten Commandments put up in every public building they can find, and so forth. Lots and lots of examples of such boards trying to use their power to sponsor or endorse their religious views one way or another. I'm having a hard time coming up with any examples of "secular radicalists" on city councils trying to destroy the religious freedom of Christians. I suspect you'll have a hard time too. But please try.

Quote:
I have no idea what you refer to here. Maybe you could explain? I think it might be the "Left Behind" eschatology. i.e., dispensationalism. That is, by no means, universally accepted. It's that single brush thing again. On the other hand, your statement is kind of silly, because Christianity is predicated on the belief that anyone, Jew or Gentile, who doesn't accept Christ as the Messiah, will ultimately be "wiped out" in the sense of being lost. So you are really criticizing Christians for being Christians. And it's the dispensationalists, (I'm not one of them) who are the most ardent supporters of Israel (that, I am), because they believe that God still has much work left with the Jews as a nation.

Certainly, I will further explain my assertion. Let's take the Catholic Church in the Middle Ages, for example. On the one hand, Catholic theologians stated that it was necessary that Jews be allowed to survive, since their recognition of the Messiah of Old Testament prophecy was key to Christian legitimacy. On the other hand, there was the old blood libel that sparked pogroms, also fueled by the Jewish refusal to say that Jesus was their Messiah, a complicated tangle that (whether modern Christians want to admit it or not) has colored Christianity to this day.

I do not mean that anti-Semitism is overt or conscious in most Christians; most Christians I know would be horrified at the thought. It would simply be a wonder if Christianity, being the stepson of Judaism, ever outgrows its deep-seated need for Jewish recognition of the Christian Messiah.

In other words, Christianity was not originally anti-Semitic; it was for a long time just another Jewish sect. Over time, however, as Christianity became "Christianity", it became incredibly important that the Jews, who wrote the Old Testament and gave the prophecies the Messiah had to fulfill, acknowledge Christianity as valid. The fact that Judaism has not to this day remains a knotty problem and contributes to the often-baffling outbursts of anti-Semitism in Christianity.

I did not say that Christianity was the sole cause of anti-Semitism, I'm simply pointing out that the ontological assumption of Christ being the Messiah the Jews foretold being denied by the Jews makes a fertile breeding-ground for outcroppings of anti-Semitism.

I'd suggest reading James Carroll's Constantine's Sword for a further explanation, it's in some places very maudlin but generally well-reasoned.

David Heddle at May 27, 2005 05:18 PM |

True, I cannot say who is a "true" Christian. On the other hand, merely calling oneself a Christian, or a Moslem, or a Buddhist does not make it so...

Oh, and who do you think you are to decide who is a True Christian (R)?

Regarding the Rutgers Nuremberg Project, I might spend time rutting around the web site when I have the free time. (I read Der Spiegel and the Sueddeutscher Zeitung in German, so I'm probably well aware of what's at Rutgers). But, let's get a couple of things straight. Government has often allied itself with establishments of religion to control the masses. And establishments of religion allied themselves with government to enrich themselves. It was a mutually beneficial operation to screw the common people.

In Germany, there were a couple of acknowledged religions. The RCCI (Roman Catholic Church, Inc) and the ELKD (translation: Evangelical Lutheran Church in Germany) were two of them. I was actually appalled when I read my spouse's mothers "Reisepass" from Germany from the 1950s. It listed her religion. She was listed as being Lutheran, but I'm sure that the "papers" for other people would indicate some of them as being Jews, and that made it easier for the Nazis to round up and exterminate them.

Regarding "quote mining," it should be evident that purported Christians quote mine, too. Purported Christians quote mine Leviticus to bash gay people, but ignore the other parts of Leviticus that relate to, for example, wearing clothing of two types of fabrics. Or eating shellfish. Or the portions that relate to the various sacrifices that are to be made. At some point this picking and choosing gets to be a bit ludicrous. I've read the Bible. It's time for a Christian to call the anti-gay stuff for what it is: bigotry.

Ok, David, I'll do what you really should have done yourself, and try to actually examine the data you linked to like, y'know, a scientist. Had you done so yourself, you might have had the chance to observe how poorly it comports with the 'more Christianity, less antisemitism' thesis. (You are a scientist, aren't you? If not, then please disregard my lightly chiding tone here.)

Consider the following stats (country/population/percentage of churchgoers/# of incidents/# of incidents normalized to US population/Jews per 1,000). I'll present them here in increasing order of churchliness, measured in terms of the percentage who go to church at least once a week. Also, note that I have restricted my attention to Europe, since that should give us at least a moderately decent amount of background of cultural & economic homogeneity, against which to look for what seems to be driving different rates of major antisemitic violence.

Denmark - 5.5 mil - 3% churchgoers - 1 incident - 55 US-normalized - 1.2 Jpt
Russia - 143mil - 3.9% churchgoers - 32 incidents - 65 US-normalized - 1.8 Jpt
(http://www.rickross.com/reference/rs/rs48.html)
Sweden - 9mil - 5% churchgoers - 10 incidents - 333 US-normalized - 1.7 Jpt
France - 60 mil - 8% churchgoers - 64 incidents - 320 US-normalized - 8.8jpt
Czech Republic - 10mil - 9% churchgoers - 3 incidents - 90 US-normalized - .3 Jpt
Germany - 83mil - 9% churchgoers - 34 incidents - 123 US-normalized - 1.3 Jpt
Belgium - 10mil - 11% churchgoers - 6 incidents - 180 US-normalized - 3.1 Jpt
Hungary - 10mil - 11% churchgoers - 3 incidents - 90 US-normalized - 5.1 Jpt
Switzerland - 7.3mil - 11% churchgoers - 5 incidents - 205 US-normalized - 2.5 Jpt
Britain - 60 mil - 13% churchgoers - 50 incidents - 250 US-normalized - 4.6 Jpt
Austria - 8mil - 19% churchgoers - 5 incidents - 187 US-normalized - 1.1 Jpt
Spain - 40 mil - 20% churchgoers - 2 incidents - 15 US-normalized - .3 Jpt
Greece - 11mil - 26% churchgoers - 3 incidents - 82 US-normalized - .4 Jpt
Portugal - 10.5mil - 29% churchgoing - 1 incident - 28 US-normalized - 0 Jpt, basically
Italy - 57.5mil - 32% churchgoing - 4 incidents - 21 US-normalized - .5 Jpt
Poland - 38 mil - 54% churchgoers - 4 incidents - 31 US-normalized - .1 Jpt

Data on Jewish demographics was found at
http://www.jafi.org.il/education/100/concepts/demography/demtables.html#4

The CS Monitor site I linked to earlier also has data on the Muslim populations of these various countries, which I won't bother to reproduce here b/c it turned out not to be statistically relevant; this was surprising to me, but I suspect that what we'd really want is data on recent Islamic immigrants.

If one just runs a regression with normalized # of incidents as the dependent variable and % weekly churchgoers as the independent, then you do get something that is semi-suggestive, a beta of -.48 with a significance of .06, which at least approaches being interesting. But it turns out that having lots of churchgoers is, to put it roughly, negatively correlated with having some Jews on hand to commit violent acts against -- what's really making the difference between the nations of Europe is the percentage of Jews in each country. Run a regression on Jews as the independent variable, and you get a beta of .655 and a stellar significance of .006. Run the regression with both Jews and churchgoers, and Jews stay significant at .027, but the significance of churchgoers goes to a lousy .283.

So, the data you cite -- when considered in the light of other obviously relevant data -- fail to support your (still silly) claim of 'more Christians, less antisemitism', and merely support the (completely boring) claim of 'more Jews, more antisemitism'.

And I would note also that the data that you cite is only a measure of major acts of antisemitic violence, not of the prevalence of antisemitism per se; I would worry both about the appropriateness of major acts of violence as the right variable to use for operationalizing antisemitism itself. There may be other factors (such as socioeconomic strife) that cause antisemitism to manifest as more or less violently at different times, but the underlying presence of antisemitism itself would, I think, be our main interest in this debate. And, again, when we look at the more appropriate data that I appealed to earlier, one doesn't get even the superficial appearance of support for the 'more Christians, less antisemitism' thesis.

"Of course the KKK groups don't count as Christian, any more than they counted as Democrat when they were Democrats or Republican now that that seems to be the their party of choice." This is just completely wrong -- of course the KKK-types in previous decades should count as Democrats. They voted Democrat, paid their dues to the Democratic party, were elected to local government as Democrats, and so on. Loyal Democrats to a man, those sheet-wearing sonsabitches. (In the South, anyway, though not in Indiana, where one should sub in "Republican" for "Democrat"!) So it is silly for someone to try to argue against a claim like, "most members of the Klan in the South in previous decades were Democrats". Now, what would also be silly would be to try to draw an inference from such a claim to a claim like, "Democrats are pro-KKK", and I made it very clear earlier that for purposes of evaluating whether, say, Christians are generally anti-semitic, this sort of data is irrelevant. But we're not wondering whether Christians are mostly anti-semites -- obviously they aren't, at least not in this country, these days -- what we're wondering is whether anti-semites are (in this country, these days) mostly Christians.

"The Nazis used Christian trappings and claimed to be Christians, we now know they in fact had plans to persecute Christians." Well, be careful with how you use the phrase "the Nazis". At best we have evidence that some folks in the upper echelons of the Reich had such a plan. But it's very clear that most of the actual rank-and-file Nazis were Christians, which is why, after all, the high command's anti-Christian plans were a secret. Put it this way: a good case can be made that Hitler was not himself really a Christian, nor his highest-ranking minions, but the case does not generalize well to the thousands upon thousands of Christian Germans who supported the Reich. (I would add, though, that some of the main neo-Nazi groups operative in the US today are explicitly anti-Christian, like the National Alliance.)

"Groups are allowed some self-identification, are they not? If every Christian organization, both liberal and conservative, would argue that the KKK is not Christian, that means something. Although it is convenient for your argument to say the KKK are Christians, in truth they are rejected across the board by Christians who agree on little else." Well, of course most Christians make such noises of protests -- the KKK stink. Who'd want to identify the KKK as part of their group? But note that the KKK's self-identification is itself Christian, and not just mere 'trappings', but in terms of where they go to church, what creeds they would swear to, what people they consider to be their co-religionists, and so on. If you want to say that their theology is completely off, that in some important sense they aren't 'real' Christians, well, sure, whatever. Probably lots and lots of Christians, including lots of non-KKK people who go to church regularly, aren't 'real' Christians, either, by such standards. And of course you can -- and should -- deny that the KKK or Christian Identity have any right to speak for Christianity as a whole, and that their misdeeds should be allowed to reflect poorly on Christianity as a whole. But none of that means that they don't pretty obviously count as Christians, for the purposes of answering a question like, 'are most of the antisemites in the USA today Christians?'. (Again, it's a direct parallel with the KKK/Democrat case.)

Look, I don't agree with any of the theology or politics or indeed much of the ethics of far-right-wing Jewish groups, either here or in Israel. But it's patently silly to deny that they are, in fact, Jewish groups. And it is just as patently silly to deny that groups like the KKK are, in fact, Christian groups.

For, after all, if this sort of normative redefinition move is kosher, then every time some alleged secular humanist does something untoward towards some Christians, I could just say, "Oh, well, those weren't real secular humanists -- real secular humanists would never persecute someone on the basis of their religion that way. And, who's to say whether the people they were persecuting were real Christians, anyway?" So, poof! No more persecution of Christians by secular humanists!

If only all our problems were so easily solved by linguistic frittery! (Cf. the currrent GOP leadership on "saving" social security....) ;-)

Oops -- that last bit looks way wrong. It's supposed to be "For, after all, if this sort of normative redefinition move is kosher, then every time some alleged secular humanist does something untoward towards some alleged Christians, I could just say...."

Raj said:

"Oh, and who do you think you are to decide who is a True Christian (R)?"

Raj, perhaps you should read more carefully. The point David has made perhaps 4 or 5 times so far is that when virtually every Christian would say "group X is not Christian", that's significant.

He is not the sole arbiter of who qualifies as Christian, nor has he claimed to be. All he's claimed is that the Christian community, as a whole, does not consider the KKK to be a part of them. It hardly makes sense to include the KKK in with a group that completely rejects them when compiling statistics about that group's behavior as a whole.

If you're claiming that Christians account for the vast majority of behavior X, but almost all of your examples of behavior X come from fringe groups most Christians reject, regardless of whether or not you can come up with a technical justification for calling those groups "Christian", the statistic is misleading.

I am familiar with the case, having had a (very) minor part in preparing the written materials for the case. There have been some reasonable questions posed, and I would liket to provide additional information.

The portion of the DRCB report quoted was the only evidence of any potential effect that the religeous issue would have a negative effect on the child.

I can have sympathy with the "there's gotta be something else going on here" reactions. Sadly, there isn't anything else going on. While oversimplified, the newspaper's report is pretty accurate.

There is no law, whatsoever, to prevent a department store from putting up a Christmas tree. Those cases all were either the acts of governmental entities or occurred on government property.

Wick Deer

Lothar wrote:

If you're claiming that Christians acc