In September, a three-member panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit ruled that the Elmbrook School District could hold graduation ceremonies in churches. Now, the full court will review that decision. The panel concluded that even though the church was filled with Christian symbols and Christian evangelization materials, it was still fine to force public school students and their families to go there if they wanted to have a graduation ceremony.
Somehow, I doubt that the two judges which voted for that decision are non-Christians who have any experience with what it's like to be a religious minority in a Christian-dominated culture.
Elmbrook said for comfort and space it held its graduation ceremonies for years at Elmbrook Church, a nondemoninational Christian in the Town of Brookfield.
Superintendent Matt Gibson asked the church to cover its large cross in the sanctuary above the graduation stage but the church refused and there were other religious symbols and in some cases, some evangelism near the entrance, according to the lawsuit brought by the Washington D.C.-based organization. Families sat in the pews.
Source: Brookfield Patch
When schools hold events in churches like this, it sends the message that those churches and what those churches stand for are favored in some fashion by the government. Students and their families should not be forced to sit in a house or worship that is not their own in order to have a secular ceremony for graduating from a secular public school. It's up to the schools to provide a secular context for such ceremonies -- it's their responsibility and obligation to the entire community.
The September decision strikes me as pretty horrible:
"Graduates are not forced -- even subtly -- to participate in any religious exercise," the majority wrote. "They are not forced to take religious pamphlets, to sit through attempts at proselytization directed by the state or to affirm or appear to affirm their belief in any of the principles adhered to by the church or its members. Instead, the encounter with religion here is purely passive and incidental to attendance at an entirely secular ceremony." ...
In a dissent, Judge Joel M. Flaum wrote, "I believe that conducting a public school graduation ceremony at a church -- one that among other things featured staffed information booths laden with religious literature and banners with appeals for children to join 'school ministries' -- runs afoul of the First Amendment's establishment clause."
Flaum said the venue choice "conveys an impermissible message of endorsement. Such endorsement is inherently coercive, and the practice has had the unfortunate side effect of fostering the very divisiveness that the establishment clause was designed to avoid."
Source: Brookfield Patch
So, it's OK to impose religion on public school students so long as they are "passive" and the religion is "incidental"? That's not any kind of standard I've ever heard of and I'll bet the judges would be hard-pressed to justify it. The proof is pretty easy: imagine all those students having to sit in a Satanic Church, a Mosque, or a Buddhist Temple in order to have a graduation ceremony.
Do you think that a single Christian would accept the argument that it's only "passive" and "incidental" exposure to Satanism and therefore it's OK? I don't. Liberal Christians might accept "passive" and "incidental" exposure to promotions of Islam and Buddhism, but conservative Christians would howl with outrage. I doubt that the court would reach the same decision if the case involved non-Christian religions.
Why? Well, an easy explanation is pure bigotry -- but I don't think it's quite that simple. I think instead that it's a question of non-conscious ideology: when the religion is your own or at least part of your own experiences, then it's hard to see how "passive" and "incidental" exposure would offend, upset, or annoy anyone. When it's a "foreign" religion, or even one you oppose, then even "passive" and "incidental" exposure is intolerable -- and then suddenly people gain an appreciation for the separation of church and state.
So many Christians reject church/state separation when it's their own religion that benefits. Once another religion benefits, however, church/state separation suddenly becomes important. Of course, church/state separation is supposed to help everyone and apply to all religions, but it's hard for many Christians to accept this because they honestly believe that their political, cultural, and historical power entitles them to a different set of rules than what applies to the rest of us.
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