Scalia: Church, state not always separate
The Daily Progress/Megan Lovett
The idea that the Constitution bars God from the public square is bunk, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia said at the University of Virginia.
The ostensible wall separating church and state is not inviolable, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia told a crowd at the University of Virginia School of Law on Thursday.
The judicial system, he argued, has too often gone overboard in its interpretation of the First Amendment’s establishment clause, which forbids any “law respecting an Establishment of Religion.”
The courts’ “guiding light” in many religious freedom cases, Scalia said, is the neutrality principle, which essentially holds that the government cannot favor one religion over another and also cannot favor a religious group over a secular group or vice versa.
For example, the court system has sought to bar students from reciting the Pledge of Allegiance because it contains the phrase “One nation, under God.”
Rulings that seek to totally separate religion and government, Scalia said, run counter to the Constitution’s meaning.
“If you want to enact a statute that says the president can never say ‘God bless America,’ then I have no problem with that,” he said. “Just don’t tell me that the Constitution prohibits it.”
Scalia, a conservative appointed by President Reagan, said he dislikes “abstractions” — or rules — created by the courts that can trump tradition and the original meaning of the Constitution.
“When one of these judicially created abstractions comes up against a longstanding tradition, it is the abstraction — not the tradition — that must yield,” he said.
Scalia called himself an “originalist” who sees the text of the Constitution as “supreme.”
Today Scalia will receive the Thomas Jefferson Foundation Medal in Law. Sponsored jointly by UVa and the Thomas Jefferson Foundation, the honor is the highest external award bestowed by the university. Scalia was a faculty member of UVa’s law school from 1967 to 1971.
Scalia asserted that Jefferson never intended to keep religion completely out of the public sphere. Jefferson, he said, mentioned a deity in the Declaration of Independence and the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom. In founding UVa, he added, Jefferson made sure that a room in the Rotunda was reserved for worship.
The idea that the Constitution demands that God must be completely kept out of government is bunk, he said. Prayer begins legislative sessions and the convening of court, he pointed out. American currency says “In God We Trust,” he added.
“All sorts of things just shout out ‘It’s a lie! It’s a lie!’” he said. “That’s what I’m disturbed about.”
Also during today’s private awards presentation, U.S. Sen. John W. Warner, R-Alexandria, will receive the Thomas Jefferson Foundation Medal in Citizen Leadership. And Gro Harlem Brundtland, special envoy to the United Nations on climate change, will receive the Thomas Jefferson Foundation Medal in Architecture.
Brundtland will give a public lecture at 3 p.m. today in Old Cabell Hall auditorium at UVa. Warner has no public appearance scheduled.
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Reader Reactions
I understood Justice Scalia’s point. He said there are limits to where an the law restricts religious actions in public. On that point I agree with him. For instance, it is perfectly OK for a person to pray in school, it is not OK to require others to join. In a similar manner, if one wants to recite the Pledge under ones breath, that’s OK. It is not OK to have a teacher require the class to recite the Pledge.
At the same time, a Justice of the Supreme Court ought to be better read on the issues while making their arguments. Too often we are told our country was based on religious freedom as if it were born of this freedom. A closer look shows that freedom was limited when our country was born and has grown in a dynamic rather than static manner.
I suspect the reason some carry these faulty arguments regarding religious freedom is these arguments do not account for the right not to believe. This is, I think, an area Justice Scalia and I might well disagree. Reasonable people may disagree, so here’s my point of view.
He might see a benefit in a society that is church or religiously based where non-believers are a minority. He might see a benefit in some type of religious pluralism where different faiths may co-exist. Here we are not so different.
I would extend that same pluralism to those who chose to doubt, those who live their lives never knowing, and those who chose to say no to religion and belief in God. We have too long a history of religious persecution to settle easily into a co-existance of differing believers. If we did, we’d likely go after the doubters and non-believers in as persecutory manner as ever before.
Missing the point “22901”, what Scalia is saying is that the Govt can not make our Republic Catholic, Muslim, or whatever. It can not become officially any 1 Religion.
However that does not mean that the 10 commandments can not be shown in a public place or that references to God can not be shown. All the Consititution says is the govt can not pick any 1 Religion and force people to covert to it. The government is representitive of the people and that is even more so at the local level which is why our founders wanted us to have our power through the house.
To take the idea even farther, to say that there should be no religion in public or even a hint of it on Govt is to promote one theology over another. It in effect promotes the religious beliefs of Athiests and Agnostics over that of other religions.
This issue will always be upon us and I can respect where the other side is coming from but I just hope that we can all have a respectful dialog again in our Republic on any issue and get past the politics of hate that plauge us today.
In the matter of the Pledge and other similar rulings, the court upheld the right not to believe, a consideration not acceptable in earlier times. Would Judge Scalia have citizens forced to believe in some form of God? More to the history of our nation, would he have citizens forced to believe in a particular religion?
If so, then what form of God would he find acceptable? What religion is acceptable? Colonial Americans often believed in freedom of religion: the freedom for they themselves to worship as they wish. Often Colonial Americans were Congregationalist Protestant and looked askance at Baptists. The few Catholics who arrived were purtitan in their orientation and kept quiet about their Catholic feelings unless they were in Maryland. Then there were the Jews who left England where it was illegal to be Jewish to come to America and pretended to be Protestants. Is this the society Judge Scalia would want us to return to?
Yes it is true the Declaration of Independence does refer to a “Creator” but says nothing else about God. Jefferson himself did not see Jesus in mystical terms and cut those passages out of his Bible. He admired Jesus as a moral teacher, but saw him strictly as a human, not the Son of God. I think someone should give the Judge a lesson in early American history.
Somebody needs to tar and feather this traitor before it’s too late.
The man is a true hero. I wish there were more like him in this world and on the courts.
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