Back on the Shelves

Two court decisions this week involving schools and religion have demonstrated the wisdom of the Framers of the Constitution in dealing carefully and deliberately with the issue of religious beliefs. The Framers knew that any official recognition of religion in government, no matter how limited or innocent it might seem, was only the risky beginning. The first tiny step onto such tremulous ground could quickly plunge the government into bottomless quicksand.

The next step, of course, would be for a group to persuade the government to declare its religion the one true belief and to impose it on others. That Americans still attempt to have the government perform this role is amazing and exasperating. That they are able to do so testifies once more to the openness of this nation to all sorts of thought and belief.

This week federal appeals courts rejected lower-court rulings aimed against the use of certain books as texts in schools. In a Tennessee case the plaintiffs objected to “The Diary of Anne Frank,” among many others, because the book implies that all religions are equal. In an Atlanta case a district judge had banned the use of 44 textbooks in Alabama because, as argued by fundamentalist Christians, they promote secular humanism and, in doing so, deprive their children of proper religious direction.

Amazingly, the federal district judge in Alabama bought the notion that secular humanism is an established religion and that it was unconstitutionally being favored over Christianity and other religions. Not surprisingly, the appeals court ruled that this was not at all the case.

The Constitution is a secular document because the Framers intended that it be just that. Religion properly is outside government, but each sect is free to persuade individuals to its cause, if it can. Banning textbooks, however, is not the way.