House Panel Mulls Idea of Religion Bill

Delivering on a promise to social conservatives, House Republicans began considering a “religious liberty” constitutional amendment Thursday aimed at reversing decades of court rulings and government policies that they say have produced “an extraordinary secularization of American public life.”

Although the proposed amendment has yet to be drafted, its purpose would be to pave the way for the return of prayer to public schools. State mandated prayer in schools was ruled unconstitutional by the Supreme Court in 1962. The proposal would allow religious-oriented displays in public places--also banned by the courts.

The religion “bill of rights,” as the amendment is known, was the subject of a hearing Thursday before the House Judiciary Committee’s subcommittee on the Constitution. The session was the first of many planned public hearings on the topic by the panel.

The proposed amendment, together with a constitutional amendment banning flag desecration that was approved Wednesday by the House Judiciary Committee, effectively opens a new phase of the legislative agenda of the GOP-dominated Congress.

After a frenzied, 100-day drive that focused largely on economic issues, the Republicans now are turning to an array of potentially divisive cultural issues that may well spill over into the 1996 presidential campaign.

Their agenda includes anti-abortion initiatives, reversal of affirmative action programs, steps to reduce the role of the federal government in public education, defeat of surgeon general nominee Henry W. Foster Jr. and ending federal funding for the arts and humanities.

The issues are dear to social conservatives, who constitute a bedrock of Republican support. At the suggestion of House Republican leaders earlier this year, these conservatives have waited patiently since January while the House concentrated on the priorities set forth in its “contract with America” campaign manifesto.

The Rev. Lou Sheldon, chairman of the Traditional Values Coalition, hailed Thursday’s hearing as “a new beginning for religious freedom in America.”

Committee Chairman Charles T. Canady (R-Fla.) said that while the government “should not be a proponent of religious dogma,” for the most part “the law has, in effect, driven religion from the public schools and the public square.”

Canady and Rep. Ernest Istook Jr. (R-Okla.), another advocate of the amendment, said that the measure would offer people an opportunity to express their religious preferences and would leave as “a local issue” practical implementation.

“We are talking about permitting religious expression, not about compelling it,” Istook said.

But critics said that the amendment would threaten the rights of religious minorities by creating a constitutional right to proselytism and would “undermine autonomy of choice,” in the words of Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.), the subcommittee’s top Democrat.

Another amendment foe, Americans United for Separation of Church and State, which claims 50,000 individuals and 4,000 churches as members, criticized the hearing as “the beginning of the religious right’s assault on the freedom of conscience of all Americans.”

Barry W. Lynn, the organization’s executive director, said that the amendment would “allow public schools to coerce children to participate in daily religious exercises, tax all Americans to support sectarian instruction and permit government to impose religion on people against their will.”

Steven K. Green, the group’s legal director, said that such an amendment would reverse more than two dozen Supreme Court rulings on religious freedom.

Constitutional amendments must be approved by a two-thirds majority in both houses and ratified by three-fourths, or 38, of the nation’s state legislatures.

If Thursday’s hearing is a harbinger, the unfolding debate will elicit many examples of what proponents regard as excessive concern for a minority of people who demand to be shielded from the religious expressions of others.