When the Puritans landed in Massachusetts nearly 375 years ago, they came to the New World to worship as they pleased. But they quickly became religiously intolerant themselves, banishing dissenters from their colonies.
The American colonies subsequently were settled by a variety of religious denominations. Anglicans peopled Virginia while Congregationalists spread through New England. Catholics moved to Maryland. But in many colonies the religious majority established the dominant religion as the state church. Quakers took refuge in William Penn's Pennsylvania. Jews found religiously tolerant Rhode Island a safe haven.This religious pluralism faced the framers as they devised the Constitution. Although freedom for religion was not in the original document, had it not been for the promise of the addition of that provision, the Constitution never would have been ratified. Over the next 40 years, one by one the individual states abolished their established churches.
The principle of the separation of church and state has become a cardinal principle of American life. The vast majority of Americans get angry when some religious groups attempt to use the power of the state to support their own religious beliefs.
Unfortunately this is exactly what is happening in the state of Utah. Through a proposition on the ballot next week, the religious right is attempting to use the public schools as pulpits for their doctrines.
Proposition 3 allows teachers to include in their curricula discussion of the influence of religion, religious assumptions and societal values related to religion.
Although on its face the initiative sounds innocuous enough, its real objective is to allow government to intrude into our personal religious beliefs.
The religious right will be able to use our public school classrooms to impose their religious beliefs on our children. These are the same type of people who believe that God does not hear the prayers of Jews, or that Mormons are not Christians. They have a right to assert their beliefs in a variety of settings, but not in Utah's public schools.
Proposition 3 is the latest in a series of efforts by religious right-wing groups to make public schools into centers of religious instruction.
Supporters of this proposition argue that it would merely allow the objective study of religion. But they rejected language that would have done that and only that in favor of this language, which allows far more flexibility for the schools to inject religion into public classrooms.
Moreover, the U.S. Supreme Court has already ruled that the objective study of religion is constitutional. This proposition is unnecessary if that is its purpose.
But it is not merely unnecessary, it is also potentially quite dangerous. Teachers with religious agendas will be able to inject religious values whenever they feel like it. Our public school classrooms, paid for by public tax money, will be used to promote a particular religious agenda.
The U.S. Constitution is clear that public school classrooms are not the appropriate forums for such religious instruction. The proper place for it is in the home, the church, the synagogue or the private school or university, such as the one where I teach. It does not belong in the public school paid for by the tax money of people of a variety of religious beliefs.
And this proposition will be costly to the taxpayers of Utah. Ultimately, we will see a rash of lawsuits. Eventually the courts will rule this provision to be unconstitutional. But Utahns will bear the high legal costs for this experiment by the religious right.
In his inaugural address, Thomas Jefferson noted that Americans had "banished from our land that religious intolerance under which mankind so long bled and suffered."
As religious minorities like Mormons, Catholics, and Jews know, Jefferson was somewhat premature. But nearly 200 years later, let's help make Jefferson's statement a reality in our public life. Defeat Proposition 3.