« First Amendment
April 18, 2008
Robertson: Separation of Church and State 'Insane'
A federal judge ruled Wednesday that making a portrait of Jesus the central decoration of the Slidell, Louisiana courthouse was an unconstitutional violation of the First Amendment’s separation of church and state. “To know peace, obey these laws,” read an inscription on the painting in the courthouse foyer, which depicted Jesus holding the New Testament. Slidell had already changed its display to present the Jesus portrait among other historic figures, an arrangement the judge okayed for its apparent secular purpose.
On yesterday’s “700 Club,” Pat Robertson deplored this decision and other court rulings on the separation of church and state:
You know, we’re following this insanity that’s been brought about by several Supreme Court decisions … The Supreme Court has really violated the Constitution, and they’ve brought out something that was never intended in the First Amendment. The First Amendment doesn’t say what they say it says. They have done violence to the religious traditions of this nation. America was founded as a Christian nation—in 1892, the Supreme Court said, “This is a Christian nation.”
(AP photo by Judi Bottani.)
Posted by Ezra at 10:29 AM | Permalink
February 20, 2008
Define 'Freedom' ...
In his state of the union address, President Bush called for a permanent extension of “charitable choice”—no doubt including efforts by his administration to allow faith-based groups receiving federal funding to discriminate in hiring. Reporting on the effort in Congress, the Washington Times quotes an organization taking up Bush’s charge:
A coalition of multidenominational religious groups is fighting to save the language, and the scuffle is complicating efforts in the Senate to renew the SAMHSA [Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration] law. SAMHSA funds and administers a slew of outreach and intervention programs, doling out grants to social service groups that help fight mental illness and addiction. …
"Asking faith-based organizations to ignore religion in making staffing decisions is like asking senators to disregard party affiliation and political ideology in choosing their staff, or requiring the Sierra Club or the Human Rights Campaign to ignore the political and philosophical commitments of potential staff," argued the Coalition to Preserve Religious Freedom in a letter to Mr. Kennedy and Mr. Enzi.
The “Coalition to Preserve Religious Freedom” might sound like an organization that would be outraged when a government-funded program openly refused to hire, say, Catholics or Baptists. After all, the Religious Test clause of the Constitution prohibits the government from requiring officials to be of a certain faith, and civil rights laws protect people from religious employment discrimination at all but private religious institutions. But this group apparently defines “religious freedom” not as an individual liberty but as the right of faith-based groups to discriminate while receiving federal dollars.
In fact, this coalition’s name sounds a lot like that of the Coalition to Preserve Religious Liberty, a group of 50 religious, civil rights, and educational organizations (including PFAW) that formed in the 1990s to oppose efforts to establish state-sponsored prayer and public funding of sectarian schools—quite the opposite of the Coalition to Preserve Religious Freedom.
CPRF is hosted by a group called the Center for Public Justice, and its members include (as of this 2004 document) the National Association of Evangelicals and the Christian Legal Society.
Posted by Ezra at 3:22 PM | Permalink
January 25, 2008
Faith-Based Earmarks
In September, the New Orleans Times-Picayune reported that Sen. David Vitter inserted an earmark into the federal budget to provide $100,000 to the Louisiana Family Forum, a Focus on the Family affiliate, apparently for the purpose of combating the teaching of evolution and global warming in public schools. Now the Kansas City Star is raising questions about whether earmarks from Sens. Sam Brownback (R-Kansas) and Kit Bond (R-Missouri) are going to religious purposes:
Sens. Sam Brownback and Kit Bond used earmarks last year to direct about $1 million to an area group "empowering the un-churched urban poor for the kingdom of Christ."
On the surface, the taxpayer-supported appropriations for World Impact Inc. raise constitutional questions about the separation of church and state.
… Brownback, a Kansas Republican, and Bond, a Missouri Republican, note that World Impact does a lot of good for the urban poor in the region, with wanting to create an outreach and education center in St. Louis and running a ranch in central Kansas that is used as a "Christian training center for inner-city young men ages 18-25."
World Impact operates programs in several other states and received nearly $2 million in earmarks in the 2008 spending bill, according to a report last fall in Roll Call, a Capitol Hill newspaper.
While recent rule changes have made the earmarking process a little more open, there is still far less scrutiny than to budget items that have been debated or the Bush administration’s own faith-based efforts. Still, the president of the World Impact charity assures us that “We are faith-based, but federal funds will be kept separate from our faith programs."
Posted by Ezra at 5:53 PM | Permalink
January 11, 2008
Pat Robertson: Bolshevism Behind Ruling Against Missionaries in Classroom
A federal judge ruled this week that the school district of rural Annapolis, Missouri could no longer let Gideons International hand out Bibles in an elementary school, and Pat Robertson is none too pleased. From yesterday’s “700 Club”:
According to Robertson, the ACLU doesn’t have enough to do since it lost its “raison d’etre,” Communism, and so now “they say their main goal is to take religion out of the public square.”
Robertson also complains that “one or two atheists can strip a whole community of its deeply-held religious views.” As a matter of fact, the parents who sued the school board are Christians, but in any event we expect Christianity to survive in eastern Missouri even without the local government working to convert fifth-graders.
The right-wing Liberty Counsel, which represented the school, plans to appeal.
Posted by Ezra at 5:33 PM | Permalink
January 8, 2008
ABA Asked to Examine Regent Law's Accreditation
A lawyer for Adam Key sent a letter to the American Bar Association asking them to examine the accreditation of Pat Robertson's Regent University School of Law, saying that Regent is "creating a bunch of lawyers who don't believe in free speech."
Posted by Kyle at 1:54 PM | Permalink
December 6, 2007
The Speech: Romney still no JFK
Mitt Romney’s speech on religious liberty and the role his faith would play in his presidency – the long-discussed “JFK speech” -- included some Kennedy-esque rhetoric about the fundamental importance of religious liberty, but it was a far cry from JFK’s ringing endorsement of church-state separation.
The timing of Romney’s speech, as former Arkansas governor and Baptist minister Mike Huckabee overtook Romney in Iowa polling, seemed to make it clear that Romney’s target audience was the conservative evangelicals who play a major role in Republican primaries. Many of those voters have told pollsters that they’re reluctant to vote for a Mormon, and they have little patience for arguments that church-state separation is good for religious liberty.
Romney’s speech was a mixed bag. At its best, it included high-minded praise for America’s religious diversity, what Romney called “our nation’s symphony of faith.” He also acknowledged that religious intolerance has been part of American history, something usually not spoken of by Religious Right leaders who cite the Puritans as evidence that America was designed to be a “Christian nation.”
Regarding the Mormon church, Romney made the same kind of assertions that were at the heart of JFK’s speech about his Catholicism – that the church would not dictate policy positions to him, and he would be a president for all Americans. Well, at least all religious Americans -- Romney’s speech did not include even a simple nod to Americans who aren’t religious. “Freedom requires religion,” he said.
Romney also did a dance around the notion of a religious test for public office. He said it would be wrong to ask him to “explain his church’s distinctive doctrines” because that “would enable the very religious test the founders prohibited in the Constitution.” But then he declared Jesus Christ to be “the son of God and savior of mankind.” He knows that his target audience has a de facto religious test for the presidency – Christians only please – and argued today that he meets it.
He also took what seemed like a veiled shot at other candidates by saying “Americans do not respect believers of convenience.” That’s a pretty dangerous argument for him, given that it’s his own 180-degree policy shifts that many voters don’t trust. And what exactly did he mean by that? Was he implying that the faith of candidates who say they’re Christian but disagree with him on some political issues is somehow suspect? Candidates on both sides of the aisle have had their faith questioned on those grounds.
Romney also reached out to conservative evangelical voters by advancing one of the movement’s main talking points on religion in the public arena – that there’s a sinister effort to establish “a new religion in America – the religion of secularism.” He hit another Religious Right talking point on federal judges: “Our greatness would not long endure without judges who respect the foundation of faith upon which our Constitution rests.”
He asserted that “while differences in theology exist between the churches in America, we share a common creed of moral convictions,” citing “the right to life itself among them.” Of course there’s no common moral conviction on that issue, even among Christian churches, indicating one again that Romney was speaking here to a particular group of conservative Christians whose teachings on social issues mirror those of the Mormon Church.
It’s a fascinating position Romney is in. As a member of a minority faith that has experienced persecution, he understands the importance of church-state separation. And it’s good for Americans to hear a Republican candidate talk about the value of religious diversity and how church-state separation has contributed to America’s vibrant religious life. But his efforts to reach out to conservative evangelical primary voters undermined that message. It will be interesting to find out whether the speech has its intended effect.
Posted by Peter at 2:40 PM | Permalink
November 30, 2007
Pat Robertson to the Rescue?
Amid all the turmoil plaguing Oral Roberts University, it appears as if things might be turning a corner because, in addition to a Christian businessman’s pledge to bail out the debt-ridden institution with a $70 million donation, it seems as if Pat Robertson is set to take advantage offer his assistance:
A team from Regent University will travel to financially troubled Oral Roberts University in Tulsa, Okla., on Monday to explore “options” for ties between the institutions.
“We are pleased to report that Dr. Pat Robertson, president and chancellor of Regent University and long-time friend of Oral Roberts University, has contacted members of the board of regents and has expressed interest in exploring options for the future of ORU with Regent University,” George Pearsons, chairman of the ORU Board of Regents, said in a statement posted on the university’s Web site.
“Dr. Robertson is sending a team on Monday to Tulsa to meet with ORU Regents and administrative representatives,” he said
It should be noted that Robertson’s Regent University Law School got its start back in the mid-80s when ORU, like today, was facing financial difficulties:
The Regent law school was founded in 1986, when Oral Roberts University shut down its ailing law school and sent its library to Robertson's Bible-based college in Virginia.
Regent didn’t just get ORU’s “entire law library, [but] some students and faculty” as well.
Who knows what part of ORU Robertson has his eye on this time.
Speaking of Robertson and Regent, Adam Key, the Regent Law School student suspended and ordered to undergo a mental evaluation for posting an unflattering photo of Robertson on his web page, has apparently decided to sue:
A Regent University law student who was suspended for posting an unflattering photo of school founder Pat Robertson on the Internet sued the university and Robertson on Thursday.
Adam M. Key, 23, claims in the federal suit that Regent officials violated his free speech and due process rights for expressing his "Christian religious and political opinions" when it suspended him in October.
…
"I went there because I wanted an environment conducive to learning that had a respect for religious liberty, but the only liberty they are interested in defending is theirs and people like them," Key said in a telephone interview with The Associated Press on Thursday.
Because the private university receives federal funds, it is required under the U.S. Higher Education Act to respect students' freedom of religion and expression.
The lawsuit also alleges Key was "fraudulently induced" to attend Regent. "Adam relied on Regent's many claims of religious liberty and speech" and the law school's American Bar Association accreditation, the lawsuit states.
Posted by Kyle at 1:19 PM | Permalink
October 16, 2007
If You Don’t Like Pat Robertson, You Must Be Crazy
There is an interesting story developing down at Pat Robertson’s Regent University. It seems as if one of the students, Adam M. Key, doesn’t seem to like Robertson much and doesn’t really fit the stereotype of the typical Regent student:
Key, a bearded 23-year-old with a tableau of tattoos, would seem an odd fit at the evangelical Christian institution Robertson founded in 1978.
Key, a Lutheran, describes himself as a “liberal Christian” who heads the campus’ small “Christian Left” organization.
The tattoos reflect his passion for justice and the legal system. The colorful jumble of images features the U.S. Constitution written on a scroll, the Magna Carta, the Torah, phrases such as “due process,” and men of principle such as Martin Luther, Sir Thomas More and former Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.
One startling image shows Osama bin Laden juxtaposed with Robertson.
“I believe they’re both reprehensible people,” Key said, “but I defend their right to believe whatever they want.”
Key, who is from Texas, said he had wanted to attend a Christian institution with a law school accredited by the American Bar Association, such as Regent. One motivating factor, he said, was “the opportunity to show people that liberalism isn’t a sin.”
Key said he has a grade-point average close to 3.0 and that he’s on track to graduate from the three-year program in 2½ years. He said he was only vaguely familiar with Robertson and his political views when he applied to Regent.
Key reportedly posted a photo of Robertson appearing to make an obscene hand gesture on his Facebook page, which he took from a freeze-frame of a YouTube video of Robertson scratching his face on “The 700 Club” - and apparently the folks at Regent didn’t find it funny:
Regent officials gave Key two choices: publicly apologize for posting the picture and refrain from commenting about the matter in a “public medium,” or write a brief defending the posting. He faces punishment that could include expulsion.
Key, a second-year law student, said he refused to apologize and “be muzzled” by the university, so he composed the document, which includes citations from noted First Amendment cases.
…
Key said that Jeffrey Brauch, dean of the law school, rejected his brief and that he now awaits disciplinary action under the university’s Standard of Personal Conduct. At one point during the controversy, Key said, he was escorted by three armed security guards from the university’s public relations office.
And now Robertson U. has gone a step further and ordered Key to submit to a Regent-approved mental health counselor:
Adam M. Key, 23, was ordered to undergo a mental-health evaluation before he can return to classes. He also was ordered to undergo counseling if a mental-health provider that is acceptable to the university deems it appropriate, and to provide a report showing that he has completed any treatment plan required.
Key also must agree to allow the mental-health provider to provide regular updates on his treatment to the school.
Presumably, Key’s case won’t be discussed when Regent Law School students gather for this:
LAW 774 First Amendment Law (3) Survey of the protections guaranteed by the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. Topics covered include freedom of religion, the establishment clause, freedom of speech and freedom of the press.
Posted by Kyle at 2:16 PM | Permalink
October 15, 2007
Regent Student Barred From Campus Over Robertson Photo
The Associated Press reports that Adam M. Key, the "Regent University law student who posted an unflattering photo of school founder Pat Robertson on the Internet has been banned from campus" and has been "ordered to undergo a mental-health evaluation before he can return to classes ... [and] also must agree to allow the mental-health provider to provide regular updates on his treatment to the school."
Posted by Kyle at 12:07 PM | Permalink
October 11, 2007
Regent Student Under Fire Over Robertson Photo
The Virginian-Pilot reports that Regent University Law Student Adam Key is facing disciplinary action from the university for having posted an unflattering picture of Pat Robertson on his Facebook page.
Posted by Kyle at 2:58 PM | Permalink
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