Do you know what really offends me? Commonsense, time-honored morals. Violence, stealing, adultery — these I can handle. But when someone tells me that I shall not kill my neighbor, that’s just going too far.
Sounds ludicrous, doesn’t it? Normally I would think so, but I’m not so sure anymore.
Two weeks ago, a moving crew extracted a monument of the Ten Commandments from the Alabama Judicial Building as dozens of protesters looked on, feeling frustrated and infuriated, praying all the while. An out-of-state moving company had to be hired, because no Alabama firm would take the job.
Why did this have to happen if the monument was so meaningful and well-supported by the vast majority of Alabama’s citizens? Were thousands of petitions circulated, or was there a large-scale, citizen-led push to have the monument removed?
No. The monument was confiscated because a group of judges ruled that it was in violation of the Constitution.
A federal court delivered a verdict stating that the Ten Commandments monument violated our nation’s legal separation of church and state.
Alabama’s chief justice, Roy S. Moore, installed the monument and was suspended for not removing it by the federal court-ordered Aug. 20 date. Moore issued a statement saying, “It is a sad day in our country when the moral foundation of our law and the acknowledgment of God has to be hidden from public view to appease a federal judge.”
Amen.
Now, let me clear something up before the anti-religious jump down my throat. I’m not trying to impress my particular faith and morals on anyone else. People of all faiths should not have to be confined to expressing their convictions only in the privacy of their homes.
I had hoped to spare readers a dissection of the First Amendment, but it seems appropriate here.
“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.”
This simple sentence prohibits the government from establishing a state religion, but at the same time permits Americans to express our religious beliefs freely in all settings, especially public ones. I know that if you’ve heard it once, you’ve heard it a hundred times, but maybe it just might start to sink in: the Constitution guarantees freedom of religion, not freedom from religion.
Instead of being so preoccupied with how religion will adversely affect our society, we need to start thinking about how religion’s absence in our daily lives is harming us. Religion has the obvious benefit of teaching certain fundamental morals. These are ethics that are also agreed upon by society in general.
However, by practicing acceptance of religion in the public arena, we can do much more than that. Religion can serve as a way to understand and learn more about one another in ways we were never really given the chance to before. I’m sure we can all admit that we don’t have a very good understanding of creeds other than our own, if we have any at all. Why not celebrate diversity in every aspect of life? Why not respect how religion makes us the decent and contributing citizens we are as Americans? Why not appreciate our religious beliefs?
It’s very hard for me to believe that the authors of the First Amendment were intending to forbid Americans from professing their faith in public, since it is one of the most important things in a person’s life. How unfortunate it is that our federal courts have lost site of what truly matters in life and have replaced it with bans and regulations. It begs the question: Do we still know where our priorities lie?
God forbid we have a little spiritual and moral influence in our day-to-day lives. Oops. Pardon my use of the G-word.
Nicole Marklein ([email protected]) is a junior majoring in political science.