I have a polite request for a handful of lawyers in Madison: please keep your politics within the confines of your own city. Last week, the University of Minnesota announced in addition to withdrawing from the Minnesota Faith/Health Consortium earlier this summer, it has ceased the creation of courses addressing the relationship between faith and healing after the Madison-based Freedom from Religion Foundation filed a lawsuit against the institution in federal court.

This recent action by a group of Madison-bred attorneys affirms the notion that the interpretation of a "wall of separation" between church and state is becoming increasingly distorted.

The First Amendment does nothing more than prohibit laws "respecting an establishment of religion." Regrettably, many anti-religious organizations have interpreted this clause — contrary to the U.S. Supreme Court — to read that no public entity shall mention religion in any form.

The Foundation not only sought the University's immediate withdrawal from the Consortium, they also demanded the research institution halt the development of the Faith/Health Clinical Leadership program. The program, in conjunction with Luther Seminary and Fairview Health Services, would have provided clinical courses to graduate students interested in researching the intersections between faith and healing.

Ironically, the Foundation sued the University before the sequence of courses was developed and offered to students. With the courses still on the drawing board, though, the Foundation naively inferred such classes were endorsing religion. Why would such an organization do this? It's quite obvious: when atheists see the word "religion," they immediately cry foul.

Unfortunately, the University succumbed to the pressures of a few sue-happy Americans. Instead of dragging the institution through the financial constraints often present with litigation, the University cowered like a child facing a schoolyard bully and conceded to the demands of the Foundation.

If the legal counsel of the University had more gumption to pursue this matter, they would have realized that both the law and academic freedom were on their side.

Studying the correlation between faith and healing — as the proposed courses intended to do — is indeed constitutional. The Foundation, on the other hand, believes public universities should avoid the discussion of the "r" word completely. Nonetheless, there is a difference between studying the role of religion in American life and endorsing a particular religion.

Atheists can't seem to accept the distinction.

If it had seen the inside of a courtroom, the Foundation's substandard legal argument would have been quashed by established case law. To determine whether the University violated the establishment clause by involvement in the Consortium and offering of such classes, the federal court would have applied the test set forth in Lemon v. Kurtzman. If the Court applied the Lemon test, it would have found the actions of the University indeed had a secular purpose, they did not have the primary effect of advancing or inhibiting religion and they did not foster an excessive government entanglement with religion. Simply put, the University's actions were constitutional.

The constitutionality of the courses aside, the organization also encroaches on academic freedom in a university setting. The Foundation considers itself a group of "freethinkers." Unfortunately, these freethinkers prefer to censor intellectual thought that doesn't comport to their ideals. In the end, intellectual diversity has been forced to take a backseat while atheists continue to force their way to the helm of curricular control.

An overarching question raised by the recent actions of the Freedom from Religion Foundation is somewhat obvious: will this litigation ever end? The establishment clause of the First Amendment is one of the most litigated provisions of the Constitution. And the Foundation doesn't seem to be letting up on the citizens of Minnesota any time soon. The organization is now attacking Gov. Pawlenty's proposal to create a Minnesota Council of Faith-based Initiatives to better assist religious organizations in providing social services to the citizens in the state.

Atheists and those organizations targeting what they erroneously believe to be actions of the Religious Right need to realize they have been using the wrong forum for their assault on religion. They have been using our nation's courtrooms to influence nothing more than what amounts to public policy. Sometimes they find a judge who is sympathetic to their politics, sometimes they don't. Nonetheless, the pages of the Constitution should not be a place to fight hollow legal arguments. The halls of our state legislatures and Congress would be more appropriate.

The Constitution bars the "establishment of religion," and studying its role in American life is hardly "establishing" anything, except for the right of students to study a question of importance and interest to the medical community.

Darryn Beckstrom ([email protected]) is a doctoral student in the Department of Political Science and a second-year MPA candidate in the La Follette School of Public Affairs.