September/October 2002

With a surge toward a violent culture, many things must happen to redirect our society. I understand that simply posting the Ten Commandments will not instantly change the moral character of our nation. However, allowing states the freedom to decide these matters is an important step in promoting morality and religious freedom in our society.—REP. ROBERT ADERHOLT (R. Ala.), sponsor of the Ten Commandments Defense Act of 2002.

We'd all be better off members of Congress started following the commandments and stopped using them for crass political purposes.—BARRY LYNN, Americans United for Separation of Church and State.

“Every man is free to embrace and profess that religion which, guided by the light of reason, he considers to be true.” — Pope Pius IX, Condemned proposition, Syllabus of Errors, 1867.

The Supreme Court recently denied certiorari in a case testing whether state government could post the Ten Commandments. At the same time, a federal district court in Pennsylvania held that the government’s display of the commandments violates the establishment clause.

As I have noted in my www.FindLaw.com column, serious constitutional problems arise when the government displays the Ten Commandments. The typical defense is that the commandments are the ground for much of our criminal law and therefore constitute a legal and historical document—not a religious one. But this argument, upon examination, is so weak that it ought to be rejected out of hand.

What is a church? The Nebraska Supreme Court was asked to decide this question in a case stemming from a liquor license granted to a Kum & Go convenience store in Omaha. The Kum & Go is located across the street from the House of Faith, a nondenominational Christian congregation that has been worshiping in its rented building since 1990. In Nebraska a zoning exclusion law prohibits the issuance of a liquor license to an entity located within 150 feet of a school or church. No party disputed the zoning law, but a legal battle quickly erupted over a murkier issue—whether the House of Faith could really be called a church.

The continuing battle over California’s Women’s Contraceptive Equity Act, or WCEA, is not only due to occupy part of that state’s supreme court calendar this fall, but also highlights the continuing tensions between the free exercise of religion and government in America’s most populous state.

A short drive down a quiet country road, incongruous by its being located between the large population centers of San Francisco and Sacramento, is the Vacaville Seventh-day Adventist Church. Actually, the church itself isn’t quite finished. At present the complex consists of a one-room church school and a fellowship hall where weekly worship is conducted. And off to the side of the 21-acre parcel sits a single-story, triple-wide mobile unit, beautifully landscaped and ready for use. It is this structure, or rather, its use, that has been the subject of a six-year-long battle with the county of Solano. It is a battle that is far from over.

The woman sitting to my left at the May 2 CARE Act Rally in the Hart Senate building turned out to be from a Christian community aid program in Phoenix, Arizona. By her wide-eyed intensity I had picked her to be of the mind-set I’d observed before in various multilevel marketing recruitment situations. But I figured we could talk anyway, so I began to ease up on the question of separation of church and state. Sure, there are many ways of looking at the topic, but I thought to at least encounter a little deference to the concept. Wrong!

clause of the First Amendment means at least this: neither the state nor the federal government can set up a church. Neither can pass laws which aid one religion, aid all religions, or prefer one religion over another. Neither can force nor influence a person to go or remain away from church against his will or force him to profess a belief or disbelief in any religion.