USA, October 25, 2004: HPI note: The following article appeared on the conservative Christian newsletter Religion Today. It claims to show how religious freedom is regularly curtailed in the US, though more specifically it reports mostly incidents of Christians being restricted from expressing their religion in public schools and other public settings. It shows the degree to which the government enforces “separation of church and state.” For the entire report, with 50 pages of examples, click “source” above. It is interesting reading.
Report beings: Thanks to the efforts of a Texas-based legal group, the nine members of one Senate subcommittee now have in their hands a document that outlines literally hundreds of examples of violations of individuals’ religious freedoms — in the United States. In September, the U.S. State Department reported in its sixth Annual Report to Congress on International Religious Freedom that eight national governments are designated as being of particular concern as violators of internationally acknowledged religious freedom rights. Those eight countries are North Korea, China, Burma, Iran, Sudan, Saudi Arabia, Vietnam and Eritrea.
Now comes a report from the Liberty Legal Institute (LLI) in Plano, Texas, that reveals what the group describes as “widespread religious hostility” across the U.S. That report, titled “Examples of Hostility to Religious Expression in the Public Square,” documents acts of hostility towards, and discrimination against, expressions of faith by students, faculty, government employees, churches, religious organizations, and ordinary citizens.
The 51-page document identifies three organizations that LLI contends have led a nationwide campaign to remove religious expression from the public square: the American Civil Liberties Union, Americans United for the Separation of Church and State, and People for the American Way. Cornyn’s press release accuses all three of those organizations of actively litigating against such things as equal access for religious groups in public schools, school choice programs that would permit needy children to attend parochial and nonsectarian schools alike, and voluntary, student-led religious expression. The senator says he was not surprised during his subcommittee’s hearings to hear from those groups that there was not a problem with religious expression in the United States. “[N]o one will actually admit to being hostile to religious expression,” he says. “They know full well that they are far more likely to advance their extreme ideology through the courts, rather than through the democratic process.”
Following are some samples of hostility to religious expression, as provided in the Liberty Legal Institute report/
A 12-year-old elementary school student was reprimanded by a public school in St. Louis, Missouri, for quietly saying a prayer before lunch in the school cafeteria, according to a federal lawsuit.
Public high school students in Massachusetts started a Bible club and tried to hand out candy canes with a biblical passage attached. The school suspended the students for distributing the candy canes.
A public school sixth grader in Boulder, Colorado, tried to complete her book report assignment by presenting the Bible, but was forbidden from doing so by her teacher. She was also forbidden from bringing the Bible to school.
A Texas school district refused to hire a public school teacher for the position of assistant principal, because her children attended a private Christian school, in violation of the district’s policy that the children of all principals and administrators attend public school.
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