Everson v. Board
of Education, 330 U.S. 1, was a landmark decision of the United States Supreme
Court which applied the Establishment Clause in the country's Bill of Rights to
State law. Date decided: 1947 Majority: Black, joined by Vinson, Reed, Douglas, Murphy. Citations: 330 U.S. 1 (more)67
S. Ct. 504; 91 L. Ed. 711; 1947 U.S. LEXIS 2959;
168 A.L.R. 1392. Ruling court: Supreme Court of the United States - Wikipedia
This was the
ruling that started the War on Christianity in the US in 1947. Congress could
have corrected this Supreme Court decision, but the Socialist politicians
stopped it. This marks the beginning of the decline in public education in the
US. See article below:
We are a religious people whose
institutions presuppose a Supreme Being. When the state encourages religious
instruction it follows the best of our traditions. By William Federer, 1/19/19.
Justice
William Orville Douglas served the longest term on the bench in the Supreme
Court's history -- 36 years, until his death JANUARY 19, 1980. He was one of
the eight Supreme Court Justices nominated by Franklin D. Roosevelt. He
previously taught law at Columbia Law School and Yale Law School, and served on
the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.
Justice
William O. Douglas wrote the majority decision in the 1952 case of Zorach v.
Clauson: "The First Amendment, however, does not say that in every and all
respects there shall be a separation of Church and State ...Otherwise, the
state and religion would be aliens to each other -- hostile, suspicious, and
even unfriendly ...Municipalities would not be permitted to render police or
fire protection to religious groups. Policemen who
helped parishioners into their places of worship would violate the
Constitution. Prayers in our legislative halls; the appeals to the Almighty in
the messages of the Chief Executive; the proclamations making Thanksgiving Day
a holiday; 'So Help Me God' in our courtroom oaths; -- these and all other
references to the Almighty that run through our laws, our public rituals, our ceremonies
would be flouting the First Amendment.
A
fastidious atheist or agnostic could even object to the supplication with which
the Court opens each session: 'God save the United States and this Honorable
Court ...'"
Justice
Douglas continued: "We are a religious people whose institutions
presuppose a Supreme Being. When the state encourages religious instruction it
follows the best of our traditions. For it then respects the religious nature
of our people and accommodates the public service to their spiritual needs.
To
hold that it may not would be to find in the Constitution a requirement that
the government show a callous indifference to religious groups. That would be
preferring those who believe in no religion over those who do believe ..."
Douglas
concluded: "We find no constitutional requirement which makes it necessary
for government to be hostile to religion and to throw its weight against
efforts to widen the effective scope of religious influence ...We cannot read
into the Bill of Rights such a philosophy of hostility to religion."
Chief
Justice Warren E. Burger cited Justice Douglas' Zorach v. Clauson opinion in
the 1984 decision of Lynch v Donnelly: "The concept of a 'wall' of
separation between church and state is a ... figure of speech ... but the
metaphor itself is not a wholly accurate description of the practical aspects
of the relationship that in fact exists between church and state. The
Constitution does not require complete separation of church and state; it
affirmatively mandates accommodation, not merely tolerance, of all religions,
and forbids hostility toward any. Anything less would require the 'callous
indifference' (Zorach v. Clauson), that was never intended by the Establishment
Clause ...Indeed, we have observed, such hostility would bring us into 'war
with our national tradition as embodied in the First Amendment's guaranty of
the free exercise of religion. (McCollum)
..."
Justice
Stanley Reed wrote in his dissent of McCullum v Board of Education, 1948: "Rule
of law should not be drawn from a figure of speech."
Justice
Potter Stewart wrote in his dissent of Engle v Vitale, 1962: "The Court
... is not aided ... by the ... invocation of metaphors like the 'wall of
separation,' a phrase nowhere to be found in the Constitution."
Justice
William Rehnquist wrote in his dissent of Wallace v Jaffree, 1984: "The
'wall of separation between church and State' is a metaphor based on bad
history, a metaphor which has proved useless as a guide to judging. It should
be frankly and explicitly abandoned. It is impossible to build sound
constitutional doctrine upon a mistaken understanding of Constitutional history.
The
establishment clause had been expressly freighted with Jefferson's misleading
metaphor for nearly forty years. There is simply no historical foundation for
the proposition that the framers intended to build a wall of separation.
The
recent court decisions are in no way based on either the language or intent of
the framers ... But the greatest injury of the 'wall' notion is its mischievous
diversion of judges from the actual intentions of the drafters of the Bill of
Rights."
Judge
Richard Suhrheinrich wrote in ACLU v Mercer County, 2006:
"The
ACLU makes repeated reference to 'the separation of church and state.' This
extra-constitutional construct has grown tiresome.
The
First Amendment does not demand a wall of separation between church and state.
Our nation's history is replete with governmental acknowledgment and in some
cases, accommodation of religion."
In
Committee for Public Education & Religious Liberty v. Nyquist, 413 U.S.
756, 760 (1973), the Court stated: "This Nation's history has not been one
of entirely sanitized separation between Church and State. It has never been
thought either possible or desirable to enforce a regime of total
separation."
The
Court stated in Lemon v. Kurtzman, 403 U.S. 602 (1971): "Our prior
holdings do not call for total separation between church and state; total
separation is not possible in an absolute sense."
Chief
Justice Warren E. Burger continued in Lynch v Donnelly, 1984: "That
neither the draftsmen of the Constitution, who were Members of the First Congress,
nor the First Congress itself, saw any establishment problem in employing
Chaplains to offer daily prayers in the Congress is a striking example of the
accommodation of religious beliefs intended by the Framers ...
Our
history is pervaded by official acknowledgment of the role of religion in
American life, and equally pervasive is evidence of accommodation of all faiths
and all forms of religious expression and hostility toward none. It would be
ironic if the inclusion of the creche in the display, as part of a celebration of an event acknowledged in the
Western World for 20 centuries, and in this country by the people, the
Executive Branch, Congress, and the courts for 2 centuries, would so 'taint'
the exhibition as to render it violative of the Establishment Clause ...
To
forbid the use of this one passive symbol while hymns and carols are sung and
played in public places including schools, and while Congress and state
legislatures open public sessions with prayers, would be an overreaction
contrary to this Nation's history and this Court's holdings ..."
Burger
continued in Lynch v Donnelly:
"A
significant example of the contemporaneous understanding of that Clause is
found in the events of the first week of the First Session of the First
Congress in 1789.
In
the very week that Congress approved the Establishment Clause as part of the
Bill of Rights for submission to the states, it enacted legislation providing
for paid Chaplains for the House and Senate. It is clear that neither the 17
draftsmen of the Constitution who were Members of the First Congress, nor the
Congress of 1789, saw any establishment problem in the employment of
congressional Chaplains to offer daily prayers in the Congress, a practice that
has continued for nearly two centuries. It would be difficult to identify a
more striking example of the accommodation of religious belief intended by the
Framers ..."
Chief
Justice Burger continued: "Our history is replete with official references
to the value and invocation of Divine guidance in deliberations and
pronouncements of the
Founding
Fathers and contemporary leaders. Beginning in the early colonial period long
before Independence, a day of Thanksgiving was celebrated as a religious
holiday to give thanks for the bounties of Nature as gifts from God.
President
Washington and his successors proclaimed Thanksgiving, with all its religious
overtones, a day of national celebration and Congress made it a National Holiday
more than a century ago. That holiday has not lost its theme of expressing
thanks for Divine aid any more than has Christmas lost its religious
significance. Executive Orders and other official announcements of Presidents
and of the Congress have proclaimed both Christmas and Thanksgiving National
Holidays in religious terms. And, by Acts of Congress, it has long been the
practice that federal employees are released from duties on these National
Holidays, while being paid from the same public revenues that provide the
compensation of the Chaplains of the Senate and the House and the military
services. Thus, it is clear that Government has long recognized -- indeed it
has subsidized -- holidays with religious significance."
Burger
added: "Other examples of reference to our religious heritage are found in
the statutorily prescribed national motto 'In God We Trust,' which Congress and
the President mandated for our currency, and in the language 'One nation under
God,' as part of the Pledge of Allegiance to the American flag. That pledge is
recited by many thousands of public school children -- and adults -- every
year. Art galleries supported by public revenues display religious paintings of
the 15th and 16th centuries, predominantly inspired by one religious faith.
The
National Gallery in Washington, maintained with Government support, for
example, has long exhibited masterpieces with religious messages, notably the
Last Supper, and paintings depicting the Birth of Christ, the Crucifixion, and
the Resurrection, among many others with explicit Christian themes and
messages.
The
very chamber in which oral arguments on this case were heard is decorated with
a notable and permanent -- not seasonal -- symbol of religion: Moses with the
Ten Commandments. Congress has long provided chapels in the Capitol for
religious worship and meditation. There are countless other illustrations of
the Government's acknowledgment of our religious heritage and governmental
sponsorship of graphic manifestations of that heritage ..."
Burger
continued: "Congress has directed the President to proclaim a National Day
of Prayer each year 'on which (day) the people of the United States may turn to
God in prayer and meditation at churches, in groups, and as individuals.' Our
Presidents have repeatedly issued such Proclamations. Presidential
Proclamations and messages have also issued to commemorate Jewish Heritage
Week, Presidential Proclamation No. 4844, 3 CFR 30 (1982), and the Jewish High
Holy Days, 17 Weekly Comp. of Pres. Doc. 1058 (1981) ..."
Chief
Justice Warren E. Burger concluded the Lynch v. Donnelly decision: "One
cannot look at even this brief resume without finding that our history is
pervaded by expressions of religious beliefs such as are found in Zorach.
Equally
pervasive is the evidence of accommodation of all faiths and all forms of
religious expression, and hostility toward none. Through this accommodation, as
Justice Douglas observed, governmental action has 'follow[ed] the best of our
traditions' and 'respect[ed] the religious nature of our people.'"
Justice
Anthony Kennedy wrote in Town of Greece v. Galloway, May 5, 2014: "In
Marsh v. Chambers, 463 U. S. 783, the Court found no First Amendment violation
in the Nebraska Legislature's practice of opening its sessions with a prayer
delivered by a chaplain paid from state funds. The decision concluded that
legislative prayer, while religious in nature, has long been understood as
compatible with the Establishment Clause. As practiced by Congress since the
framing of the Constitution, legislative prayer lends gravity to public
business, reminds lawmakers to transcend petty differences in pursuit of a
higher purpose, and expresses a common aspiration to a just and peaceful
society. Legislative invocations are compatible with the Establishment Clause.
The
First Congress made it an early item of business to appoint and pay official
chaplains, and both the House and Senate have maintained the office virtually uninterrupted
since that time. That the First Congress provided for the appointment of
chaplains only days after approving language for the First Amendment
demonstrates that the Framers considered legislative prayer a benign
acknowledgment of religion's role in society. In the 1850's, the judiciary
committees in both the House and Senate reevaluated the practice of official
chaplaincies after receiving petitions to abolish the office. The committees
concluded that the office posed no threat of an establishment."
Justice
Kennedy was referring to the House Judiciary Committee Report of Congressman
James Meacham of Vermont, March 27, 1854: "At the adoption of the
Constitution, we believe every State -- certainly ten of the thirteen --
provided as regularly for the support of the Church as for the support of the
Government." Justice Kennedy continued in Greece v. Galloway: "Any
test the Court adopts must acknowledge a practice that was accepted by the
Framers and has withstood the critical scrutiny of time and political change. An
insistence on nonsectarian or ecumenical prayer as a single, fixed standard is
not consistent with the tradition of legislative prayer outlined in the Court's
cases. The Congress that drafted the First Amendment would have been accustomed
to invocations containing explicitly religious themes of the sort respondents
find objectionable ..."
Kennedy
continued: "One of the Senate's first chaplains, the Rev. William White,
gave prayers in a series that included the Lord's Prayer, the Collect for Ash Wednesday,
prayers for peace and grace, a general thanksgiving, St. Chrysostom's Prayer,
and a prayer seeking 'the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, &c' ..The
decidedly Christian nature of these prayers must not be dismissed as the relic
of a time when our Nation was less pluralistic than it is today ..."
Kennedy
added: "The Court instructed that the 'content of the prayer is not of
concern to judges' ...To hold that invocations must be nonsectarian would force
the legislatures that sponsor prayers and the courts that are asked to decide
these cases to act as supervisors and censors of religious speech, a rule that
would involve government in religious matters to a far greater degree than is
the case under the town's current practice of neither editing or approving
prayers in advance nor criticizing their content after the fact ...It would be
but a few steps removed from that prohibition for legislatures to require
chaplains to redact the religious content from their message in order to make
it acceptable for the public sphere.... Government may not mandate a civic
religion that stifles any but the most generic reference to the sacred any more
than it may prescribe a religious orthodoxy ...See Lee v. Weisman, 505 U.S.
577, 590 (1992) ('The suggestion that government may establish an official or
civic religion as a means of avoiding the establishment of a religion with more
specific creeds strikes us as a contradiction that cannot be accepted');
Schempp,
374 U. S., at 306 (Goldberg, J., concurring) (arguing that 'untutored devotion
to the concept of neutrality' must not lead to 'a brooding and pervasive
devotion to the secular') ..."
Justice
Kennedy added: "The First Amendment is not a majority rule, and government
may not seek to define permissible categories of religious speech ...While
these prayers vary in their degree of religiosity, they often seek peace for
the Nation, wisdom for its lawmakers, and justice for its people, values that
count as universal and that are embodied not only in religious traditions, but
in our founding documents and laws.... The first prayer delivered to the
Continental Congress by the Rev. Jacob Duché on Sept. 7, 1774, provides an
example: 'Be Thou present O God of Wisdom and direct the counsel of this
Honorable Assembly; enable them to settle all things on the best and surest
foundations; that the scene of blood may be speedily closed; that Order,
Harmony, and Peace be effectually restored, and the Truth and Justice, Religion
and Piety, prevail and flourish among the people. Preserve the health of their
bodies, and the vigor of their minds, shower down on them, and the millions
they here represent, such temporal Blessings as Thou seest expedient for them
in this world, and crown them with everlasting Glory in the world to come. All
this we ask in the name and through the merits of Jesus Christ, Thy Son and our
Saviour, Amen'. W. Federer, America's God and Country 137 (2000) ..."
Justice
Anthony Kennedy concluded the Town of Greece v. Galloway decision, May 5, 2014:
"As a practice that has long endured, legislative prayer has become part
of our heritage and tradition, part of our expressive idiom, similar to the
Pledge of Allegiance, inaugural prayer, or the recitation of 'God save the
United States and this honorable Court' at the opening of this Court's sessions
... It is presumed that the reasonable observer is acquainted with this
tradition ... Their purpose is largely to accommodate the spiritual needs of
lawmakers and connect them to a tradition dating to the time of the Framers ...
Ceremonial prayer is but a recognition that, since this Nation was founded and
until the present day, many Americans deem that their own existence must be
understood by precepts far beyond the authority of government to alter or
define and that willing participation in civic affairs can be consistent with a
brief acknowledgment of their belief in a higher power, always with due respect
for those who adhere to other beliefs."
Norb Leahy, Dunwoody
GA Tea Party Leader
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