Last month a nativity scene appeared in a public park in Fairfield. It was placed there by a state representative who, in response to town officials’ concerns about First Amendment violations, said that she and another person had privately purchased the scene. In an attempt to defuse the situation, the town placed a sign stating that the scene was a private display, and that any and all faiths should feel welcome to add their own display at the same location. Adding a sign that labeled the display as private clarified that the display was not municipally owned or funded. The Maine Chapter of the Freedom From Religion Foundation was pleased to put up our own season greetings.
During the discussions, the representative reportedly threatened to file charges of theft if the nativity were to be removed. She said that she was donating it but it was hers, and if it was removed she already had a message in to the First Liberty Institute.
That would be the same First Liberty Institute that’s helping religious schools in Maine have it both ways in terms of your tax dollars: take the money, but don’t follow the rules about using it. Oh, and thank you for helping to starve public education.
The representative did not explain how something donated could still be her property, but did repeat the well-worn and often debunked talking points alleging that the United States is built on Christianity. In short, her actions and statements were a toxic mix of aggression and, at best, ignorance. She added that putting a nativity scene in a public place is the kind of thing we need to get back to – a haunting echo of her support of Rep Lemelin’s statement last April that the Lewiston shootings were divine retribution for the passing of a particular bill.
This is ridiculous. The US Constitution was the first governing document to separate religion from government, and the first to say that power comes from people rather than a deity. There are two mentions of religion in it. One is in Article VI, Section 3: “…no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States.” In other words, religion is mentioned in the original, unamended document in order to exclude it from government. This is very clear. The other mention of religion is sixteen words of the First Amendment: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof”, which separates state and church and guarantees religious freedom.
A Christian display by itself on public property is a violation of the “establishment” clause, which prohibits government from favoring one religion over others. Apparently, one way to ignore this prohibition is to claim religious freedom of speech, which favors the “exercise” clause of the amendment over the “establishment” clause. This approach therefore says that the founders wrote a sentence in which one clause directly contradicts another. Rather than get into all of that, the town encouraged displays from everyone. It’s not a perfect solution, but it’s one that’s being reached in more and more places across the country. So, freedom as well as getting along. Who would have a problem with that? Well, apparently, the aforementioned representative does. She referred to another set of beliefs as “crap.” That right there shows why those sixteen words exist.
The Wall of Separation is not a wall that divides. It protects. Some founders thought that religion needed to be protected from government, and some thought that government needed to be protected from religion. Either way, both schools of thought believed that the wall needed to exist.
Without that wall, we might have a President who would take advantage of tear gas and bullying peaceful demonstrators so that he could pose for a photograph using a bible as a prop. We might even have a president who would unleash a blizzard of executive orders that ignored legal precedence and the basic tenets of constitutional law in order to accomplish Christian Nationalist agenda items. As of this writing, only one of those two sentences is hypothetical. Let’s hope it stays that way, otherwise it’s going to be a long four years from which true religious freedom might only slightly recover, if at all, because the Christian Nationalists who support and enable President-elect Trump will be around a lot longer than he will. And they are already here in Maine.