Back and Forth and the Hampton Froth

Hampton, New Hampshire is a very civilized town. Citizens are not allowed to confront each other except according to very strict rules: During School Board meetings, members of the School Board may ask questions of members of the public, but members of the public are not allowed to ask questions of the School Board; same is true for Budget Committee meetings. 

No "Back and Forth!"

But back and forth is allowed at the "Deliberative Sessions" where warrant articles are discussed. The old town meetings are simply not practical in a town of 20,000, we are told, although fewer than 500 ever attend a deliberative session.

During, these exchanges, citizens are expected to keep their comments to below 3 minutes, so everyone can have a chance and nobody hogs the microphone.

The upcoming session to discuss the warrant article granting public funds to the Sacred Heart School promises to evoke a "to and fro among citizens." There is a moderator to be sure things don't get too testy, although in the past the moderator has also made sure one side doesn't prevail if it's the side he does not favor.

Here is an preview of what may happen this time:

Ms. Proforma:  Giving this small amount of money to the Sacred Heart School is all about the kids. This is a wonderful school, which teaches real values and we are sniping about the money when it's all about the kids! I have been in education for 20 years, and I'm there because it's all about the kids. That phrases has profound meaning for me, because, that's why I'm here!

Mr. Contrarian:  You know, I sort of feel insulted by that phrase--as if you are more about the kids than I am. My objection to this article has to do with its violation of the separation of church and state.

Ms. Proforma: Well, but it's all about the kids in the end. Do we fund this wonderful school for the kids, or not? It's all about the kids!

Mr. Contrarian: This reminds me of the man who lives next door to the woman who grows a fabulous flower garden. I mean, it's gorgeous: reds, purples, yellows. But, the problem is she uses a really pungent fertilizer to grow those flowers, and so the man walks over and says, "Love the flowers, but you know, the aroma just knocks me off my feet!"

And the woman responds: "But it's all about the flowers!"

You see, they are talking past one another.

Obadiah Youngblood

Ms. Profundo: People who talk about "separation of church and state" always say this article is about being constitutional, but those words "separation of church and state" are nowhere in the constitution. It's just not a thing!

Mr. Contrarian: This is true: those 5 words together do not appear in the Constitution. But this Constitution was written in the 18th century, when they used different words. And the very first words of the Bill of Rights, the First amendment, are, "Congress (i.e. government) shall make no law respecting the establishment of religion." 

Now what could that mean? How can government establish religion? Well, the only 2 ways I know is to either simply declare an official religion--like the Church of England--or to give money to support religion, the way Germany does: if you register with your local Lutheran church, then 3% of your income tax goes to that church. This warrant article is like that--government funds, public funds, to a church.

Obadiah Youngblood

Ms. Proforma: Separation of church and state discriminates against religious schools.

Mr. Contrarian: Justice Alito would agree with you. He wrote that in his opinion about that case in Maine about the kids who lived in a part of the state so remote the only school within reach was a religious school, but the state refused to fund it because it was a religious school and taught evangelical Christianity--a violation of church and state. But Justice Alito said that is discriminating against religion. 

I agree with Justice Alito, it does discriminate. But I think that's a very good idea. We discriminate every day, as we make choices. Discrimination is not necessarily a bad thing.  Discrimination on the basis of race can be bad, but discriminating about which institutions we support with public funds is essential. We can choose not to support a specific religion because we know that will protect all religions to thrive, not favor one.

If we did not do this, then religions looking for an audience could simply seek out under-served areas and grow there with government support, no matter how extreme their views might be.

Ms. Profundo: Well, but these public funds are not used for religious purposes by the school. And this school has more non Catholics than Catholics. And the religious teaching is pretty minimal.

Mr. Contrarian: The fact is we have no information about how much religious instruction occurs at the school or how the money is used. But we do know that you cannot separate the school from the church. The church would give up nearly everything else it does rather than lose its school because the school is necessary to continue the work of the church, to bring the next generation of Catholics into being. That is essential for the church, but we should not grant taxpayer funds to accomplish this.

Ms. Profundo:  But this is hardly a church school. It's more a private school.

Mr. Contrarian: A private school with crucifixes on the wall and most of its budget from the archdiocese of Manchester. You cannot say it's just "Catholic lite." 

In the state of Utah, a state heavily dominated by one church, the kids in the public schools, which receive public funds, leave the school building at noon, walk next door to have lunch and religious teaching at the Mormon church school, and  they return about 90 minutes later to have their public school classes. That is a way of guaranteeing separation of church and state. Hampton could learn from Utah. 

Under The Banner of Heaven: Hampton's Fundamentalist Churchfolk

 

God is greater than the United States, and when the Government conflicts with heaven, we will be ranged under the banner of heaven against the Government.--John Taylor, 1880, Third President of the Church of Latter Day Saints

"If you want to get good people to do wicked things, you need religion."--Christopher Hitchens

"I'm tired of this separation of church and state junk that's not in the Constitution."--Lauren Boebert

 “We need to be the party of nationalism and I’m a Christian, and I say it proudly, we should be Christian Nationalists.”--Marjorie Taylor Greene

The United States says we cannot marry more than one wife. God says different.--John Taylor

Allah 'akbar

I wasn't born or brought up Catholic. Well, not officially.

But so many of my friends and my mother's friends were Catholic, from an early age, I didn't realize I wasn't actually Catholic for some time.

My best friends were not always Catholic, but over the years I've had as many Catholic friends as most Catholics ever have. Maybe more.

On the other hand, I've been aware, from an early age, the dangers of absolutism, of anyone who claims to know the will of God or anyone who says he has a special, exclusive private line to God.

Or a certain knowledge of anything, for that matter.

My grandfather's immovable faith in the Communist party brought him to some pretty weird and unenviable places: He was an acolyte of Joseph Stalin.

In college, a professor told the story of Abraham taking his toddler son up to the mountain to stab him to death, because God had demanded him to do this, as a demonstration of Abraham's complete devotion to God. 

"But," the professor said, "Wouldn't a rational human being pause and say, 'Hold on a minute! Would MY God tell me to kill this innocent, lovely child? That could not have been the voice of God. Maybe the voice of the Devil. Or maybe I just didn't hear anything. But no, my God would never tell me to do anything so vile!'  "

Students objected that the professor had no idea of the context of that story: Abraham was living in the days when God walked the earth,  spoke directly to human beings.   Abraham would have known that was God speaking every bit as much as we know it is you up there on the stage speaking to us now.

"No," the professor insisted.  "You can know something by using your sight, hearing, smell. But there are other ways of knowing something. You can ask your rational brain: 'Is what I'm seeing, or think I'm seeing, is that what I'm hearing or think I'm hearing likely to be true? If not, perhaps I should investigate some other explanation.' "

That argument applies to so many current assertions we hear every day now.

When two Mormon brothers slit the throats of a young mother and her infant, they did so under the banner of Heaven, i.e., they did so because they have heard the voice of God, and are acting upon it. Or so they said.

The woman was the wife of a third brother, and she had objected to one of the brothers insisting he was commanded by God to take his adolescent step daughters as his "wives," (i.e. sex partners)  and he used as justification, the early, originalist teachings of Joseph Smith and Brigham Young. The received word of The Heavenly Father.

The brother whose wife was murdered said later: "They just do what they want to do and then make up an excuse using The Heavenly Father as the reason."

The brother who wanted to take his step daughters to bed reasoned that God had given him a strong sexual urge, and to respond to that gift is to accept God's will, in this case in the direction of his step daughters.

Of course, the Mormons who practice polygamy and occasional murder are as rare, or more exceptional than the Muslims who fly airplanes into buildings or decapitate school teachers for daring to teach girls how to read and write.

But, until recently, I had not thought of Catholics as fundamentalists or extremists. Sure, there may be extremists in any group, but I know so many Catholics who accommodate their religion to the practice of contraception and certainly to free speech and to  the separation of church and state. 

But when a hundred Catholic congregants attended a town meeting to vote for their church to be awarded taxpayer funds to the church, I saw the Church differently. 

These folks were not asking to be reimbursed for a soup kitchen they might have run, but they were asking the town, which has Protestants, Jews and likely a few well hidden Muslims, to pay for the church school which teaches their kids how to be good Catholics. 

And they could not be shamed by appeals to patriotism, or by arguments that  separation of church and state is a good thing, because, after all, it is separation of church and state which grants the church exemption from taxation. It did not shame these true believers to take the tax break with one hand and to hold out the other for taxpayer funds.

Christopher Hitchens

Their minds could not be changed by argument. Their priest was there, in his collar. They were there to strike a blow for their church. Anything that got between them and the money was  "anti-Catholic" and "anti-religion."

Somehow, when I listened to these folks, George Carlin floated up in front of my eyes: "God will send you to burn and suffer for all time! BUT, he LOVES you! And he needs MONEY!"

The essential parts of democracy boil down to two major things:

1/ You must have freedom of speech, to say what you think.

2/ You must agree that once the majority has spoken, has written down a set of rules, even if you disagree, until you can convince the majority to change those rules, you abide by them.  So, if the majority agrees the state should not establish a Church by proclaiming an official state church or by supporting it with taxes, then, until you can change that rule, you abide by it.

You can say, well, we elected a Catholic Supreme Court and they have said there is no such thing as separation of church and state, that separation of church and state is unconstitutional. 

But I will say: The Court is actually not elected. To change the Constitution on something so fundamental, you need Congress and 2/3 of the states to amend it.

If the Court said, well, actually, that thing about freedom of speech, that doesn't really apply any more, then we would rebel.

Oh, wait, actually, the Court did do that, once. Oliver Wendell Holmes said that in Schenck.  The Court killed freedom of speech, practically speaking.

Of course, the Court had a lot of help from President Wilson, J. Edgar Hoover and a host of absolutist fundamentalists who believed in a White, Christian, Anglo Saxon America.

Now we have, in Hampton, a church which believes in power over principle. This church has 1,400 families attending, which likely means about 6,000 citizens in a town of 20,000 souls.  And the members or friends are on the school board, the town budget committee, the zoning board, you name it. They are well placed.

So, it doesn't matter about separation of church and state, the faithful will do whatever they want to do, and they'll use the Heavenly Father as the reason.