Freedom of and Freedom from Religion

Wednesday March 28, 2012

     Today Martha and I got to present Chapter 13 of "Major Problems in American Constitutional History."  Our topic was Freedom of and Freedom from Religion.  At first, I was not that interested in the topic because I do not have much interest in the topic.  However, the text did a good job illustrating different problems between religion and government over the years.  It even had court cases from the 21st century.  I also was able to relate to some of the issues that were brought up, such as saying "One nation under God" in the pledge of allegiance and having a "moment of silence" at the beginning of each school day because these issues became major problems when I was in high school.
     Before we even started our discussion I reminded the class that many people came to America for religious freedom, yet they were intolerant of others.  Also, according to the text, religion was not that big of an issue until the 1940s when new immigrants brought a lot more diversity.
     Document 1 dealt with the court case of Engel v. Vitale.  This case dealt with a city in New York when the government created a prayer and had school children recite it every day.  The prayer was, "Almighty God, we acknowledge our dependence upon Thee, and we beg Thy blessings upon us, our parents, our teachers, and our country.  Amen."  This case determined that it is unconstitutional for state officials to compose an official school prayer and encourage it to be said in public schools.  However, some officials still believed that this prayer was worded so vaguely that it did not promote any particular religion, and therefore, did not violate the First Amendment.  I find it funny that some people thought that back then.  Today, we have many different religions in this country who do not pray to one god, but either several or none at all.  Back in 1962 when this case was happening, however, there must not been as many different religions with multiple gods.  Either way, government officials cannot create a prayer and make school children recite it (especially because we all know how gullible children are...).
     We also looked at the court case from 1985 Wallace v. Jaffree.  In this case Jaffree was a parent of 3 children.  An Alabama law authorized teachers to set aside one minute at the start of each day for a moment of "silent meditation or voluntary prayer."  In this case the teachers were leading prayers and the students was saying them out loud in unison.  Jaffree said it violated the First Amendment and that his children were subject to carious acts of religious indoctrination.  When his children did not recite the prayer they were ostracized from their peers/classmates.  In the end, the Supreme Court said the law was unconstitutional in a 6-3 vote.
     The last document was talked about today (we ran out of time to discuss the essays) was document 7.  This was the court case of Zelman v. Simmons-Harris (2002).  Public schools in Cleveland, Ohio were deemed failures by the federal government.  The Pilot Project Scholarship Program was created to provide tuition vouchers for up to $2,250 a year to some parents of students to attend participating public or private schools in the city and neighboring suburbs.  The vouchers were distributed to parents according to financial need and the parents got to choose where to enroll their children.  The problem with this system was that 82% of participating private schools had a religious affiliation.  Many people thought this violated the First Amendment because it was mixing church and state.  The Supreme Court ruled that it did not violate the Establishment Clause because it passed a 5 part test:
1.) the program must have a valid secular purpose
2.) aid must go to parents and not to the schools
3.) a broad class of beneficiaries must be covered
4.) the program must be neutral with respect to religion, and
5.) there must be adequate nonreligious options
Upon deciding the case, the judges said that they were being consistent in this case like they were with Mueller, Witters, and Zobrest.
     Along with religion, we also talked more about periodization.  The lists that we made up on Monday were not periodization, they were chronology.  This was to show students that it can be difficult to mix/confuse the two different ways to sort historical events.  Periodization has to have years/dates and sometimes things can overlap between multiple periods, again, the Cold War comes to mind.  It is important to keep in mind that periodization is not simply a list of events, it is a generalization of a period.  Our homework for today was to make two different periodizations of our life.  I have chose to do mine in a social aspect and in an economic aspect.  Though my life is but twenty years long, I have experienced enough to make a periodization of my life.

Social Periodization
1991-1994     communication only with family
1995-1998     making first real friends/a little shy (early school years)
1998-2001     outspoken (learning to speak your mind)
2002-2005     true tests of friendships (middle/high school)
2006-2009     planning for the future (high school graduation)         
2010-2012     working toward goals & keeping best friends close

Economic Periodization
1991-1996     relied completely on parents for everything
1997-2002     chores
2003-2008     first jobs
2009-2012     more independence/pay for everything myself