Salt Lake City, USA - The most recent unanimous ruling handed down by the Supreme Court raises concerns about a broader movement within the court that could seriously weaken religious liberty.
The court ruled a city government in Utah has the right to refuse the donation of a monument from a religious sect called Summum for display in a public park. However, that same public park has displayed a Ten Commandments monument for decades and other religious monuments as well.
Because the high court treated this matter as a free speech case and not a religion case, the reach of the Summum decision may be somewhat limited. Viewed from the perspective of a larger constitutional context, however, the decision is more than a little troubling.
By refusing to give Summum the same recognition as other religions in the same park, the Supreme Court effectively created a hierarchy of religions, with Summum near the bottom, and made a judgment about the efficacy of a representation of that religion in a public place filled with representations of other religions.
Justice Samuel Alito's majority opinion argues that Summum followers have the right to hand out leaflets in the city park because that is private speech, but the erection of a permanent Summum monument is government speech. In other words, a monument in a public park reflects the views of the government. If Alito is correct, then the Ten Commandments monument in that same park has received government endorsement.
And if that does not run afoul of the U.S. Constitution's protection against the establishment of a religion, I don't know what does.
The Ten Commandments monument was not at issue in this case. But, future litigation will have to elicit a decision about the potential conflict of the government endorsing the viewpoint expressed in that religious tenet. That realization makes me nervous. Now that the conservative Alito has replaced the centrist Sandra Day O'Connor, I dread what the outcome of that case would be given tendencies already clearly demonstrated.
The court has dealt with the issue of Ten Commandments monuments before. In 2005, the Supreme Court said that such a monument on the grounds of the Texas Capitol did not violate the Constitution because the Ten Commandments "have an undeniable historical meaning" as well as "religious significance."
This sort of treatment of the Ten Commandments offends me not only as a believer in the First Amendment, but as a believer in God. I would prefer that government not include any religious monuments in public spaces, but to sanction the Ten Commandments for only historical meaning undermines the religious significance of that tenet of my faith and more. The court has in effect desacralized one of the foundational principles of Christianity and Judaism.
In 2007, the court also severely undercut the ability of ordinary citizens to bring lawsuits to protect their First Amendment rights.
Last week the court announced it will hear a case as to whether a cross to honor fallen soldiers can stand in a national preserve in Mojave, Calif. Incredibly, when a court ordered that this cross be removed, Congress passed a law selling one acre of land on which the cross stood to a private organization.
Combining legal issues from all the other cases mentioned above, it is not unreasonable to assert that this case could be the tipping point for the court's rightward shift on religion.
When making its ruling in the Mojave cross case, I hope the court understands that in our religiously diverse nation, no one is free to follow his or her religious beliefs (or non-beliefs) if the government is actively favoring certain religions over others. If, however, the court rules as it has recently, our Constitution's first freedom will become a shadow of its former self.
Rev. Dr. C. Welto n Gaddy is the president of Interfaith Alliance and serves as pastor for preaching at Northminster Baptist Church in Monroe, La.