Should religious student clubs be allowed in public schools?

Yes

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by Robert Allport

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Should Religious Student Clubs Be Allowed in Public Schools

Religious clubs should not only be allowed in public schools, they should be encouraged as an object lesson in tolerance and respect for social diversity. Kids spend a vast amount of time in the educational systems and institutions of society and they do so for the purpose of learning. Parents, even adults having no kids in school, take very seriously the role and quality of education presented to the next generation of young citizens; and rightly so.

Religion has played a vital role in society since the dawn of time. With obvious exceptions, humanity is religious at heart. Empires and civilizations have been built around a vast host of deities. Western civilization of today evolved from polytheistic societies that enjoyed a wide margin of tolerance for diversity. Religious fervor is credited for a vast migration of early settlers to America and the whole of our Constitutional Democracy was irrefutably founded on sound, religious principles.

It took religious enlightenment to arrive at the monumental conclusion that "all men are created equal," and it was on the basis of this religious cornerstone that Civil Rights finally brought home the ultimate liberation of an entire nation of home born foreign nationals. Taking for granted that reasonable men would continue and maintain the practice of spiritual communion between heart and heaven, our founding fathers felt no sense of trepidation for their decision to prohibit the policy of a religious state. They were free men of religious conviction founding a free nation.

Religious tradition was intricately woven into the fabric of Continental Congress in accord with Constitutional Congress. At the very heart of Democracy, in the very halls of Congress, they neither established a formal religion nor prohibited the exercise of such liberty. They were free of such tyranny. Citizens were free to choose and that liberty was not infringed upon just because it took place on the floor of Congress.

Separation of Church and State as we know it today is the invention of a hellish strategy developed in the bowels of spiritual insurgents and renegades who fell from grace. We all know it; they know it and all but the blind guides of the blind seem to be privy to a cosmic conflict that has raged since the beginning. This is nothing more or less than that great struggle between good and evil, heaven and hell being played out on the stage of humanity. Religious advocates of the true spirit of tolerance vested in the intent of our great Constitution and Democracy take consolation that the end of this age of Man will fully disclose the deluded folly of a fallen nobility.

While in the course of berating the ideal educational opportunity to foster the concepts of religious liberty, tolerance, appreciation and respect for diversity, who among us has stopped to question the concept of a State enforced secular education? Where is the citizen's liberty in a great nation that mandates required attendance in school systems subsidized by tax monies? What are the consequences for refusal to attend State established schools? Have we not established and sanctioned, under penalty of law, one religion, the religion of Man, while prohibiting the free exercise of the religion of the Ages? What is the hypocritical difference in practice between what we have devolved and what we have witnessed in totalitarian regimes that enforce State indoctrination of youth?

"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof..." It does not require a Harvard Law Degree to grasp the simplicity of this Constitutional provision. Men of simple means are well able to take from it the precise meaning vested in its great context. Should religious student clubs be allowed in public schools? I have heard nothing to the effect that Congress has made a law mandating the establishment of religious student clubs. I have heard nothing to the effect that attendance of religious student clubs is required and enforced by Congress. Just so we are clear on this matter, Congress has made no law respecting the establishment of religious student clubs and it's unlikely that they ever will.

It was Congress themselves who prohibited infringement upon religious freedom of expression. How may Congress oppose the very laws it established by prohibiting the exercise of a civil liberty within the very halls of its own educational institutions? That provision was created in the very bowels, heart and soul of American government: it contained no clauses, conditions, restrictions, nor exceptions. The very question, "should we allow" reeks with high treason against the very foundation of our civil liberty. What part of Congress shall make no law prohibiting the free exercise of religious freedom do we not seem capable of understanding? What manner of anti-Christian, anti-religious heart beats in the raging breast of some who display the same nature of hatred for religious liberty that animated the raging masses who vehemently withstood racial equality?

Yes, our public educational systems are owned, operated, enforced and financed at the State and Federal levels. What does the voluntary exercise and organization of religious student clubs have to do with that? Absolutely nothing. Has Congress established a law that mandates religious students clubs? No. Has Congress prohibited the exercise of religious freedom? It does to the extent that we allow pedestrian critics of an anti-religious sort to dictate bogus, deluded laws to the contrary. At this proposal, true Americans should be engulfed with the same patriotic fervor that gave birth to the great States of America in the beginning. Why strike a Revolutionary chord of liberty from one sort of tyranny just to succumb to another form of humanist tyranny?

In the final analysis, this whole issue is not about civil-religious liberties or the comingling of Church and State affairs. The deluded whitewash employed to cloak those tired old rationalizations and justifications has worn so thin that even the most pious antagonistic humanist who opposes religious liberty at any level of society stands as naked as those who withstood the Civil Rights Movement for racial equality. They had their brand of deluded rationalizations, too. At the end of the day, however, their myriad excuses were nothing but a smoke screen to conceal a seething hatred, contempt and fear of a race of people they wished would go away. This whole issue is not about religious liberty at all. It's about the self-deluded condition of hateful hearts who fear God and wish he would simply go away.

The continuing quest for religious liberty and tolerance at every level of society is about exposing the condition of the individual who stands for or against the Creator who endowed all men with certain inalienable rights: it's about exposing the heart of a nation. The issue of religious student clubs is merely one more among many other means divinely employed to determine where each of us stand in the scheme of eternity: it's about choices that issue from the heart. These are the realistic affairs being played out and weighed in the balance behind the veil of eternal-spiritual verses temporal-natural dimensions. The principle question is not so much about whether to allow religious student clubs as it is about the nature of arrangements being made for life after death and that awesome introduction to the One stood for or against.

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