Whitehead understands that a narrow definition of legal standing may someday come back to haunt religious conservatives.
Last week, we here at “The Wall of Separation” noted that the Supreme Court had heard arguments in an important case dealing with the right of taxpayers to challenge White House expenditures promoting the “faith-based” initiative.
The media has a tendency to portray legal showdowns like this in simplistic terms. The advocates of church-state separation are in one camp, and the religious conservatives are in another.
But that old formulation does not hold true in Hein v. Freedom From Religion Foundation. In this case, Wisconsin taxpayers are seeking “standing” – the right to sue — over public funds the Bush administration spent to set up special offices and hold conferences to promote the faith-based initiative. It’s true that several leading Religious Right groups, including TV preacher Pat Robertson’s American Center for Law and Justice, oppose the move and have asked the high court to slam the courthouse door in the face of these plaintiffs.
But not all religious conservatives agree. One dissenter is John W. Whitehead, founder and president of the Rutherford Institute in Charlottesville, Va. In an interesting column published in Legal Times, Whitehead explained why conservative Christian groups that seek to curtail the right to sue are misguided.
“Because faith-based initiatives programs seem to favor Christians, these groups have aligned themselves with the current administration,” Whitehead writes. “But by relying on the artificial distinction between spending decisions by Congress and those by the executive branch, these particular Christian groups have taken an overly narrow view of the issue and thus failed to see the bigger picture – and the greater threats to religious freedom.”
He continues, “For example, would these same Christian groups be equally supportive if the White House – under a president not so sympathetic to Christians – decided to purchase menorahs for display in federal offices? What if the executive branch opted to produce pamphlets extolling the virtues of Wicca? Or what if, as Judge Richard Posner of the 7th Circuit pointed out, the homeland security secretary decided that in order to reduce the threat of domestic terrorism by al Qaeda, the U.S. government should build a mosque and employ an imam to conduct Islamic services using the agency’s general funds?”
Americans United and the Rutherford Institute don’t always see eye to eye on what constitutes an “establishment of religion.” But Whitehead is astute enough to realize that the proper relationship between church and state will only be harder to determine if Americans can’t even get their cases into the courts. He also understands that a narrow definition of legal standing may someday come back to haunt religious conservatives.
It’s a shame more conservative Christians can’t see that.
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