{"id":9,"date":"2010-06-09T11:15:16","date_gmt":"2010-06-09T11:15:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/religionandpubliclife\/2010\/06\/enfield-graduations-back-to-court.html"},"modified":"2010-06-09T11:15:16","modified_gmt":"2010-06-09T11:15:16","slug":"enfield-graduations-back-to-court","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/2010\/06\/enfield-graduations-back-to-court.html","title":{"rendered":"Enfield Graduations Back to Court"},"content":{"rendered":"

When last we visited<\/a> the legal wrangle over whether Enfield, CT could hold its high school graduation ceremonies in the sanctuary of a nearby magachurch, a federal judge had granted an injunction to the contrary, backed up by a lengthy opinion laying out why doing so would violate the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment. Since then (i.e. a week ago) the Enfield school board voted 5-4 to hold the graduations at their two high schools and not to pursue the matter further in court–and then, yesterday evening, reversed itself<\/a> on the legal issue, thanks to the switch of one Republican member.<\/p>\n

This means that the Connecticut Family Institute–whose signature issue, same-sex marriage, is now a settled right in the Nutmeg State–has a new cause to justify its existence. And it means that the American Center for Law and Justice, which is handling the case for nothing, has a case it may well be able to ride up to the Supreme Court–unless the Enfield board re-reverses itself.<\/p>\n

School board Chairman Gregory Stokes, the evangelical pastor who has pushed the church venue, cited an “overwhelming outcry” from the Enfield populace to justify moving ahead with an appeal. Board member Donna Szewczak said she switched her vote because “we needed to take a strong
\nstance” against the American Civil Liberties Union and People United for Separation of Church and State, the two groups who represented the anonymous plaintiffs (a non-religious and a Jewish family).<\/p>\n

Although Hartford Courant <\/i>columnist Rick Green has had a good time<\/a> accusing the Connecticut Family Institute of being driven mostly by pecuniary self-interest, it’s normal for rights battles of this kind to be waged by professional partisans with agendas (and pecuniary needs) of their own. So what, exactly, are the agendas here?<\/p>\n


\n
Here’s what the head of the CFI told Green:<\/p>\n

The
\nquestion of whether a graduation should be held at the church
\nshould be up to the people. First Cathedral was being discriminated
\nagainst. This was a misreading of the First Amendment.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In
\nother words, religious institutions should be able to have the same
\naccess to government contracts as non-religious institutions. This is
\nthe “neutrality” claim that has been made with respect to government
\nfunding of religious institutions under various faith-based initiatives.<\/p>\n

On the other side, the ACLU is standing for the principle that
\nindividuals participating in public school ceremonies should not be
\nsubjected to religious messages as a matter of official policy. In the
\n1992 case Lee<\/i>
\nv. Weisman<\/i><\/a>, the Supreme Court held that officially
\ndesignated prayer at high school graduation ceremonies was
\nunconstitutional. The decision in the 5-4 case was written by Justice
\nAnthony Kennedy, who currently represents the swing vote in such
\ncases. Should the Enfield case reach the high court, the question will
\nbe whether he will take an identical view of the sort of message sent to the
\ngraduates by the crosses and other Christian iconography present in
\nBloomfield’s First Cathedral church.<\/p>\n

Americans tend to have a visceral sympathy for Free Exercise claims. For
\nexample, it’s not hard to get laws passed giving individuals rights to
\ntake days off from work etc. for religious reasons. But there’s far more
\nresistance to Establishment cases, where plaintiffs
\nobject to some arguably religious public practice or installation that strikes the majority as innocuous. The prayer and Bible reading decisions of the early 1960s are still hard for many to swallow.<\/p>\n

The other evening I was sitting around with some friends from the
\nneighborhood who said they were going to stop contributing to the ACLU
\nbecause it had gone too far in the Enfield case. When I suggested that
\nthey might feel differently if they belonged to a religious minority,
\nthey were polite enough not to disagree–but whether they’ll be writing
\nthose checks, I don’t know. <\/p>\n

Once upon a time, America’s public schools began each day with a reading
\nfrom the King James Version of the Bible. The Roman Catholics, considering it a Protestant thing, protested.
\nThe Protestants were unimpressed. So the Catholics set up a school system of their own. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When last we visited the legal wrangle over whether Enfield, CT could hold its high school graduation ceremonies in the sanctuary of a nearby magachurch, a federal judge had granted an injunction to the contrary, backed up by a lengthy opinion laying out why doing so would violate the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment.…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":222,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"yoast_head":"\nEnfield Graduations Back to Court - Religion & Public Life With Mark Silk<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/2010\/06\/enfield-graduations-back-to-court.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Enfield Graduations Back to Court - Religion & Public Life With Mark Silk\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"When last we visited the legal wrangle over whether Enfield, CT could hold its high school graduation ceremonies in the sanctuary of a nearby magachurch, a federal judge had granted an injunction to the contrary, backed up by a lengthy opinion laying out why doing so would violate the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment.…\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/2010\/06\/enfield-graduations-back-to-court.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Religion & Public Life With Mark Silk\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2010-06-09T11:15:16+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Mark Silk\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Enfield Graduations Back to Court - Religion & Public Life With Mark Silk","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/2010\/06\/enfield-graduations-back-to-court.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Enfield Graduations Back to Court - Religion & Public Life With Mark Silk","og_description":"When last we visited the legal wrangle over whether Enfield, CT could hold its high school graduation ceremonies in the sanctuary of a nearby magachurch, a federal judge had granted an injunction to the contrary, backed up by a lengthy opinion laying out why doing so would violate the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment.…","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/2010\/06\/enfield-graduations-back-to-court.html","og_site_name":"Religion & Public Life With Mark Silk","article_published_time":"2010-06-09T11:15:16+00:00","author":"Mark Silk","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/2010\/06\/enfield-graduations-back-to-court.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/2010\/06\/enfield-graduations-back-to-court.html","name":"Enfield Graduations Back to Court - Religion & Public Life With Mark Silk","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/#website"},"datePublished":"2010-06-09T11:15:16+00:00","dateModified":"2010-06-09T11:15:16+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/#\/schema\/person\/927f8b0a579506efe527e8e0967f519d"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/2010\/06\/enfield-graduations-back-to-court.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/2010\/06\/enfield-graduations-back-to-court.html"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/2010\/06\/enfield-graduations-back-to-court.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Enfield Graduations Back to Court"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/","name":"Religion & Public Life With Mark Silk","description":"Beliefnet Voices","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/#\/schema\/person\/927f8b0a579506efe527e8e0967f519d","name":"Mark Silk","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/c82\/c82eec82562775fad85f4a47e1a5fc4ax96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/c82\/c82eec82562775fad85f4a47e1a5fc4ax96.jpg","caption":"Mark Silk"},"description":"Mark Silk graduated from Harvard College in 1972 and earned his Ph.D. in medieval history from Harvard University in 1982. After teaching at Harvard in the Department of History and Literature for three years, he became editor of the Boston Review. In 1987 he joined the staff of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, where he worked variously as a reporter, editorial writer and columnist. In 1996 he became the founding director of the Leonard E. Greenberg Center for the Study of Religion in Public Life at Trinity College and in 1998 founding editor of Religion in the News, a magazine published by the Center that examines how the news media handle religious subject matter. In 2005, he was named director of the Trinity College Program on Public Values, comprising both the Greenberg Center and a new Institute for the Study of Secularism in Society and Culture directed by Barry Kosmin. In 2007, he became Professor of Religion in Public Life at the College. Professor Silk is the author of Spiritual Politics: Religion and America Since World War II and Unsecular Media: Making News of Religion in America. He is co-editor of Religion by Region, an eight-volume series on religion and public life in the United States, and co-author of The American Establishment, Making Capitalism Work, and One Nation Divisible: How Regional Religious Differences Shape American Politics. In 2007 he inaugurated Spiritual Politics, a blog on religion and American political culture.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/author\/msilk"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/222"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}