Private: keep out!

If the ultraconservative Heritage Foundation has its way, Congress will "begin a new national debate to help renew the role of religion in American life' " It will pass a resolution "that data on religious practice are useful for policymakers and researchers as part of the public policy debate," "commission research on the relationship between regular church attendance and social issues," and "mandate a census question on religious practice." Congress will also "fund federal experiments with school choice that include religiously affiliated schools."

The president of the United States, the Heritage Foundation also insists, should "appoint judges who are more sensitive to the role of religion in public life," "direct the Bureau of the Census to record levels of religious practice in the census for the year 2000:' and "issue a directive to all federal agencies making clear that cooperation between government entities and the socially medical, and educational services of faith,based organizations does not violate separation of church and state."

The Supreme Court, recommends Heritage, "should review the decisions in which it has changed the laws of the land [sic! by changing commonly held beliefs regarding the Constitution and religion [sic!] and send to Congress those that should have been the object of legislative action rather than judicial reinterpretation [sic!]."

These startling public policy recommendations are the heart of a 29-page "backgrounder" entitled Why Religion Matters: The Impact of Religious Practice on Sociai Stability. The document was issued on january 25, 1996, by the Heritage Foundation, a right,wing extremist think tank founded by radical right theoretician and activist Paul Weyrich. The recommendations are purportedly based on surveys of social science literature which find a positive correlation between religious belief and/or practice and family strength, family economic advancement, "sound moral judgment," mental and physical health, and other benefits. While the Heritage Foundations conclusions are not nuanced and do not begin to suggest the complexities of the myriad forms of religious belief and practice and their varied effects--positive, negative, and neutral--on the lives of individuals, families, and communities, these issues are certainly suitable subjects for re, search--but not by government.

Thanks to the wisdom and foresight of this country's founders, all levels of government are required by the US. Constitution as well as state constitutions to be religiously neutral. Religion is a private matter, off limits to government. Government needs to know only enough about religion to avoid becoming entangled with it, to avoid using public funds to support it, and to avoid favoring some religions over others. "For purposes of this discussion, humanism and other nonsupernaturalistic life stances may be regarded as religions. The last thing this country needs is to have government, which has enough difficulty trying to carry out the purely secular functions delegated to it in the federal and state constitutions, grab the tar baby of religion and jump into the bramble bush of sectarian controversy.

Thus all of the Heritage Foundation's public policy recommendations are dangerous: not only are they bad public policy but they pose serious threats to our constitutional arrangement of church-state separation. Let's look at the details.

Should Congress "begin a new national debate to help renew the role of religion in American life"? If religion flourishes in the United States under our church,state separation arrangement while languishing in countries with greater or lesser degrees of church,state union, why would religion even want government help or involvement? As Congress has no constitutional authority to legislate regarding religion, where does it get the authority to "begin a national debate to help renew the role of religion." The Heritage folks seem not to agree with Ben Franklins dictum: "When a religion is good, I conceive it will support itself, and when it does not do so, and God chooses not to do so, so that its professors are obliged to call for the help of the civil power, "its a sign, I apprehend, of its being a bad one."

Should Congress pass resolutions about religious practice and "commission research on the relationship between regular church attendance and social issues"? No. Again, such action would exceed its constitutional authority, violate the First Amendment, and plunge lawmakers into religious controversies.

Should Congress or the president require the Census Bureau to ask questions about religious practice? Absolutely not. While such information might be useful to social scientists, government has no business compelling citizens to answer questions about religion. Let private posters do it. Furthermore, as most polling about religion and religious practice tends to be simplistic and superficial, would census bureau questions likely be any better?

Should Congress "fund federal experiments with school choice that include religiously affiliated schools"? Between 1965 and 1993 voters in Massachusetts, New York, Maryland, the District of Columbia, Michigan, Missouri, Nebraska, Colorado, Idaho, California, Oregon, Washington, and Alaska voted with a cumulative total vote of 66.9 per, cent to 33.1 percent to oppose any diversion of public funds to nonpublic schools, the vast majority of which are pervasively sectarian. The U.S. Senate defeated such a measure sponsored by Senators Bob Dole, Dan Coates, and Joseph Lieberman in 1994 and in March 1996 Senate Democrats, augmented by a couple of Republicans, blocked GOP efforts to impose a voucher "experiment" on the District of Columbia, our last colony. (If you want to see all the reasons why choice/voucher plan should be opposed, read The Case Against School Vouchers by Al Menendez, John Swomley, and myself, available for $10 from Americans for Religious Liberty, P.O. Box 6656, Silver Spring, MD 20916.)

Should the president "appoint judges who are more sensitive to the role of religion in public life"? Does Heritage mean more judges like William Rehnquist and Antonin Scalia, who would tear down Jefferson's and Madisons wall of separation, or judges like William Brennan and Thurgood Marshall, who understood, appreciated, and strove to protect religious freedom? I think we all know the answer.

Should the Supreme Court review its prior church,state decisions (you may want to reread paragraph three)? It is generally only the ultraconservative religion political extremists who disagree with the Supreme Court's long line of rulings upholding church,state separation. The Heritage Foundation folks seem not to grasp that the Bill of Rights was and is intended as a brake on majoritarian attempts to we away the rights of individuals and minorities. The America that the Heritage Foundation envisions is the cramped and dismal little world of Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell, James Dobson, Paul Weyrich, D. James Kennedy, the extremist minority within the Catholic tradition, and their followers and fellow travelers.

This is a watershed political year. If the extremist-s who are consolidating their takeover of the Republican Party succeed in capturing the White House and tightening their grip on Congress, the Census Bureau prying into the religious beliefs and practices of an U.S. citizens will truly be the least of our worries.

Finally, is it not strange that people who vociferously decry "big government" want to expand the power of government over our private lives and compel us to pay taxes to support sectarian institutions?

Edd Doerr is president of the American Humanist Association and executive director of Americans for Religious Liberty.