Fallout From Secular Revolution Still Clouds America's Public Square

0 Comments | Insight on the News, March 5, 2001 | by Don Feder

West of Austin, Texas, investigators have found what they believe to be the remains of the archbishop of atheism, Madalyn Murray O'Hair. God rest her soul. O'Hair and two family members were abducted and murdered in 1995 during the course of a robbery, apparently by an ex-employee of her American Atheists Inc.

O'Hair liked to style herself as "the most hated woman in America" -- a title she worked hard to secure. Her outbursts were deliberately provocative. Thus, according to O'Hair, the pope should be tried for "crimes against humanity" and the Bible is a fraud concocted "by a bunch of Jews starved [and] wandering around the Sinai desert."

O'Hair is dead, but the revolution she helped to launch -- to expunge religion from our public life -- is very much with us.

O'Hair was best-known for her 1963 Supreme Court case that ended school prayer. Since then, the high court has banned invocations at graduation ceremonies, student-led prayers at football games, display of the Ten Commandments in schools and Nativity scenes standing alone in public places -- as well as other horrors lately discovered to constitute an establishment of religion.

Most of those who've taken up O'Hair's cause aren't atheists. Many even have a vague belief in God. But all are obsessive. For them, every public manifestation of faith is an attack on the foundations of democratic government. If they can't call it unconstitutional, even under their twisted interpretation of the First Amendment, they complain that it's insensitive or an attack on diversity.

Mention of Jesus in prayers offered at George W. Bush's inauguration were "inappropriate and insensitive," stormed Barry Lynn of Americans United for the Separation of Church and State. These blessings "excluded tens of millions of Americans who are Muslims, Jews, Buddhists, Shintoists, atheists and agnostics," complained attorney Alan Dershowitz. Perhaps Dershowitz would like to end the practice of presidents taking the oath of office on a Bible (up to this point, a Christian Bible) which, by his reasoning, also would exclude all of the aforementioned.

Seth Leibsohn of the Jewish Policy Center notes that references to Jesus were included in prayers at the inaugurations of Franklin Roosevelt, John F. Kennedy, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan -- and that apostle of inclusion, Bill Clinton. And, miracle of miracles, there wasn't mass alienation among America's non-Christians.

The latest battlefield in this holy war is Bush's initiative for federal support of faith-based programs that alleviate social ills. As one of his first official acts, the president established a White House office to coordinate funding of these programs (see "Bush Embraces Charitable Choice," Feb. 26). This has elicited the predictable response from secularist Chicken Littles (the First Amendment is falling). The proposal "violates every premise of the ... establishment clause prohibiting government promotion of religion," huffs Lynn. Not at all. It would promote drug-rehabilitation programs, soup kitchens, homeless shelters and the like run by religious institutions. Government would aid the charities, not their ministries.

The return on public investment here is far greater than from traditional government programs. But devout secularists would rather see needs go unmet than have federal funds go to religious bodies doing good work. For the disciples of O'Hair, whatever they call themselves (secularists, civil libertarians), faith is automatically suspect.

Any connection between religion and government becomes an ominous entanglement of church and state -- even something as innocuous as a minister affirming the president's faith at his inauguration or a superintendent of schools voicing approval of a private group distributing Ten Commandments book covers.

Uprooting God from our culture does society no good. Public manifestations of faith (your faith, my faith, anyone's faith) are reminders that there is a higher authority to whom we all are accountable. O'Hair died horribly, a victim of the world she helped to shape. Without the-deity she fought so hard against, there is no right and wrong, and increasingly people are ruled by their passions and humanity is a tragedy waiting to happen.

Don Feder writes editorials for the Boston Herald and is nationally syndicated.