A case heard Wednesday by the Supreme Court is a reminder that governmental involvement in religious expression does so to the detriment of religion itself. In Summum v. Pleasant Grove City, Utah, the court heard an appeal arising from a faith group’s request to place a monument of its Seven Aphorisms next to a Ten Commandments monument in a city park.
A friend-of-the-court brief filed by the Baptist Joint Committee and a coalition of religious freedom advocates argued, however, that the case has an Establishment Clause dimension that should be before the court.
“Because of the peculiarities of Tenth Circuit jurisprudence, Summum couched its legal claims principally in the language of free speech and viewpoint discrimination. The proper locus of its complaint is, however, the Establishment Clause — which the Founders intended to serve as the principal bulwark against the government’s resort to rank denominational prejudice,” the brief states. “And although Summum has yet to develop its Establishment Clause claim and marshal its evidence, there is enough in the record to suggest that Pleasant Grove’s conduct may well have had a discriminatory object.”
Baptist Joint Committee General Counsel K. Hollyn Hollman warns that while the Court will not reach the religious liberty issue, the facts demonstrate an inherent problem with religious displays on government property.
“The proclamation of religious Scripture or principles should come from people of faith, not the government,” Hollman said.
“Groups are free to design and construct monuments that support their faith and place them on private property,” Hollman said. “However, when the government decides which religious displays to accept and rejects others, it raises questions of fairness and invites suspicion from those who rightly expect government to be neutral in matters of religion.”
