Church and State Are Not Exactly Separate, Alfred University Professor Maintains 6/04/99
Alfred, NY -- In some ways, the American "separation of church and state" creed means the opposite.True, there's no state religion, prayer is banned from public schools, and taxes are not supposed to finance religious activities. But government branches continually tangle with religion, trying to decide just what church-state separation means. No session of the US Supreme Court is complete without some case involving religion. And since the religion label has a cash value, both the courts and the Internal Revenue Service spend time and energy figuring out who is entitled to it.Dr. Arthur (Larry) Greil, professor of sociology and health policy at Alfred University, has been watching and studying the American way of church-state separation and has become a nationally recognized authority on the subject.In August, he will present a paper on "Beyond Separation and Establishment: Toward a Multi-Dimensional Conception of Church-State Relations" at the annual meeting of the Association for the Sociology of Religion in Chicago. Written with a student, the paper is a study of how church-state separation works in western
Europe.Germany, for instance, has compulsory public schooling like ours. "But in the US, we have no problem saying 'I want to home-school my child.' There's a religious group outside Buffalo, the 12 Tribes, that does just that," Greil said in a recent interview. Religious home-schooling doesn't bother many Americans, but in Germany, it's a major political issue.In another example, Kosher butchering is outlawed in Switzerland as cruelty to animals (because they take longer to die than animals butchered in the usual way), so Orthodox Jews have to get their meat outside the country. Such a law wouldn't work here, "because our version of church-state separation implies that the government must keep hands off religion," Greil said. "Europeans are comfortable with a higher level of regulation."In a recent trip to Europe, he spoke on "The U.S. Supreme Court and Minority Religions" for a seminar at the London School of Economics."Separation of church and state, and also freedom of religion, have been interpreted here in a way that confers privileges on religion," Greil said. "It has become valuable for a group to be labeled a religion."As a result of our lack of laws on religion, the Supreme Court has been called upon to define religion in order to say which groups have the right to the label -- in other words, who can claim the right of free exercise of religion. The court has dealt with two questions -- "How do I know a religion when I see it?" and "What are the limits to free exercise of religion?"
Those are the issues Greil talked about in London.Most Supreme Court cases have involved the free exercise of
religion rather than tax issues, Greil said. For instance, when several Mormon polygamy cases were heard in the 1890s, the decisions boiled down to "You have freedom of religion as long as you act the way we think a religion should act."In 1944, the court heard US vs. Ballard. "Guy Ballard was the founder of the 'I AM Ascended Master Religious Activity,' which evolved into the Church Universal and Triumphant, which still exists in Montana," Greil said. (CUT disavows the connection.)"Ballard claimed to be able to channel the spirit of Jesus and other dead masters. He
advertised through the mails, was convicted of mail fraud, and went to the Supreme Court, claiming the right of free exercise of religion."The question became: Is this a religion or is this trash?" Greil continued. "The court ruled that whether his beliefs were stupid didn't matter; all they were empowered to decide was the question, Was he sincere?
They found no evidence that he was consciously defrauding people."In US vs. Seeger in 1965, the court went a step further. "Seeger claimed to be a conscientious objector even though he was an atheist," Greil said. "His belief was not based on God but on philosophy. Concluding war was wrong, he refused to serve. The court said a religion is anything central to your life, anything that functions in your life the same way religion functions in a religious person's life.
From there, the court has gone on to the definition that anything people believe in can be a religion."But there were limits. In 1968 Timothy Leary, convicted on marijuana charges, said marijuana was his central belief, "and the Supreme Court said, 'Don't push us,'" Greil said.In a way, it doesn't matter what the Supreme Court rules. "The government is not one voice. The IRS decides who gets to be a religion, because it's the IRS, not the court, that determines who gets a tax exemption ... In practice, the IRS has said that in order for a religion to count for tax purposes, it has to look like a Judeo-Christian religion, with church services and so on."Back in his classes at Alfred University, Greil tells his students that the Constitution's words are vague. Interpreting them isn't simple. "Our interpretation of state involvement in religion varies by institution," he said. "For instance, the government can't give money to Catholic schools but it can support Catholic hospitals."As for the annual December controversy about displaying Christian figures in public parks, local officials often solve it by adding symbols of other religions. "But why are two or three religious symbols less religious than only one?" he said. "I tell my students that church-state separation is easier to say than to do. In real life, religion and politics are always intertwined. The important thing is to
protect the rights of minorities."
