From our Tortured Relationship between Religion and State Department

So here’s a story about Wellesley Middle School in Massachusetts, which took a gaggle of kids off to some local Islamic Cultural Center for some multicultural field trip. In the course of it, the guys running the center said their prayers and some of the kids decided to join in. Somebody videotaped the thing and now there’s a lawsuit being filed against the school for violating the establishment clause.

In a sane world, none of this would be happening. Wellesley wouldn’t have taken the kids to this dodgy place. The kids would not have been encourage to pray in a religious tradition about which they knew nothing.

But, just as much, Christians would not now be invoking the stupid “banish all religion from the public square” logic they have hitherto rightly protested. This is a classic example of how liberalism makes new and disastrous mistakes and then stupid conservatives make sure we go on making them. Where, once upon a time, Christians were upset at the utter denuding of our secularized schools from all mention of God, now they are battling vigorously to make sure that we keep making a desert and calling it peace.

In a sane world, this dumb blunder would have been dealt with by, say, a little visit to a synagogue, a Catholic Church, and an vote on which Protestant Church the students wanted to taste, plus a little reminder that they are there to observe, not participate.

But no. When you get rid of the Big Laws, you get the small ones. So now it’s lawsuit city and a dumb little failure to chaperone is being turned into yet another opportunity to enforce a draconian silence on all religious conversation in the public square.

For more information on what I think is the sane approach to promoting healthy religious conversation among our schoolkids, go here.