Supreme Court is wrong: Prayers divide
By Richard Cohen, WashPost, Updated: May 6 at 10:07 am
It was in the fifth grade that I confronted the crucifix. It hung ominously in Mrs. McCarthy’s classroom, looming on the wall opposite the door. I was the messenger for the day, stationed just outside the principal’s office, where I was given the occasional note to deliver to a classroom. The first time I entered Mrs. McCarthy’s, I recoiled and nearly did not go in. The crucifix, macabre or so it seemed to me, announced that this particular classroom was not for me. I was in a public school, but this was a parochial classroom.
I am old enough to chuckle about that experience and my feelings – this was PS 39, after all – but I recognize, too, how the invocation of religion can be seen as a hostile act. The Supreme Court yesterday ruled, more or less, that that is not the case – the prayers conducted under government auspices are no more than ceremonial traditions, innocent, benign, a bit of atavistic Americana.
The five justices in the majority are wrong. The prayers separate. They announce to nonbelievers that this place – this city council meeting, this courtroom, this place where you have come beseeching the government for something – is not yours. It belongs to them. It is their prayer they are reciting. So it is their courtroom or city council chamber and you, the supplicant, are an outsider – not one of them.
I heard one of the plaintiffs in the case interviewed on National Public Radio and she recounted how an ancestor had fled from the joyously anti-Semitic Cossacks — oh, how they loved to kill Jews! – and how another had suffered under the Nazis, and I thought, “Oh, give me a break! This is America.” There are no Cossacks here, and the Nazis have been vanquished, the very last of them, creaky 90-year-olds, being hunted down by the German government for the incomprehensible crimes of so long ago. She sounded silly to me, alarmist – a bit too melodramatic.
(More here.)
It was in the fifth grade that I confronted the crucifix. It hung ominously in Mrs. McCarthy’s classroom, looming on the wall opposite the door. I was the messenger for the day, stationed just outside the principal’s office, where I was given the occasional note to deliver to a classroom. The first time I entered Mrs. McCarthy’s, I recoiled and nearly did not go in. The crucifix, macabre or so it seemed to me, announced that this particular classroom was not for me. I was in a public school, but this was a parochial classroom.
I am old enough to chuckle about that experience and my feelings – this was PS 39, after all – but I recognize, too, how the invocation of religion can be seen as a hostile act. The Supreme Court yesterday ruled, more or less, that that is not the case – the prayers conducted under government auspices are no more than ceremonial traditions, innocent, benign, a bit of atavistic Americana.
The five justices in the majority are wrong. The prayers separate. They announce to nonbelievers that this place – this city council meeting, this courtroom, this place where you have come beseeching the government for something – is not yours. It belongs to them. It is their prayer they are reciting. So it is their courtroom or city council chamber and you, the supplicant, are an outsider – not one of them.
I heard one of the plaintiffs in the case interviewed on National Public Radio and she recounted how an ancestor had fled from the joyously anti-Semitic Cossacks — oh, how they loved to kill Jews! – and how another had suffered under the Nazis, and I thought, “Oh, give me a break! This is America.” There are no Cossacks here, and the Nazis have been vanquished, the very last of them, creaky 90-year-olds, being hunted down by the German government for the incomprehensible crimes of so long ago. She sounded silly to me, alarmist – a bit too melodramatic.
(More here.)
Powered by Blogger
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home