Bible Detectors

We've all seen those bright-eyed representatives from the Gideon Bible company standing inside the Yard gates and handing out pocket-sized scriptures. Some of us may have dismissed the whole evangelical enterprise as a nuisance or an embarrassing anachronism, while others may have admired the distributors' optimistic zeal.

It's unlikely, though, that many of us realized that only Harvard's status as a private school permits these innocuous though pushy gift-givers to be there at all. If this were a public school, religious literature could not be distributed on the grounds, though flyers promoting all other ideologies or public services might proliferate freely.

Thanks to the Supreme Court, whose understanding of religious issues has in recent years exhibited all the intelligence and sensitivity of a pie in the face, distribution of religious materials on public property (such as a public school's campus) is now considered a violation of the church-state separation.

An Indiana school district was charged with such a violation by the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit because the schools permitted the distribution of literature by Gideon Bible representatives as well as by representatives of the Boy Scouts and the 4-H Club. The school officials felt that allowing students access to the Scouts and 4-H but not the Gideons was discrimination. They tried to appeal the verdict but were denied permission by the Supreme Court.

There are two logical flaws operating here, both of which are absurd and dangerous. The first involves the over-board definition of public space and government jurisdiction. The second centers on whether, once having satisfactorily defined a space as public and subject to government supervision, certain sorts of ideas can selectively be banned from it. (Stop me if you've heard this one before.)

Concerning public space, the Court's syllogism appears to be: "Anything that is government-funded is part of the state. Religion should be kept separate from state institutions. Therefore, religion should be excluded from any place in which the government plays a bureaucratic or economic role."

First of all, this view of public space leads to a logical contradiction. If a public school is officially on the state side of the church-state line, public parks and streets are even more so. The only place our poor Bible-toting friends could ply their trade would be churches and privately owned property. Would we really want to live in a city where, while walking down the street, we could be offered coupons and advertising cards telling us to "Call 1-900-HOT-TITS"--but not Bibles?

The Court itself is not even consistent in its application of this bizarre principle. Courts all over the nation require witnesses to swear on the Bible to tell the truth "so help me God," and our money still reads, "In God We Trust," but children, unless they can afford private school, are denied the chance to learn what those words mean and how they relate to our civic ideals.

The more important philosophical objection to the Court's understanding of public space and the church-state relationship, however, is that it is irreconcilable with the ideals of democracy. Only in a totalitarian country is all public space defined as "the state" or "the government." Public schools and colleges belong to the community, the tax-payers, not the government. Correct me if I'm wrong, but the way I read the First Amendment, it does not even suggest that the government enforce the separation of church and community. The First Amendment's "establishment of religion" clause was originally designed to prevent both the state and the community from making any religious observances or doctrines mandatory for unwilling citizens--not to prevent the community from voluntarily bringing religious topics into schools and public life. That's what the "nor prohibiting the free exercise thereof" clause means.

It's especially ironic that the appeal was brought to the Supreme Court not by the Gideon Bible company, but by the school district. No one was forcing the children to accept either the Bibles or the ideas contained in them; the school officials simply believed in the value of making religious ideas available to children.

By closing off this option to schools and communities, and thereby impoverishing the moral education of the next generation, the Supreme Court has indeed prohibited the free exercise of religion, and also established a flawed free-speech precedent: the barring of certain ideas from public space (however that space is defined).

I close with a query to our esteemed Supreme Court justices: If religion is so dangerous that it and it alone must be banned from public space, why not go all the way? Frisk kids for crosses and yarmulkes when they come into school. Instead of metal detectors, let's have Bible detectors in those hallways. And that problematic "under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance has to go. I guarantee you will soon see a marked change in the quality, moral seriousness, and sense of direction of America's public school students.

Jendi B. Reiter '93 is sad to announce that this is her final diatribe on behalf of free speech in the pages of The Crimson. Next fall, she'll be pontificating at Columbia Law School.

The presence of a Bible in a public school does not constitute 'establishment of religion.'

Public space belongs, not to the government, but to the community.