A Citizen's Guide to Indiana

Masson's Blog

Indiana Constitution: Article I, Section 4

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Indiana Constitution: Article I, Section 4:

No preference shall be given, by law, to any creed, religious society, or mode of worship; and no person shall be compelled to attend, erect, or support, any place of worship, or to maintain any ministry, against his consent.

In 1893, the Indiana Supreme Court declared characterized the separation of church and state as “the crowning glory of civil government among men. The Court noted the separation in the U.S. Constitution and in most states, but said that it was especially true under the Indiana Constitution that:

The law has known no religious creed, no religious opinion, no religious doctrine, no standard of belief in matters pertaining to religion. Our state constitution, framed by wise men, and adopted by the people, has still more securely placed us out of the reach of those fierce and bloody struggles arising out of a difference in religious opinion in former times by declaring that “all men shall be secured in their natural right to worship Almighty God according to the dictates of their own consciences,” and that “no law shall in any case whatever control the free exercise and enjoyment of religious opinions, or interfere with the rights of conscience;” and that “no preference shall be given by law to any creed, religious society, or mode of worship; and no man shall be compelled to attend, erect, or support any place of worship, or to maintain any ministry, against his consent.” And that “no religious test shall be required as a qualification for any office of trust or profit.” These provisions of the fundamental law not only take away all power of the state to interfere with religious belief, but they leave the citizen perfectly free to repudiate the faith and belief he once professed and adhered to, and adopt a new creed and faith, differing from that of the church to which he belonged; or he may repudiate his old belief and faith without adopting any new one; and these changes he may adopt as often as to him may seem proper, and the law will protect him in it. In other words, the law allows every one to believe as he pleases, and practice that belief so long as that practice does not interfere with the equal rights of others.

Smith v. Pedigo, 33 N.E. 777, 778-779 (Ind. 1893).

From time to time, you will hear proponents of intertwining government and religion complain that there was no intent by the Founders of the federal government to separate church and state. I believe that they did so intend. But, putting that aside for a moment, the text of the Indiana Constitution seems to provide much clearer textual support than the federal Constitution for the proposition that government simply has no business dealing in religious matters.

Maybe I’m just misremembering, but I can’t recall any discussion of this provision when the matter of Speaker Bosma’s sectarian prayers as official business of the Indiana House of Representatives was being argued and decided. The taxpayers of Indiana have apparently spent $350,000 to assist the House of Representatives to maintain the right to conduct sectarian prayer in its chambers. I know that rights have a way of getting watered down as the courts consider them, but still it sure feels like I’m being asked to support a ministry when tax dollars are being spent to provide a forum for a minister to sing “Just a Little Talk with Jesus.”

Dan Burton: Fearing the Reaper

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I’m no scholar of the Bible, and, I’ll confess I know the verse from Hosea 8:7 mostly from the movie Young Guns, where it comes up a number of times, notably at the end when Emilio Estevez shoots Jack Palance between the eyes and says, “Reap it, Murphy, you son of a bitch.”

The original Biblical version, depending on your translation, says something like:

For they sow the wind And they reap the whirlwind. The standing grain has no heads; It yields no grain. Should it yield, strangers would swallow it up.

Sowing the wind, in this case, refers to the making of a vain show of worship; a spectacle that might fool the gullible, but which will ultimately yield no fruit.

Speaking of vain shows of worship, enter Dan Burton (h/t Blue Indiana).

Saying America is “moving in a very, very wrong direction,” Indiana Rep. Dan Burton says he will introduce legislation mandating that “In God We Trust” be retained in a prominent place on U.S. currency and coinage.

“Recently, there were thousands of coins minted without ‘In God We Trust’ on them, and now they’re talking about putting ‘In God We Trust’ in an obscure place on coins so that people can’t read it, right on the edge of the coin,” the Republican complains.

Practically preaching from the pulpit, the congressman warns that “once you start turning your back on the good Lord, I think you are going to reap the whirlwind, and this is something this nation cannot afford to do right now.”

As Thomas at Blue Indiana points out, Burton is fiddling while Rome burns if he’s spending his limited time between rounds of golf obsessing about the design of our coinage. Just who is sowing the wind here? Rumor has it there is real work to be done, and now is not the time for meaningless spectacles of piety. Unfortunately, even if it’s Dan who is doing the wind sowing, it’s the common citizenry who will get the brunt of the whirlwind.

WTF?

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Good Brownie points out this truly odd statement by Bill Richardson reported by the Des Moines Register:

God’s will is for Iowa to have the first-in-the-nation caucus, Democratic presidential candidate Bill Richardson told a crowd here Monday.

“Iowa, for good reason, for constitutional reasons, for reasons related to the Lord, should be the first caucus and primary,” Richardson, New Mexico’s governor, said at the Northwest Iowa Labor Council Picnic. “And I want you to know who was the first candidate to sign a pledge not to campaign anywhere if they got ahead of Iowa. It was Bill Richardson.”

Is this in the Apocrypha? Maybe one of the lesser known books of the Bible? Or, does the Lord speak directly to Governor Richardson?

I didn’t see it – maybe Bill was just engaged in some good natured hyperbole that does not come across clearly in print reporting. But, on its face, this certainly looks like a gaffe of epic proportions.

Under the Banner of Heaven

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Some vacation reading I have done was Jon Krakauer’s Under the Banner of Heaven. It examines the case of Ron and Dan Lafferty’s murder of their sister-in-law and baby niece as a jumping off point to take a look at Mormon history and Mormon fundamentalism particularly and to thereby examine some aspects of religion generally.

The Laffertys seemed to have grown up as pretty solid mainline Mormons. They converted to Mormon fundamentalism in part because of a conviction that the abandonment of polygamy by the mainline Church was contrary to the revelation of Joseph Smith about the sanctity of plural marriages. One thing led to another and they wound up killing their uppity sister-in-law and her toddler daughter because God told them to.

Krakauer speculates that some of the fundamentals of the development of the Mormon religion probably parallels the development of other more “major” religions. The difference is that due to its recency, the rise of Mormonism is better documented than the rise of Christianity or Islam. Like Joseph Smith, Mohammad and Jesus were probably charismatic individuals with odd ideas and claims to a direct link to God. Men who seemed peculiar to most, but by virtue of their extreme charisma were able to convince a non-trivial number of people of the truth of their odd ideas. The oddities of Mormon belief are not inherently less believable than some of the oddities of Christian belief, for example. The Christian oddities are simply older and more familiar. Transubstantiation – the Catholic idea that bread and wine are literally turned into Christ’s flesh and blood or even the idea of a Virgin Birth don’t generally make most people bat an eyelash. But, it’s pretty easy to get people to raise their eyebrows at the Mormons’ sacred underwear.

In case any of you are looking for a book to read, I’d recommend Krakauer’s Under the Banner of Heaven.

Crazy, if true

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Bil Browning at bilerico has caught wind of an amazing rumor.

From what I’m hearing, the Republicans are still angry that SJR-7, the constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage and civil unions, failed on a tie vote in the House earlier this year. Before they’re willing to address property tax reform, they want the amendment back on the table and passed in the same special session. No amendment – no tax relief.

I tend to think a special session is a bad idea for other reasons. Rushed, pressured, and panicked is no way to approach comprehensive property tax reform. But if these wingnuts are refusing to address a real problem (property taxes) if they don’t get a chance to address a fake problem (gay marriage), that’s pretty incredible. I guess their single-mindedness is impressive even if their critical thinking skills are not. If the rumor is true, anyway.

Sectarian House Prayer update

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The Fort Wayne Journal Gazette Political Notebook has an update of sorts on the sectarian House prayer lawsuit. Indiana’s House of Representatives has appealed to the Seventh Circuit for the right to conduct sectarian religious prayer as part of the official business of the House. Oral arguments were conducted in September. Nothing has happened since then except that Representative Bosma petitioned to have his name removed from the case and replaced with Speaker of the House of Representatives — which is how the suit was styled in the first place, until Bosma sought to have his name injected into the suit.

I wonder if the writers of the political notebook were at all prompted to write about the status by the Indiana Law Blog’s post from earlier this week wondering about the status of the case. Could be it’s just in the air. In the last week of June, I went so far as to look at the 7th Circuit docket to see if anything had happened.

Ed Brayton on Blue Laws

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Dispatches from the Culture Wars brings us a post entitled Sunday Blue Laws Should Be Abolished. Ed Brayton discusses an effort in Wichita, Kansas to allow stores to sell beer on Sunday. A local pastor is opposing it and gets dressed down by Ed for saying:

“It’s a moral issue,” claims Pastor Moore. “It is Sunday. I don’t think that liquor stores should be open on Sunday, because Sunday is a day of worship …. it’s a day of rest.”

Ed points out that this is, in fact, a legal issue. If Pastor Moore and his congregants want to rest on Sunday and not buy beer, nobody is going to hassle them about it. To the contrary, however, Pastor Moore and his congregants really want the state to be obliged to bring its police powers to bear and penalize those who have different opinions on the subject of buying beer on Sundays.

Indiana, of course, has similar laws. They strike me as particularly silly since you can buy beer in a bar or a restaurant on Sundays, you just can’t pick up a 6-pack in the store. For me, it’s more a nuisance than anything else. I’m not normally inclined toward drinking on Sundays in any case and, if I were, planning ahead by picking up enough beer on Saturday eliminates the problem. Still, I have to wonder what actual practical purpose these blue laws serve other than to symbolize obeisance of the government to certain religious preferences.

Governor names Cale Bradford to Court of Appeals

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The Governor named Cale Bradford to the Indiana Court of Appeals. (See the Indiana Law Blog for more details.) Judge Bradford has been a judge of the Marion County Superior Court. I don’t get down to Marion County very often, so I primarily know Judge Bradford from his anti-Wicca jurisprudence (subsequently struck down by the Court of Appeals). Long-time readers may recall that Judge Bradford, in a divorce decree involving two Wiccan parents with children, ordered that these parents take steps to shelter their child from involvement in and observation of “these non-mainstream religious beliefs and rituals.” Neither parent requested such a provision in the decree.

That’s just one case, and may well not be representative of Judge Bradford’s jurisprudence. Still, that case is at least a red flag with respect to separating church from state.

Gallup: Majority of Republicans Doubt Evolution

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Gallup has a depressing poll out.

The majority of Republicans in the United States do not believe the theory of evolution is true and do not believe that humans evolved over millions of years from less advanced forms of life. . . . Those [Americans] who attend church frequently are much less likely to believe in evolution than are those who seldom or never attend. That Republicans tend to be frequent churchgoers helps explain their doubts about evolution.

And here is the howler:

About a quarter of Americans say they believe both in evolution’s explanation that humans evolved over millions of years and in the creationist explanation that humans were created as is about 10,000 years ago. . . . It might seem contradictory to believe that humans were created in their present form at one time within the past 10,000 years and at the same time believe that humans developed over millions of years from less advanced forms of life. But, based on an analysis of the two side-by-side questions asked this month about evolution and creationism, it appears that a substantial number of Americans hold these conflicting views.

It might seem contradictory? The results showed 24% believe both evolution of humans over millions of years is true AND creation of humans within the past 10,000 years. 41% believe creationism is true and evolution is false. 28% believe that evolution is true but that creationism is false. And 3% believe that bothare false or have no opinion.

God, we’re stupid.

Grab an IGWT plate — don’t cost nothin’.

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For some reason, reading this American Values Alliance post by Arthur Farnsley on his adventures at the BMV, I was reminded of Bluto in Animal House when he said, “Grab a beer. Don’t cost nothin’.”

Farnsley was unable to get his college specialty plate because of some paperwork problems. Fine. But then, when he abandoned his efforts to get a specialty plate, the helpful BMV worker kept pushing the “In God We Trust” plate. By my count, he had to ask for the regular plate four times before the state employee gave up on pushing the In God We Trust plate.

The paragraph that reminded me of Bluto:

Then she asked, “Are you sure? The ‘In God We Trust’ plates don’t cost any extra.” I said, “No thank you. Absolutely, definitely, regular plates please.” I had the same feeling you get at McDonald’s when they ask, “do you want fries with that?” She gave me my plate and stickers and I left.