Kerby Anderson

The Supreme Court ruled that Coach Joseph Kennedy did not violate the Constitution when he went to the 50-yard-line after a game and offered a short prayer. It shouldn’t have taken seven years to come to that conclusion, but the fight for religious liberty can sometimes be a long process.

The court’s decision generated lots of comments and commentary. But I found the comments by George Will to be especially helpful. He is a great writer, but also comes to the conversation as an agnostic observer. He expected other secularists to “bring religious zeal to their crusade against the incipient theocracy they detect in every religious observance allowed in the public square.”

Justice Neil Gorsuch argued in the majority opinion that “the free speech and free exercise clauses ‘work in tandem,’ protecting both expressive and non-communicative religious activities.” The First Amendment was intended to protect religious speech, even a quiet prayer at the end of a football game.

Critics of religious liberty cases love to quote Thomas Jefferson. In fact, Justice Sonia Sotomayor cited the Jefferson phrase about “the separation of church and state.” George Will reminds us that “two days after he wrote the letter endorsing a ‘wall of blossoms’ between church and state, he attended, as he occasionally did, religious services in the House of Representatives.” Yes, religious services were held in government buildings.

He also reminds us of Jefferson’s live-and-let-live philosophy found in his “Notes on the State of Virginia.” “It does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods or no god. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.”

The Supreme Court ruled correctly, and the critics would do well to go back and read the Constitution and some of the writings of Thomas Jefferson.