In this amusing article from late last year, Rex Huppke reports for the Chicago Tribune that apparently God has “been put in charge of keeping [Kentucky] safe from terrorism.” According to the article, Democratic Representative Tom Riner, a former Baptist preacher, inserted a line in a homeland security bill “requiring the state to acknowledge formally that safety and security in the state ‘cannot be achieved apart from reliance upon almighty God’” – to be put on a plaque somewhere in the state’s Office of Homeland Security. Riner, who is a staunch accomodationist, felt the language was necessary because “[Christianity is] part of our history” and that “if we don’t affirm the right to recognize divine providence, then that puts that right in jeopardy.”
When Kentucky resident Edwin Hensely brought the bill’s language to the attention of the national advocacy group American Atheists, the group immediately began to mobilize to declare the bill’s unconstitutionality. Hensely called the bill “absurd,” and other atheist activists see it as an attack on non-believers, calling it “part of a pattern of Christians trying to use government as a weapon for imposing their beliefs on everybody.”
Though the bill is “flagrantly unconstitutional,” in the words of Northwestern University law professor Andrew Koppelman, I found each party’s line of reasoning rather amusing and representative of the stereotypical accomodationist/separationist debate. From the proud, self-righteous accomodationist comes the argument that “religion is an inherent part of the fabric of our nation, and we should be reminded of that at all times,” while from the beleaguered and oppressed separationist comes the cry that “our beliefs (or lack thereof) are being suppressed because God was mentioned on a plaque in the Office of Homeland Security.” As Koppelman notes, “one man’s ‘suppression of history’ is another’s ‘abiding by the First Amendment’.”
So, what do we learn from this example? Perhaps nothing more than “if you put God on a government building, expect a lawsuit” – but that certainly hasn’t deterred anyone yet.
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This article does chronicle something a bit far-fetched and perhaps a bit irrelevant to the national political scene, but it was certainly quite interesting. I appreciate and agree with your insight into the “stereotype” that each party concerned falls into—the fundamentalist legislators and the outraged atheists alike.
There is always going to be a certain amount of so-called “accomodationists” in our representative government. Whether Representative Riner was explicit in his plans to “put [God] in charge of keeping the Bluegrass state safe from terrorism” in his campaign is unlikely, but as Kentucky is firmly entrenched in the Bible belt, I would bet that many of his constituents would support this move. You aptly call this piece amusing—what’s the real importance whether there is a plaque in a random corner of the Kentucky Office of Homeland Security? Surely the state government there isn’t so perverse as to eliminate any other system—that’s why there is a department in the first place. Representative Riner and the American Atheists alike fall into the same general type, that is, extremists. To the average citizen, this would be of little importance.
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