Thanks for the piece on Carson. My favorite example of the government funding ministers (contra Locke) is the tax expenditure in Section 107 of the Internal Revenue Code, which exempts either the rental value or rental allowance of a home "of a minister of the gospel."
Sir, I am no legal scholar. I have not even read the full opinions referenced above. I appreciate your sharing your views and I agree whole heartedly with your first two normative claims. I disagree with the third. I do so because I think that the Court’s equating religion with a “viewpoint” in Shurtleff is facile and perhaps disingenuous. I doubt seriously that the Founders considered religion a viewpoint. Were that the case I expect the Establishment Clause would include viewpoint rather than solely religion. I also doubt that the current conservative majority consider their own Catholicism merely a viewpoint. When focused on free exercise, they certainly view religion as deserving far more “protection” that viewpoint. They conveniently sing a different tune when it comes to establishment.
John, I participated as a committee member and as the chair in a number of WASC accreditation visits to religious schools in Southern California. (I was assigned religious schools because I was on staff at a Christian school. We visited and recommended accreditation status on Catholic, Lutheran, Christian, and Arminian schools.) For high schools this accreditation was needed for their students to received credit towards public higher education and a lot of private colleges and universities as well. One way that many of these schools overcame objections to their science classes that taught that evolution was not a viable explanation of the natural world was that these courses were grandfathered in at some point in the past. However, if they were to offer a new course that taught Creationism it would not be approved by the University of California and therefore not counted as a science credit.
My point is that a state could fund students going to these kind of religious schools if the schools met the requirements for accreditation from their regional accreditation entity. If a school did not acquire proper accreditation the state could refuse to fund students who attended. I'm wondering if states like Maine with this problem of not having enough public schools could tighten their accreditation standards that might lead to certain religious schools losing their accreditation. This would not be on the account of their religion courses, but rather science, history, government, English, and other courses that varied too far from state standards.
Thanks for the piece on Carson. My favorite example of the government funding ministers (contra Locke) is the tax expenditure in Section 107 of the Internal Revenue Code, which exempts either the rental value or rental allowance of a home "of a minister of the gospel."
Sir, I am no legal scholar. I have not even read the full opinions referenced above. I appreciate your sharing your views and I agree whole heartedly with your first two normative claims. I disagree with the third. I do so because I think that the Court’s equating religion with a “viewpoint” in Shurtleff is facile and perhaps disingenuous. I doubt seriously that the Founders considered religion a viewpoint. Were that the case I expect the Establishment Clause would include viewpoint rather than solely religion. I also doubt that the current conservative majority consider their own Catholicism merely a viewpoint. When focused on free exercise, they certainly view religion as deserving far more “protection” that viewpoint. They conveniently sing a different tune when it comes to establishment.
John, I participated as a committee member and as the chair in a number of WASC accreditation visits to religious schools in Southern California. (I was assigned religious schools because I was on staff at a Christian school. We visited and recommended accreditation status on Catholic, Lutheran, Christian, and Arminian schools.) For high schools this accreditation was needed for their students to received credit towards public higher education and a lot of private colleges and universities as well. One way that many of these schools overcame objections to their science classes that taught that evolution was not a viable explanation of the natural world was that these courses were grandfathered in at some point in the past. However, if they were to offer a new course that taught Creationism it would not be approved by the University of California and therefore not counted as a science credit.
My point is that a state could fund students going to these kind of religious schools if the schools met the requirements for accreditation from their regional accreditation entity. If a school did not acquire proper accreditation the state could refuse to fund students who attended. I'm wondering if states like Maine with this problem of not having enough public schools could tighten their accreditation standards that might lead to certain religious schools losing their accreditation. This would not be on the account of their religion courses, but rather science, history, government, English, and other courses that varied too far from state standards.