Blame the Majority! Scholar Peter Irons discusses why the line between church and state is blurring
Last night, LitMinds hosted activist, Professor Emeritus Peter Irons at the Berkeley Hillside Club.
On tour for his new book "God on Trial: Dispatches from America's Religious Battlefields." The book tells individuals' stories many of whom took their personal battle over religion all the way to the Supreme Court:
- Residents of San Diego in 1989 challenged a forty-three-foot-high cross in the center of a public park (the case is still actively being fought)
- A dispute erupts in a Texas town in 1995 over the recital of prayers at high school football games (the Baptists who make up the 95% of the population tell the other 5% to put up with the prayers or skip the football games)
- A county administrator in rural Kentucky in 1999 displays the Ten Commandments in county courthouses. When his own cousin tells him he can't do that but he refuses to take them down, she notifies the ACLU who takes the case all the way to the Supreme Court
- In 2000, a California parent challenged the words “under God” in his daughter’s daily Pledge of Allegiance
- And, most recently, in 2004, parents in Dover, Pennsylvania, challenged the school board’s requirement that “intelligent design” be taught as an alternative to Darwin’s theory of evolution
Last night in front of an audience at the Berkeley Hillside Club, Peter Irons and Jeffrey Brand (Dean of the USF Law School) discussed the role the Christian Majority has had in blurring the lines separating church and state. LitMinds' Lewis Klaustner moderated the event and the audience participated in a healthy Q&A with the constitutional scholars.
We captured the event with a few photographs (below) and have started a discussion on the LitMinds.org boards to continue last night's discussion.
