Guest Post by Morbo
A state judge in Indiana has issued a ruling that should alarm all who value religious freedom.
Marion Superior Court Judge Cale Bradford has ruled that Thomas E. Jones and his ex-wife, Tammy Bristol, who are both Pagans, may not expose their son Archer to “non-mainstream religious beliefs and rituals.”
A Domestic Relations Counseling Bureau had noted in a report that although Jones and Bristol are Pagans, they send Archer to a Catholic school. This seemed to bother Bureau officials, who asserted in a report, “Ms. Jones and Mr. Jones display little insight into the confusion these divergent belief systems will have upon Archer as he ages.” Jones and Bristol challenged that portion of the report in court, but Bradford let it stand.
I find the Bureau’s reasoning confused. So what if the boy is Pagan but attends a Catholic school? Lots of non-Catholics attend Catholic schools. If Archer were being raised Presbyterian or Jewish, this wouldn’t even be an issue. Can you imagine a court issuing a ruling ordering parents to stop exposing their child to “Jewish beliefs and rituals”?
My guess is that someone’s personal prejudices have found their way into this ruling. Paganism, according to a recent New York Times report, is a fast-growing religion, but the faith is dogged by numerous misconceptions.
As The Times noted, “Paganism is the umbrella term for nature-based belief systems.” Its followers go by different names, among them Wiccans, Druids, Dianics and practitioners of magic.
These are pre-Christian traditions, but they have nothing to do with Satanism, black magic or the worship of demons. The modern-day follower of Wicca is far removed from the storybook figure of a crone with warts tossing newts into a bubbling cauldron.
It can be difficult for members of a society’s majority faith to understand that numerical superiority does not translate into additional rights or favored status. We live in a secular state. The government is supposed to treat all religions equally. More importantly, what an individual believes about God — or whether he or she even believes in God at all — should be irrelevant to the state.
The issue of parental rights also comes into play. The government has the right to protect children from being exposed to danger in the name of religion. That’s why the state can step in when parents use faith healing and deny medical treatment to sick children. But outside those rare cases, the spiritual life of children lies solely with their parents. It’s none of the state’s business.
Judge Bradford’s decision is short-sighted, and if I were a conservative I suppose I’d have to call for him to be drawn and quartered. But I’m not a conservative, and I recognize there is a proper way to deal with matters like this: appeal to a higher court. That’s just what the Indiana Civil Liberties Union has done on behalf of Jones and Bristol.
Here’s hoping the Indiana Court of Appeals has a better understanding of the religious freedom guarantees of the First Amendment than Judge Bradford.
One more thing: A tip of the hat to Micah Clark, executive director of the American Family Association of Indiana, a Religious Right group. I’m normally no fan of the AFA, but Clark realizes why this issue is important. He told the AP, “The parents have the right to raise their child in that faith, just as I have the right to raise my child in the Christian faith.”
I hope Clark’s boss, the Rev. Donald Wildmon of Tupelo, Miss., doesn’t fire him for this surprisingly lucid stand.