It's Sunday

Bingo.  

And, "render unto Caeser", Christians.

This month, Texas Senate Republicans passed three bills about religion in schools that have historians feeling déjà vu.

The first, SB 1515, would require public schools to display the Ten Commandments in a “conspicuous place” in classrooms. The other bill, SB 1396, would permit public schools to set aside time for students and staff members to pray or read the Bible and other religious texts. The third, SB 1556, would give employees the right to pray or “engage in religious speech” while on the job. The bills are on their way to the Texas House for approval. These bills follow Texas’s SB 797, which took effect in 2021 and requires schools to display “In God We Trust” signs.

[...]

[I]n 2022, the Supreme Court decided in Kennedy v. Bremerton School District that a football coach’s prayer at football games constituted protected speech. The bill’s authors and conservative supporters said the court’s ruling represents a “fundamental shift” for religious liberty much in the way that “the Dobbs case was for the pro-life movement.”

The lawmakers see a signal that they can rethink the separation of church and state, the long-standing idea embedded in the First Amendment of the US Constitution, which states that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.”

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"The Ten Commandments measure is almost surely unconstitutional. It would be astonishing to me if it survives a court challenge.

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"The other bill about prayer and Bible reading is a little more complicated because they do say that it would be open to other religious texts. But I’d be curious as to how many districts in Texas would be down with people reading the Quran or the Bhagavad Gita.


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When the Supreme Court banned school-sponsored prayer in 1962 in Engel v. Vitale, most African Americans wanted prayer in schools, based on what I read in the Black press from the time. They were opposed to the Supreme Court decision because the civil rights movement was a religious movement. It’s characteristic of our moment that the religion schools push has become exclusively a right-wing matter because there was a long tradition of left-wing efforts to promote religion in schools as a way to fight racism or poverty. And that’s gone.

[...]

"Some people on the court, including Gorsuch, have suggested that they want to revisit the Lemon test. But let’s be clear, the Lemon test is just about the question of whether you can promote religion. It’s not about the question of whether you can establish a single religion, and that’s what the Ten Commandments legislation would do. It is cleanly and clearly unconstitutional. The religious texts bill is probably more contestable, but the Ten Commandments one, it will be a slam dunk.
  Vox

We'll see.

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...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.