One of the common arguments raised by those who object to the limitations placed upon how the government accommodates religious beliefs is that such limitations are an expression of hostility. A good example would be the case of Sechler v. State College Area School District, where David Warren Saxe argued that a lack of explicitly and overtly Christian symbols and content at a "Winter Holiday" program amounted to government hostility towards religion.
Normally, such arguments are aimed at secularists and nonbelievers, but this masks the fact that there is another, equally important issue at hand: the search for secular justifications for religious displays leads to the secularization of religious symbols and content. This, in turn, is seen as demeaning to religion, which is at least as bad.
Curiously, by resorting to secular arguments, accommodations who are unhappy with a strict separation of church and state are actually aiding the mass secularization of society. Christmas has become secularized. Easter has become secularized. Good Friday is becoming secularized. They argue that the Ten Commandments is sufficiently secular to withstand court challenges. Do they really want nativity scenes to become secularized? What's next, a secular crucifix?
Could accommodationists really be so desperate to have the government acknowledge and support their religious beliefs they are willing to castrate those beliefs, eliminating their fundamentally religious nature? Wouldn't it make more sense for them to stand up proudly declare that their symbols are profoundly religious? They should also stand up like adults and accept the consequences of the religious nature of their symbols: that the government of everyone cannot provide support or privilege to the religion or religious symbols of a few.
An interesting perspective was offered by the National Council of Churches following the Supreme Court's decision in Lynch v. Donnelly. In this case, the Court ruled that a nativity scene with a creche was permitted so long as it was accompanied by more secular symbols, like a plastic Santa Claus and reindeer (thus the origin of the "plastic reindeer rule"). The NCC complained that this ruling put Christ "on the same level as Santa Claus and Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer" — and they were right.
In the related case of County of Allegheny v. American Civil Liberties Union, an amicus brief from the National Council of Churches of Christ in the U.S.A. argued that "government acceptance of a creche on public property ...secularizes and degrades a sacred symbol of Christianity." People should heed these words from the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals opinion in Florey v. Sioux Falls School District:
- It is not only the nonbeliever who fears the injection of sectarian doctrines and controversies into the civil polity, but in as high degree it is the devout believer who fears the secularization of a creed which becomes too deeply involved with and dependent upon the government. It has rightly been said of the history of the Establishment Clause that "our tradition of civil liberty rests not only on the secularism of a Thomas Jefferson but also on the fervent sectarianism ...of a Roger Williams.
The Christian Right often tries to portray legal conflicts over the separation of church and state to be a conflict between atheists and religious believers, but that really isn't true. The fact of the matter is that these legal battles are all-too-often conflicts between far-right Christians and coalitions of atheists, members of other religions, and members of other Christian groups.
