A soap opera with sobering overtones

JOSEPH N. BELL

The long-running Westminster School District Board of Trustees soap

opera nearby offers some lessons that can be instructive in

Newport-Mesa, not just to deal with possible future conflicts but in

such current issues as the nature of invocations at local City

Council meetings.

In case you haven’t been paying attention, three Westminster

school trustees -- a majority on the board -- have refused to sign

off on a state antidiscrimination law that offends their Christian

convictions. None of the other 1,055 local school boards in the state

has taken a similar stand, and state education officials are

threatening to withhold funding essential to the operation of

Westminster schools until the district complies with the law. As a

result, a large majority of parents in the school district are mad as

hell at these three intransigent trustees and have started the recall

process while they rail at them at school board meetings.

The trustees under fire have responded by digging ever deeper into

their moral entrenchments and using public funds to replace an

attorney who has served the board for 26 years with a new attorney

who was co-founder of a group that promotes conservative candidates

for various Orange County school boards. The new attorney, Mark

Bucher, has refused to address the full Westminster board and is said

to be seeking a re-wording of the law that both his clients and the

state could accept. Meanwhile, state Sen. Joe Dunn (D-Santa Ana) has

proposed legislation that would allow the state to take control of

districts in noncompliance with the law -- meaning Westminster -- and

the 10,000 students whose education is threatened wait and wonder how

deeply the antics of these alleged public servants will impact their

lives.

There is only one rational solution to this impasse. When proper

governance at any level is held hostage by personal religious views,

the public officials holding these views must either accept the law

as it exists or resign. They must not be allowed to punish innocent

citizens affected by their intransigence. Free of the restrictions of

office, they can then try to change the law through normal democratic

channels. But civil disobedience is not a luxury enjoyed by public

officials. Thus, the intractable stance of the three Westminster

trustees is inexcusable and unsupportable in this society, and the

Westminster parents have every right to be incensed.

The angry Westminster dispute is an extreme example of what seems

to be a growing number of confrontations over the encroachment of

religion in secular matters in this country. The U.S. Supreme Court,

for example, is presently considering the legality of the phrase

“under God” in the Pledge of Allegiance. The Ten Commandments keep

popping up and being challenged in public schools and government

buildings. And we even have our own mild flap over the proper

religious parameters in invocations delivered before our local City

Councils. In these homegrown disputes, the elements of tradition and

how many and which issues to take on become factors.

In the public comments over restricting invocations at local City

Council meetings to generic reference to deity rather than specific

religious liturgy, the traditionalists figured we’ve been doing this

too long to fuss about it now. And the constitutionalists argue

either that censoring invocations violates the First Amendment or not

censoring them endangers the separation of church and state.

As far as I know, no one suggested that invocations be dropped

altogether, since no one pays attention to them anyway. The only

thing that seems clear in all this muddle is that the place of

religion in public life is going to come up again and again, and the

same arguments are going to be made.

The one I hope will be studiously avoided is the line that our

Founding Fathers were all born-again Christians and based the new

nation they created firmly on the foundation of Christianity.

Conservative Christians, who can and do cite numerous quotations to

back up their position, devoutly hold this conviction. The problem

is, I can cite just as many -- I would suspect a lot more -- proving

the opposite point of view.

George Washington did, indeed, say: “The United States is in no

sense founded upon the Christian doctrine.” And Thomas Jefferson did,

indeed, write his own expurgated version of the New Testament,

leaving out all references to the supernatural. And he did say:

“Question with boldness even the existence of a god, because if there

is one, he must more approve of the homage of reason than of

blindfold fear.” And James Madison did say: “Who does not see that

the same authority which can establish Christianity in exclusion of

all other religions, may establish with the same ease any particular

sect of Christians in exclusion of all other sects.”

These quotes are just a tiny sampling. They are also taken out of

context, as are the quotes offered to support an opposite point of

view. The reality is that these were complex men whose

often-differing religious views can’t be put into a handy box to make

an over-simplified point. Only by reading deeply about them can their

views be put into context, and using them to make generalizations in

support of a particular religious position is a kind of historical

shell game.

I do like to believe, however, that if the Founding Fathers were

around to deal with those three inflexible trustees in Westminster,

they would have the trustees in stocks in the public square. And they

would make very sure that the children affected suffered no loss in

the quality of their education.

* JOSEPH N. BELL is a resident of Santa Ana Heights. His column

appears Thursdays.