Tuesday, December 04, 2007

Watergate Felon Charles Colson's Forcible Christianization Program Slapped Down by Eighth Circuit and Justice O'Connor

This is a great decision and should be a significant set back for the Christianists. As a retired Justice, Sandra Day O'Connor sat on an Eighth Circuit panel by designation in a case challenging one of the most frightening elements of the American Christianist agenda: convicted Watergate criminal Chuck Colson's program, Prison Fellowship Ministries, which, for all practical purposes, seeks to make conversion to Christianity a condition of prison rehabilitation. Prison Fellowship Ministries (where my former law partner Mark Earley now works after what can only be described as a "Stepford Wife" like change after losing the election for Governor of Virginia to Mark Warner) seeks to pressure prison inmates directly and through added privileges to participate in evangelizing and religious conversion to fundamentalist Christianity.
Naturally, in the process Mr. Colson has a platform from which to make a rather nice living for himself and from which to pontificate. These "ministries" always (1) seek to eliminate the constitutional church and state divide, (2) strive to coerce others into living by the Christianists religious agenda either by force or other incentives, and (3) always provide cushy job stability to the leaders of the cult, I mean "ministry." The full decision can be found here: http://www.au.org/site/DocServer/Innerchange_decision_12-3-07_pdf.pdf?docID=2101. A few of the decision highlights follow:
On the merits, the plaintiffs invoke the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment, as applied to the states through the Fourteenth Amendment. . . .Also involved is the establishment clause of the Iowa Constitution, which is analyzed simultaneously. . . . The Establishment Clause erects a barrier between government and religious entities “‘depending on all the circumstances of a particular relationship.’” . . . For those “who wrote the Religion Clauses of the First Amendment the ‘establishment’ of a religion connoted sponsorship, financial support, and active involvement of the sovereign in religious activity.” Walz v. Tax Comm’n, 397 U.S. 664, 668 (1970). “In each case, the inquiry calls for line drawing; no fixed, per se rule can be framed.” To analyze whether aid has the effect of advancing or endorsing religion, three criteria are decisive: whether government aid (1) results in governmental indoctrination; (2) defines recipients by reference to religion; or (3) creates excessive entanglement.
First, “government inculcation of religious beliefs has the impermissible effect of advancing religion. Agostini, 521 U.S. at 223. Whether funding “results in governmental indoctrination is ultimately a question whether any religious indoctrination that occurs . . . could reasonably be attributed to governmental action.” In the present case, plaintiffs demonstrated (and defendants do not seriously contest) that the InnerChange program resulted in inmate enrollment in a program dominated by Bible study, Christian classes, religious revivals, and church services. The DOC also provided less tangible aid to the InnerChange program. Participants were housed in living quarters that had, in previous years, been used as an “honor unit,” and which afforded residents greater privacy than the typical cell. Among other benefits, participants were allowed more visits from family members and had greater access to computers.
Second, in administering aid, a government may not define recipients by reference to religion. The aid must be “‘allocated on the basis of neutral, secular criteria that neither favor nor disfavor religion, and is made available to both religious and secular beneficiaries on a nondiscriminatory basis.’ In this case, to use the aid appropriated, inmates must have been “willing to productively participate in a program that is Christian-based.” The district court found that inmates’ religious beliefs (or lack thereof) precluded their participation. For contract years 2000 to 2004, the InnerChange program was not allocated on neutral criteria and was not available on a nondiscriminatory basis.
Third, as for excessive entanglement, there was no pervasive monitoring by the DOC, though there was some administrative cooperation.
Because the indoctrination and definition criteria indicate that InnerChange had the effect of advancing or endorsing religion during the contract years 2000 to 2004, the direct aid to InnerChange violated the Establishment clauses of the United States and Iowa Constitutions.

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