Jesus and the South Carolina Witch

Vol.  1.                        Issue 21

In the Name of Jesus.....Amen

  We establish no religion in this country, nor will we ever. We command no worship. We mandate no belief. But we poison our society when we remove its theological underpinnings. We court corruption when we leave it bereft of belief. All are free to believe or not believe; all are free to practice a faith or not. But those who believe must be free to speak of and act on their belief, to apply moral teaching to public questions.              Ronald Wilson Reagan

Leonard Van Noppen was a beloved District Court Judge from Danbury, North Carolina. When I first appeared before him, I represented a shoplifter. The young man was indigent and I was appointed to represent him.

My client had an unfortunate tendency to take what he wanted from stores at the local mall and forget to pay the cashier. I pled him guilty and asked the judge for mercy.  After sparing the young man time in jail, Judge Van Noppen turned to the question of how my client intended to pay for my services. In lieu of a monetary fee awarded for my services, the soft spoken judge extracted from my client a promise to bring me a turkey next Thanksgiving. Fifteen years later, I have long since given up on the turkey, but I shall never forget Judge Van Noppen. 

A tall and stately man, slender in build, slightly stooped with age,Judge Van Noppen commanded the attention of everyone when he entered the courtroom and took his place behind the bench of justice. He began court the same way every day. Standing in his black robe, with hands uplifted, looking like an Old Testament Prophet, he prayed. Without pretense or ceremony, he asked for strength for the day, wisdom for the tasks set before him,and for an understanding of mercy as exhibited to him by his Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. He never asked for permission to pray, nor did he ever request participation from anyone in his courtroom. All would stand. Some smirked. Occasionally someone would leave the courtroom. However, most stood quietly, drawing comfort that the man who would pass judgment over them,acknowledged a power greater than himself.

Great Falls, South Carolina, is a small town between Rock Hill and Columbia on Highway 21. Located an hour south of Charlotte, Great Falls is a good place for truckers to stop on their way to Columbia. The town was incorporated in 1968 and has about 2000 residents.  Dr. Henry Clayton Starnes is the mayor. At every meeting of the Town Council, Councilman John Broom opens the meeting with a prayer. Without pretense or ceremony, he prays in behalf of the mayor and other council members, all of whom are Christian. His prayer asks for wisdom,and he offers it in the name of his Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.

Darla Kaye Wynne is a resident of Great Falls and is a member of a coven of witches who practice a religion known as Wica. Wica is considered a “neopagan earth-centered religion.” Modern day Wiccans link their religion to an Englishman named Gerald Gardner,who revived ancient practices of witchcraft in the 1950's. Roughly linked to early Celtic practices, the Wiccans are polytheistic and believe that the earth is the sacred home of their deities.  Wiccans’“only animosity towards Christianity, or toward any other religion or philosophy of life, is to the extent that its institutions have claimed to be ‘"the only way,’"and have sought to deny freedom to others and to suppress other ways of religious practice and belief.”

      Darla Kaye Wynne sued the Town of Great Falls South Carolina claiming that by invoking the name of Jesus, the Town advanced a “fundamental belief of Christianity, not shared by those following other faiths.” In other words, as a witch, she was offended by the Christian prayer of Councilman Broom. The Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals agreed with the witch and,as of July 22,2004,prayers in the name of Jesus offered by public officials are now unconstitutional.

      “What secret knowledge, one must wonder, is breathed into lawyers when they become Justices of this Court, that enables them to discern that a practice which the text of the Constitution does not clearly proscribe, and which our people have regarded as constitutional for two hundred years, is in fact unconstitutional? . . . Day by day, case by case, [the Court] is busy designing a Constitution for a country I do not recognize.”  These words of Justice Antonin Scalia best describe recent decisions of Federal Courts interpreting the First Amendment of the Constitution. 

      The drafters of the Constitution feared the establishment of a national religion similar to which many experienced in European homelands. Only by removing all such questions of religious belief from the political process was government of a pluralistic society by majority rule possible. Removing both penalties against nonconformity and rewards for conformity allowed religious liberty to flourish. By removing politics from religion, the religious liberty of the individual became the preeminent right of all Americans. A common consensus of morality emerged. As observed by Henry Jaffa, this morality, strengthened by the support of organized religion,
created “a regime in which the rule of the majority might be consistent with the rights of the minority.”



      The First Amendment of the Constitution was drafted to insure religious liberty for all citizens of the United States. The Amendment guarantees the free exercise of religion by restraining the Federal Government from establishing a national religion. 
“It is the duty of every man to render to the Creator such homage, and such only, as he believes to be acceptable to Him. This duty is precedent, both in order of time and in degree of obligation, to the claims of Civil Society,"wrote James Madison.

  
Properly understood,the First Amendment proclaims the self evident truth that “liberty of conscience is every man’s natural right… [and] the care of every man’s soul belongs unto himself, and is to be left unto himself.” The disestablishment of religion is a necessary means to that end.

Over time, the two clauses contained in the Amendment have been interpreted separately and given equal emphasis. Modern day jurists have balanced the prohibition of the establishment of religion against the free exercise of religion. More often than not,almost any offense to the minority outweighs the free exercise of religion by the majority.Jurists justify their off balance tests by reducing the Christian prayers of public officials to acts of ceremony that reflect historical nostalgia more than personal piety. As John Witte, Jr. has observed, public expression of religious belief is permitted only if it is “purged enough of its confessional identity to pass constitutional muster, but too bleached and too bland to be religiously efficacious, let alone civilly effective.”

The Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals concluded that the prayer of Councilman Broom establishes religion and is unprotected religious expression.

The court fails to determine at what point the objections of the witch from Great Falls terminated the religious rights of Councilman Broom. Neither does the court explain at what point the expression of faith by a town councilman becomes ceremonial nostalgia. It is hard to determine what action the prayer precipitated that provides advantage to the Christian or repression to the Wiccan. What religion is established? What confession of faith is coerced?

 The decision is clear about one issue. The prayer the law protects in the privacy of a home and in the sanctity of a temple becomes religious coercion when the petitioner is an elected official who has the audacity to utter it in public. Instead of recognizing the sincerity of a man of God who seeks the blessings of Christ Jesus upon those he serves, the court uses the name of Jesus as the bright line separating an establishment of religion from the free exercise of faith. 

Christians called into public service must retain the courage of their convictions.

As we are called into public service, we must never forget that we were first called into the service of Christ Jesus. Christianity is a living faith. We believe God to be the source of our rights. We must be able to stand before those we serve and speak of our faith. Acting on our beliefs,we must not be prevented from applying the moral teachings of Christ to our public duties. Nor should we forgo the presence and blessings of Jesus in our public lives in order that we honor our commitment to support, protect and defend the Constitution.

 

What kind of Constitutional nonsense has the court brought forth when the deeply held religious beliefs of public servants are suppressed in deference to the sensibilities of a South Carolina witch?