By Selwyn Duke
“Religious liberty might be supposed to mean that everybody is free to discuss religion. In practice it means that hardly anybody is allowed to mention it.” So said G.K. Chesterton in his autobiography, published in 1937. A lot has changed since then, however — especially the number of places we’re not allowed to mention religion.
Just this week we heard the story of the Ed Young Senior Citizens Center in Georgia, where elderly residents were told that they should not pray audibly before meals. Why? Joshua Rhett Miller at Fox News explains, writing:
Officials from Senior Citizens Inc., which operates the senior center, have said the meals they provide to visitors are mostly covered with federal money — so saying a communal prayer before chowing down is a violation of federal regulations.
"We can't scoff at their rules," Tim Rutherford, Senior Citizens Inc.'s vice president, told the Associated Press. "It's part of the operational guidelines."
While I certainly can scoff, I can’t say I’m surprised. This is just another in a long line of Establishment Clause misapplications that have yielded truly bizarre prohibitions. And let’s explore how we got to our present point.
Read the rest here.
