David Forman's claims in his March 1, letter to the editor that our religious freedoms are under attack deserves to be challenged on three fronts.
First, the 1971 Lemon v. Kurt decision by the U.S. Supreme Court had absolutely nothing to do with curtailing the practice of religion. The ruling simply stated the federal government could not fund non-public (parochial) schools for such things as teacher salaries, secular textbooks, or secular instructional materials because such funding violated the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment.
Second, Mr. Forman's implication that "freedom of worship" and "religious freedom" are two separate entities baffles me. For the life of me, I can see no difference in the meanings of the two terms. If he sees "religious freedom" as consent to involve religion in political or governmental matters, that already exists — in the Middle East. It's called theocracy, and we can all see how that has worked out.
Three, Mr. Forman asserts that religious freedom "includes the ability to live out one's faith in the public square." He needs only to go to his Bible and read Jesus' admonishment against such expression. Matthew 6: verses 5-6: "And when thou prayest, thou shall not be as hypocrites are: for they love to pray in the synagogues and in the corners of the streets, that they may be seen of men... But thou, when thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut the door, pray to thy Father which is in secret."
No, Chicken Little, the sky is not falling! And to Mr. Forman, I say, "No, religious freedom is not under attack." From what I've observed, people still worship the same way they did when I was growing up.
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Dean Bishop
Austin
