Has the Supreme Court gone too far?

"In its haste to preserve the disestablishment clause" of the First Amendment, "the Supreme Court has forgotten about the free exercise clause," said JMU political science major Michelle Lancaster.

In the colloquium debate against Mary Washington College, Lancaster and media arts and design major Cate Morrison argued that the Supreme Court has gone too far in separating church and state. The sophomore debaters cited high court decisions that prevent student-led prayer at high school graduations and football games.

In No. 10 of The Federalist Papers, Lancaster said, James Madison asserted that freedom arises from a multiplicity of sects freely exercising their rights. "We must protect private choice," she said.

But allowing prayer at government-funded public school events establishes religion, said Mary Washington senior Benjamin Peck. He and sophomore Jennifer Rainey argued that the Supreme Court has not gone far enough in separating church and state.

"The Court is beginning to totter, and consistency is wavering on separation," Peck said, citing the court's decision to uphold funding for computer equipment for religious schools and other examples.

"So, it comes down to money?" Lancaster asked.

"Yes," Rainey replied.

President George W. Bush's proposed "faith-based initiatives pose a serious threat to civil rights because of the religious exemption in the Civil Rights Act. They have every right to discriminate," Rainey said. "And do we really believe that [public] money will be equally distributed among Catholics, Protestants and snake handlers?" Paraphrasing Madison, she continued, religion flourishes in greater purity without, rather than with, the involvement of government.

Morrison, however, portrayed religion in today's society as a garden walled off from society and patrolled by justices who "beat down the flowers as they raise their faces to the sun."

"The court is silencing a pivotal voice for social change," one that was largely responsible for abolition and the Civil Rights movement. According to the current standard of the Supreme Court, JMU's Lancaster said, "James Madison would not be allowed to speak at his own graduation."

"We can't ignore the spiritual voice within that calls us to be better than we are," Morrison concluded.

A coin toss determined the debating positions of the two university teams.

"We realized pretty quickly into our research that Madison came down on the opposite side," said JMU's Lancaster after the debate.

"But we had a toehold with the free exercise half of the amendment," added her debate teammate, Morrison.

By Pam Brock