In a comment a couple of days ago, Sharon referenced a truly appalling situation in Floyd County, Indiana. She’d received a request for a donation from the Indiana Sheriff’s Association. The newsletter accompanying the request profiled a program instituted by the sheriff of Floyd County: Residents Encountering Christ. The newsletter described a 3 day retreat, reporting that Sheriff Bush “went in and talked to inmates, sharing his faith and encouraging them in theirs. In all, 41 inmates were baptized during this event. Local news media took note of the program’s success.”
As Sharon wrote, “I’m not sure which I find more appalling, that a law enforcement officer uses his position of power to proselytize to inmates or that local ‘journalists’ consider baptisms achieved under these conditions to be ‘a success.'”
I am equally appalled.
Law enforcement officers assume an obligation to abide by the Constitution. There is a very lengthy string of legal precedents confirming the lawlessness–and cluelessness– of Sheriff Bush’s behavior.
That cluelessness extended to the news coverage.According to the local News and Tribune (paywall),
On July 24th, 41 Inmates at the Floyd County Jail that volunteered to take part in Residents Encounter Christ (REC) were baptized. What a powerful moment to witness!
One has to be truly naive–or blissfully unaware of the reality of power relationships–to believe that inmates “volunteered.” (As numerous women can attest, when someone with authority to make your life miserable “requests” some “accommodation,” it’s hard to refuse.)
There is absolutely no legal argument supporting Sheriff Bush’s appalling conduct. Numerous Supreme Court opinions have echoed Justice Black’s words in Engel v. Vitale:
The constitutional prohibition against laws respecting an establishment of religion must at least mean that, in this country, it is no part of the business of government to compose official prayers for any group of the American people to recite as a part of a religious program carried on by government.
That case considered the constitutionality of a rule promulgated by the New York State Board of Regents, authorizing public schools to hold a short, “voluntary” prayer at the beginning of each school day. The Court held that state laws permitting prayer “must be struck down as a violation of the Establishment Clause because that prayer was composed by governmental officials as a part of a governmental program to further religious beliefs.”
It is true–and very troubling–that the current Supreme Court has eroded previous First Amendment jurisprudence. But even those regrettable decisions don’t come close to making Sheriff Bush’s activities permissible. Perhaps someone should share these paragraphs from Justice Black’s decision with the Sheriff.
By the time of the adoption of the Constitution, our history shows that there was a widespread awareness among many Americans of the dangers of a union of Church and State. These people knew, some of them from bitter personal experience, that one of the greatest dangers to the freedom of the individual to worship in his own way lay in the Government’s placing its official stamp of approval upon one particular kind of prayer or one particular form of religious services. They knew the anguish, hardship and bitter strife that could come when zealous religious groups struggled with one another to obtain the Government’s stamp of approval from each King, Queen, or Protector that came to temporary power.
The Constitution was intended to avert a part of this danger by leaving the government of this country in the hands of the people, rather than in the hands of any monarch. But this safeguard was not enough. Our Founders were no more willing to let the content of their prayers and their privilege of praying whenever they pleased be influenced by the ballot box than they were to let these vital matters of personal conscience depend upon the succession of monarchs. The First Amendment was added to the Constitution to stand as a guarantee that neither the power nor the prestige of the Federal Government would be used to control, support or influence the kinds of prayer the American people can say – that the people’s religions must not be subjected to the pressures of government for change each time a new political administration is elected to office. Under that Amendment’s prohibition against governmental establishment of religion, as reinforced by the provisions of the Fourteenth Amendment, government in this country, be it state or federal, is without power to prescribe by law any particular form of prayer which is to be used as an official prayer in carrying on any program of governmentally sponsored religious activity.
Sponsorship of religious activity by a government official is unconstitutional.
Floyd County has a Sheriff who is either ignorant of the Constitution or willing to ignore it. In either case, he’s unfit for public office.
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