Does the First Amendment Prohibit the Establishment of Religion? Views Differ

As reported in Ohio Capital Journal, two Ohio Republican legislators introduced a bill to encourage the state's educators to teach the "positive impacts of religion on American history". In a shocking turn of events [ed. note: not actually shocking in any way], the only religion mentioned in the bill is Christianity.

Ohio House Bill 486, also known as the Charlie Kirk American Heritage Act, is odd in that it's not creating law, but supposedly clarifying existing law, which is usually what administrative regulations, not statutes, are for, but as a simple country lawyer from Darke County, it may be that this is all over my head. The bill says Ohio's public schools and universities "may provide instruction on the positive impacts of religion on American history", including "historical accounts" such as:

The appeals to divine power and protection embedded in the Declaration of Independence;

The religious background of the signers of the Declaration of Independence;

The influence of religion on the United States Constitution, as evidenced by the exclusion of Sunday from the allotted time for the president to sign or veto a bill and the dating of the Constitution according to the birth of Christ;

The role of the Ten Commandments in shaping American law and their presence in art and sculpture embedded in the United States supreme court;

and

The impact of religious leaders such as evangelist minister Billy Graham on the culture of this nation[.]

Now, I don't presume to see into the hearts of the bill's sponsors – Republican state Reps. Gary Click and Mike Dovilla – but I'll go out on a limb based on my experience as a human on this earth for 48 years, most of them in Ohio, that this bill is driven by two primary beliefs: 1) the separation of church and state is the creation of godless leftists meant to obscure America's true identity as a Christian nation; and 2) the teaching of American history, in general, and of Christianity's role in American history, in particular, is just too dang negative.

As for No. 1, it seems like we shouldn't have to go over this with the strict constructionist folks (i.e., the Constitution says what it says and its meaning was frozen in time as soon as the ink on it dried), which I'm assuming includes Click and Dovilla, but the First Amendment seems pretty clear when it says, "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion." That's one of the more interesting things the Founders pioneered. It's really not all that useful to note that the Founders were Christians or at least Christian-adjacent. As white Englishmen, of course they were. What's remarkable is their effort to get and keep government out of the religion business, to decouple the state from religion after centuries of religious conflict and persecution in Europe. Are there Christian concepts embedded in our founding documents? Sure, and that's great! Morality is great! I am 100% pro-morality. But Christianity doesn't have a monopoly on morality. Acting like it does by trying to enact this kind of law is the kind of thing the First Amendment is designed to prevent.

As for No. 2, history isn't supposed to teach you what was positive and what was negative, but what was. Also included in the bill's list of positive examples is "[h]ow religious influence shaped civil rights and the civil rights movement through men like Booker T. Washington, Frederick Douglass, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and others". That's all well and good, but if you're going to teach how Christianity helped America reach its highest ideals, then you also need to teach how it was used to violate people's civil rights, such as, for example, to propagate the institution of slavery itself and to rob Native American children of their identities in church-operated boarding schools. I could go on, but there's no need to. History shouldn't be an exercise in deciding whether something was good or bad, but an honest inquiry into where we've been to help us understand where we are today and where we can take ourselves tomorrow.

When you lose your way on the Establishment Clause, as Ohio Republicans have, you pursue laws like Ohio House Bill 486 and you steer public resources to organizations like Hilliard-based LifeWise Academy, which takes public school students on field trips to the Creation Museum and Ark Encounter in Kentucky, where they learn about humans and dinosaurs living together. You do these things in the name of free speech and religious freedom, but you don't have to squint particularly hard to see favoritism for Christianity at play, indeed, what might even be described as the state establishing its preferred religion.