Including, Excluding All Religions

THE FACEBOOK POST featured a photo of a group of young children about ten years old, sitting in a circle in a school library. Whether it was photoshopped or whether a group of children was assembled to play act the macabre scene I could not discern, but it doesn't matter. In the center of the circle was a pentagram, the traditional symbol of witchraft, and all the kids were dressed in all black, with hoods. A group of witches, not wiccans. Heads bowed. Tiny faces sombre, scowling, in prayer, worshipping Satan.The caption below said: "If you want religion in schools, does that include all religions?" Good question. It indeed should include all religions, even Satantic worhip, but, quie obviously does not. The Christian religion has a virtual monopoly on access to public civic life in America, and it should not. Tyranny of the majority. According to the constitution, there should be no religion of any sort in publically funded schools, based on the first amendment,the oft abused one which clearly states: "Congress shall make no law respecting the establishment of any religion, nor preventing the free exercise thereof". Accordingly, there can be and maybe should be free religious expression anywhere and everywere in these United States, of any and all religions, except on government property. As John Adams wrote: "The United Atates is no more a Christian country than an Islamic country". That profound founding principle, while true, is if fact not a reailty; the Christian majority rules the spiritual roost just as surely as the bloods and crips govern the streets of east Los Angeles. Slightly more than sixty percent of the American people self identify as "Christian", of many various shapes, sizes, and denominations. The percentage is declining, rapidly. Within the lifetimes of most living Americans, the Christian flock will have become a minority. Perhaps at that point the American non religious secular majority will feel their power, rise up, and demand actual enforcement of the cherished first amendment. In 1962 the U.sS. Supreme Court (SCOTUS, as we call it today), took the bold step of enforcing the first amendment, removing prayer from American public schools. I can remember my first grade class praying as a formal school function. My second grade class did not. I had no idea why. Now, I do. We were obeying the high court. Conservative evangelical Christian types, who cast themselves as the defenders of the sacred constitution, not so much. Since the 1962 ruling, the religious zealots have been waling and tooth gnashing, proclaiming the imminent or recent downfall ofAmerica, civilaztion, and natural law, all because God has been removed from Amercanpublic schools. It sure didn't take much, just the removal of a few words spoken in ritual union by children. God must be weaker than anyone imagined. Or stronger. Actually, of course, God has gone nowhere.He or she never belonged in the formal activites of public schhols, but has always been safe and sound in the hearts, mnds, and souls of those who freely choose to love and worhip him or her. And the only folks who fail to understand that are the very same confused votaries who most ardently proclaim their personal relationshp with and understanding of Him, or Her.