Morgan Chaney’s letter, “Religious concert violates bill of rights,” certainly brought to light a controversial, if not, complex issue. The line separating church and state is often a difficult line to trace, as countless court cases have proven.
However, when an assertion of a violation of the Bill of Rights of the Ohio Constitution arises, after further inquiry, it becomes incontrovertible that the religious concert is vindicated.
Chaney meticulously left out an important excerpt of the Ohio Bill of Rights. According to the Ohio Bill of Rights, “All men (and women) have a natural and indefeasible right to worship Almighty God according to the dictates of their own conscience.”
Thus, the Ohio Bill of Rights justifies the inalienable right of public religious “worship.” In addition, Chaney neglected to tackle another section of Ohio’s Constitution, which is ironically inscribed at Ohio University’s main entrance:
“Religion, morality, and knowledge, however, being essential to good government, it shall be the duty of the general assembly to pass suitable laws to protect every religious denomination in the peaceable enjoyment of its own mode of public worship, and to encourage schools and the means of instruction.”
Therefore, it would be an infringement and a true violation of the Ohio Bill of Rights if the religious concert was prohibited; ergo, the Student Activities Commission’s funding is warranted. Furthermore, “indirect consent” is not obtained simply because of OU’s state funding.
OU is compelled to maintain a form of neutrality, especially when it comes to student organizations. Divine Covering, unfortunately for Chaney, is not the only religious organization on campus, and not all religious student organizations are Christian.
In a very similar controversy, I would cite the United States Court of Appeals when it concluded in the case of Badger Catholic Inc UW v. Walsh, that “Purely religious practices ... is [sic] certainly a viewpoint neutral, category of speech. To fund every group’s varying approaches to their core religious practices would burden the [university’s public] forum and its purposes to the point of making it impossible to administer.”
Therefore, the question of consent would be impractical for the university to apply to each student organization, and in doing so, it would impinge upon students’ rights of religious expression.
Finally, Chaney speculated, “All of that money could have gone to a more secular — and therefore infinitely more deserving — program that may have actually been somewhat edifying.”
What could be more edifying than a campus (or state) that encourages public expression of a campus’ diverse spectrum of religion and culture?
The voices of religious, nonreligious, agnostic, etc., students should not be silenced or repressed; in fact, they should be heard and upheld. These are the voices that tie together the social fabric and diverse identity of our student body, and it is this identity that gives many students pride to call the Athens campus their home.
Kyle Jones is a sophomore studying French and political science.
