Jim Ketchum

Guest columnist

Patriotism, it’s been said, is the last refuge of a scoundrel. These days, you could almost substitute “school prayer” and be spot on.

In recent weeks, President Trump and his administration have been making a lot of noise about protecting prayer in schools. By his definitions, prayer remains under attack at these tax-supported institutions of learning to which we send our young in hopes they will learn something useful.

Ever since the Supreme Court’s 1962 ruling that organized, faculty-led prayers violate the Constitution’s separation of church and state, politicians looking to gain favor with the voting public have tried to make political capital and gin up anger toward those they view as responsible for the state of things regarding prayer and schools.

For the record, the high court never outlawed prayer in school. You can pray anywhere in school any time for any reason. You can teach classes about comparative religions. You can discuss the history of religion.

The only thing you can’t do is make me pray your prayer or one written by the government. This is not Iran. This is America. The issue is that simple, and it has been settled. Except for the current crop of conservatives, that’s not good enough.

They subscribe to the notion that, to be a good American, you need to be a good Christian. America, they will claim, was founded as a Christian nation, its laws written from a Christian perspective.

It’s something known as Christian nationalism, and it is a dangerous heresy both of Christianity and the Gospels.

Most of the Founders subscribed in some measure to Deism, the theory that God created everything, set it in motion, then walked away. Some call it the Watchmaker’s Theory.

Such a misreading of history also ignores the profound impact of Judaism in the infant United States, as well as other faiths which posed no harm to one another as long as each was respected.

Still, when you need some votes or some righteous indignation, it’s as easy as pointing to the nearest public school building and crying out for legally sanctioned prayer. Christian prayer, that is. That, we are told, will fix everything.

I wish it were that simple. It isn’t.

Separating church and state has worked well and continues to do so. Schools provide a place where everyone gets equal access to learning, no matter what church they or their parents attend.

Most parents I know don’t want to cede the job of religious education to public schools. I certainly did not when it came to raising my children.

My job as a parent was to oversee that religious training in the church of my choice. My children came away enriched by those faith traditions that they are passing on to their children even as I write these words.

That, it seems to me, is how religious education ought to work. The key is that it takes parental involvement. If parents really want their children to get a religious education, they need to march them and themselves down to the church, synagogue or mosque of their choice and get to work.

They will find those faith traditions rich and powerful, unlike Christian nationalism, which is not Christian and not really nationalism.

It is the haven for scoundrels who think they are patriots but who are, sadly, profoundly mistaken.

Jim Ketchum is a retired Times Herald copyeditor. Contact him at jeketchum1@comcast.net.