SEVERAL lawmakers have called for repealing Article II, Section 5 of the Oklahoma Constitution, the provision cited by the state Supreme Court in declaring a Ten Commandments monument unconstitutional. The Ten Commandments ruling has highlighted this issue, but there’s long been good reason to repeal that bizarre provision.

Article II, Section 5, commonly referred to as a “Blaine Amendment” for the congressman who promoted the language in the 1800s, declares no “public money or property” shall be provided “directly or indirectly” for the benefit or support of “any sect, church, denomination, or system of religion.”

Yet that provision was not designed to prevent state establishment of religion. Instead, its intent was to target Catholics even as governments financially supported Protestant church teachings in public schools.

An 1876 version of the Blaine Amendment debated in the U.S. Senate explicitly stated that it did not “prohibit the reading of the Bible in any school or institution.” When states adopted Blaine amendments in their constitutions, courts saw no conflict with mandatory Bible reading — from Protestant Bibles. Meir Katz, a legal fellow with the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, notes that “nearly all states that adjudicated the question interpreted their Blaine Amendment to permit the exclusive use of the King James Bible in the public schools.”