As a mainline Protestant who strongly believes in the separation of church and state, I find alarming the current efforts of right-wing Christians to remove constitutional safeguards against government-imposed religion. Across the nation, Christian nationalists empowered by the U.S. Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe vs. Wade are seeking to impose their religious beliefs well beyond issues of reproductive choice to affect public education, public libraries, and public health.
Evangelicals’ embrace of our unrepentant ex-president as a flawed, but chosen instrument of God seems heretical to me, but the results of this week’s Iowa Republican Caucus affirm this affliction. According to the Washington Post analysis on 1/16/24:
Evangelical Christian voters moved to Trump in a way that highly educated voters did not…Overall, Trump improved by 35 percentage points in the most evangelical counties, one of his biggest gains. For example, in small Hancock County in the northern tier of the state, which has one of the highest share of evangelical voters, Trump got 19 percent of the vote in 2016. He won 65 percent Monday night.
Religious zealotry seems to be spreading as fast as COVID, so it is no surprise the most fanatical and even militant of these extremists have hijacked the Republican Party, especially here in Idaho.
The latest salvo comes from two Republican legislators seeking a constitutional amendment to remove Article IX, Section 5 from the Idaho Constitution. Known also as the Blaine Amendment that restricts sectarian appropriations, the language appears in many states’ constitutions going back to the 1870s. The aim of these statutes is to ensure that public money solely supports public education, not private or religious schools.
Sponsors of Idaho’s HJR001 suggest that the Blaine Amendment is no longer applicable due to a number of court rulings in other states ensuring equal treatment of religious schools with private schools when the latter receive public funds. Since Idaho does not directly fund either private or religious schools currently, the effect of these rulings does not necessarily make Idaho’s statute null and void.
Advocates of school vouchers likely find the restrictions in Idaho’s Constitution an obstacle to their goal of having public tax dollars benefit non-public institutions – including religious schools – without having to be accountable for their educational outcomes.
We need to resist school vouchers and those wanting public tax dollars or tax credits to apply to private and religious education. Other states that have adopted school vouchers have found that costs skyrocket beyond original estimates while squeezing public school budgets and unfairly penalizing small, rural communities where public education is the only real choice.
The House State Affairs Committee will be dealing with HJR001 in the coming days. Unlike regular bills, a constitutional amendment requires a 2/3 vote of each legislative branch to pass and a majority vote of all Idahoans. If it reaches the November ballot, it will cost an estimated $200,000 to have the Secretary of State publish the proposed constitutional amendment and pro/con arguments as required by law.
Jan Brown is a retired nonprofit executive who is State Committeewoman for the Bonneville County Democrats and Region 7 Representative on the Idaho Democratic Party Executive Committee.