RALEIGH — A resolution in the North Carolina House of Representative asserting the state isn’t prohibited from establishing an official religion was effectively killed April 4 when Speaker Thom Tillis said it would not come up for a vote.
The measure, filed by two Rowan County legislators April 1, maintained the First Amendment restriction on establishment of religion applies only to the federal government, not to states or municipalities, and that the General Assembly need not “recognize federal court rulings which prohibit and otherwise regulate the State of North Carolina, its public schools, or any political subdivisions of the state from making laws respecting an establishment of religion.”
The North Carolina House of Representatives won’t be voting on a resolution asserting the state can establish an official religion.
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Had it passed, the resolution would not have had the force of law. But it’s the latest indicator that the appropriate relationship between religion and government continues to roil parts of the Mid-Atlantic.
The resolution’s primary sponsors — Republicans Carl Ford of China Grove and Harry Warren of Salisbury — said their aim was to support Rowan County’s board of commissioners in a legal battle over the board’s longtime practice of opening official meetings with Christian prayers. Both denied they wanted to establish an official religion in North Carolina and appeared to have been taken by surprise at the national attention their measure attracted.
“We’re not starting a church,” Ford told the Salisbury Post. “We’re not starting a religion. We’re supporting the county commissioners in their freedom of speech.”
Warren told the Charlotte Observer, “The resolution is not an effort to establish a state religion and should not be interpreted as such.”
Rowan is one of four counties in an arc from Salisbury through Winston-Salem where official prayers have drawn the attention of the American Civil Liberties Union of North Carolina, which filed suit in the Rowan case. The ACLU also has raised questions about similar practices by the board of commissioners in Davie County and the school board in Stokes County. In 2011, a federal appeals court ruled in a related case in Forsyth County that, while invocations at government meetings are permissible, they must be non-sectarian.
Meanwhile, just to the north in Virginia’s Pittsylvania County, the board of supervisors was permanently barred March 26 from allowing sectarian prayers at official meetings. And earlier this year, a state senator proposed an amendment to the Virginia constitution which would have, among other things, ensured the legality of invocations at government meetings. After a committee reported it to the full Senate, it was returned to committee, where it remained when the session ended.
The North Carolina House resolution prompted a response from the Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty, which said the question of whether First Amendment restrictions on religious establishment apply to the states has long been settled.
“The Baptist Joint Committee works daily to protect religious liberty for all,” the statement said. “While some issues are difficult, the question of whether the U.S. Constitution’s religion protections apply to the states is not one of them. Most Americans appreciate religious freedom and are thankful for our constitutional tradition that protects both the free exercise of religion and guards against its establishment. While legislative prayer (using a government forum to exercise religion) is controversial, government declaring an official state religion is off the charts.”
Robert Dilday ([email protected]) is managing editor of the Religious Herald.