Opinion: Court's ruling in song case a wake-up call on belief

Opinion: Court's ruling in song case a wake-up call on belief



JASON MAURO, Ph.D
St. Augustine
Publication Date: 04/19/09

In the recent film, "Watchmen," the blue Dr. Manhattan transports himself and Laurie to the surface of Mars. He stands there rapturously taking in Mars's stark beauty, until he notices Laurie desperately gasping by his feet.

"Oh," he says, "I forgot. You can't breathe here."

I was reminded of this scene by the recent federal court decision in favor of the plaintiffs over the St. Johns County School District regarding the song, "In God We Trust." The court recognized in our community an atmosphere that is potentially caustic and strangling to some of us. But to those brought up within it and nourished by it, it does not seem like an atmosphere at all. It seems as perfectly normal, invisible and pressure free as the air seems. I write this column to ask the Dr. Manhattans among us to look down and notice the Lauries gasping at your feet.

In short, the court recognized a pressure being put upon the plaintiffs, a pressure that those applying it did not even know was there. U.S. District Judge Harvey Schlesinger recognized in his ruling that the song "In God We Trust" was "overtly espousing a specific religious viewpoint and attacking of those who do not share the same belief," and sympathetically recognized that the younger plaintiffs are "extremely sensitive" to the pressure applied but unnoticed by the teachers, superintendent and school board. (Dr. Joseph Joyner's attribution of the lawsuit to a frivolous pursuit of a "personal agenda" bespeaks, I think, not malice, but a Dr. Manhattan-like blindness to a stifling pressure that, from within his own professed Christian viewpoint, he does not seem to recognize.)

I have felt that pressure myself, at School Board meetings that traditionally open with a prayer to a god, and even to a specific savior that is not mine. But stand, bow my head, and mouth the words I did, because I had business before that board, and before the superintendent, advocating for my children, and their school. I was pressed into a twisted shape that is not mine by a weighty atmosphere that was nourishing to those at the front of the room, but which to me was unhealthy. Indeed, I can write this today, because I no longer have children in the school system; I am humbled and inspired by the bravery of the parents who brought this suit while their kids are still within the school system. I know plenty of people in the county who are gasping in this overtly Christian atmosphere that so many people here simply assume is more commonly nourishing than it is.

I believe that this ruling is an occasion for all of us to pause, and understand that no particular religious atmosphere Christian, atheist, Wiccan, Muslim, Buddhist is natural to all of us. But from within any given perspective, it seems like the most natural and necessary thing in the world how could anyone not breathe this wonderful air?

This ruling reminds us that we are each responsible to see that what seems so natural and necessary to us, is not strangling our fellow citizens.

Jason Mauro, Ph.D., as lived in St. Augustine for the past 15 years. His children were educated in St. Johns County public schools. He is a former president of the Gifted advocacy group for Webster Elementary. He is a professor of English at the University of North Florida, with a specialty in conceptions of the self in American Literature. He would like to hear from those readers who have felt similarly stifled, silenced or coerced, or from those who are religious, but recognize the danger of assuming a common belief. "Perhaps together," he said, "We can strive to find an atmosphere in which we can all breathe a little easier." Readers are welcome to respond to Mauro through letters@staugustine.com or directly at tellemtoday@yahoo.com.

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