On December 14, 2013, The Economist published a short piece which definitely qualifies depiction as a religious curiosity. The Economist does not often deal with religion (though its editor John Micklethwait, with Adrian Wooldrige, who currently writes the column “Schumpeter” in the magazine, co-authored an excellent overview of the global religious scene – God is Back, 2009). This piece is titled “Religious Pluralism: Beelzebubba”. It deals with a new candidate for First Amendment litigation, The Church of Satan.
Here is what happened: In 2009 the Oklahoma legislature passed a bill authorizing the erection of a monument inscribed with the Ten Commandments on the grounds of the state capitol. Anticipating possible challenges on constitutional grounds, the bill stated that the Ten Commandments are “an important component of the moral foundation of the laws and legal system of the United States of America and of the state of Oklahoma”. The costs of this project were not borne by the taxpayers but by private donors. The legislators relied on a precedent: In 2005 the US Supreme Court ruled that a similar project in Texas was constitutional, because the Ten Commandments had “an undeniable historical meaning”—in other words, a state-sponsored history lesson is okay, state-sponsored religion is not. Trust some lawyers to argue that the Oklahoma case is profoundly different from the Texas case and therefore in violation of the constitution. Not surprisingly, the American Civil Liberties Union, that noble band of Kemalist legal warriors, brought suit against the Oklahoma history lesson.
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