The Columbia, Missouri, case involves a Lutheran parish’s day school, whose stewards want state-supported funds to pay for a minor but safety-enhancing resurfacing of the school’s playground. The American Civil Liberties Union argues, and lower courts have agreed, that subsidizing the upkeep of such a playground violates the canons of “separation of church and state,” because everything that happens on the school’s premises is “religious” or religion-related. The Alliance Defending Freedom disagrees, and says that play and playground at schools like Trinity Lutheran are not a religious activity and site, even by extension. They are recess-related.
As I read Montgomery’s article, I find reasons to agree with the ACLU on one aspect of the case, which will be adjudicated in the months ahead, and, a few lines later, with the ADF, whose reasons are also somehow compelling. And, like many other citizens, I have sympathy for the Court and lower courts when they have to deal with these never-solved and never totally solvable religious issues. I hope that Sightings readers will read the story and follow the case.
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