It's nothing scary.
We're just talking about the separation of church and state.
It's not that bad.
We're just talking about politics and religion,
the two things that you're never supposed
to talk about with a stranger.
And I'm a stranger.
Hi.
Also, surprise, lesbian, curveball!
On the count of three let’s all say
the first amendment.
Should you go?
Do you wanna go...
Okay I’ll go...I’ll just start it all,
okay no you go?
Okay, fine.
Let’s look it up.
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment
of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise
thereof, etc etc.
Seems simple enough.
Keep church and state separate to protect
the religious and the non-religious.
America’s founding fathers believed in keeping
religion out of government affairs because
they were fleeing religious persecution in Europe.
In practice, though, this separation is not so
clear cut.
So help me God.
Off the top of my head, I can point to several
instances where religious beliefs unequivocally
informed policy.
From who has the right to legally marry,
to reproductive rights and the legal determination
of when life begins,
to the lawfulness of prayer in public schools.
It becomes nearly impossible to discern the
grey area of how faith can interact with policy.
I pray that you grant, to the senators of the
United States, the fear of the lord,
and the courage to act by the council of the lord
in all matters.
I’ve headed straight to a state in the bible belt
that I have a unique relationship to:
Kentucky.
My parents settled in Kentucky after living in Belgium
for my formative years.
Needless to say, we all experienced a little
bit of culture shock.
The Kentucky legislature is predominantly
white, male, and christian.
Kentucky currently finds itself in a dynamic
political climate as conservative christian
matt bevin was recently ousted from the governor’s
seat by a democratic challenger.
Bevin was always open and definitive about the ways
in which faith informed his views.
Please don't just bring your Bible to school,
but read your Bible.
They not only inform me and my decision making
as a governor in this job, but my decision
making on everything.
And, in the past few years,
more laws have been passed that infuse a christian
theology into public life.
One such law showcasing the murky relationship
between church and state is the recent mandate
that all public schools must visibly display
our national motto, “in God we trust.”
This billboard is here as a response to the mandate
in Kentucky schools that says that
they have to have “In God we trust” displayed
in a visible public location.
I think the strongest name
under there is none of the above.
A lot of times in this discussion we’re talking
about, well what about other religions?
And we’re not even considering the fact that
some people don’t subscribe to any
religion at all.
Can you explain a little bit about why Freedom
From Religion decided to put up these billboards?
We are not one nation under God.
There are citizens who believe in multiple gods.
And there are people who do not worship a god.
People should practice their religious beliefs.
We just don't want them to harm other people
in doing so.
This is Edwin Hensley, president of the Kentucky
chapter of the Freedom From Religion Foundation.
An organization dedicated to promoting the
constitutional principle of the separation
of state and church.
Michelle Henry is an acclaimed lawyer who works with
FFRF when they take legal action
to prevent the entanglement of religion and government.
It begins with little things like posting
“In God We Trust” in every public school
and then more intrusive bills to try to keep
Christianity in the public schools or to divert
taxpayer money into private religious schools.
We are active throughout America because there's
so many violations.
Is it sort of like a separation between
church and state whack-a-mole?
They wanted all of these laws to pop up
simultaneous in lots of states.
So the organizations like Americans United, ACLU, FFRF,
could not respond to all of them.
Right now, a group of christian nationalists,
who largely seem to remain anonymous, have
assembled to form project blitz, a multi-tiered
legislative road map that aims to get God
back into public life.
Project Blitz provides lawmakers with the
language and legal tool kit to pass christian
infused laws in states that would be most amenable
i.e. the bible belt.
Project Blitz has been renamed,
it is now called Freedom For All.
All these complaints about Project Blitz,
well that’s talking about a non existent program.
The Supreme Court is now using history
as a guideline for approving laws.
In the fifties, we had the pledge of allegiance
altered with one nation under god indivisible.
We had “In God We Trust '' becoming the national motto,
replacing what was put on
all the seals of the united states, E Pluribus Unum.
And 50 years from now, they'll be pointing to in
god we trust in all our hallways and
our schools.
That's quite a sobering thought.
If a mandate can stick around for long enough,
it's like, oh, this is how it's always been.
At the local level, who is passing these laws?
In preparation for this episode, we reached out to a
number of republican lawmakers who
have a record of writing and passing
legislation informed by their Christian faith.
No one was getting back to us, but now that I'm
actually in Kentucky, I've decided to
give it another try.
Hi, my name is Grace Baldridge and I
was wondering if I could get a comment
from Representative Reed
on the “In God We Trust” mandate.
I will let him know.
Wonderful.
Thank you so much.
Thank you for calling the Congressional Prayer
Caucus Foundation.
For media, press six.
Thank you for calling the Congressional Prayer
Caucus Foundation.
I just got looped back to the same menu again.
What number should I press, 1?
Goodbye.
No!
Hello this is Joe Fisher.
I'm sorry I can't take your call right now.
Let me get your number so
I can get back incontact with you.
He is in committee meetings at the moment.
I can see if he has time to call you back.
I'll let him know and then I'll be back in contact
with you, okay?
Wonderful.
Thank you so much.
Yup.
Alright, bye.
Bye.
It’s so frustrating when we’re talking about
publicly elected officials that we’re
having a hard time getting a hold of.
Because they’re public servants, they serve the public.
But to serve the public interest they need to speak
with media and address some real
concerns of the community.
You don’t hear a lot of church bells in LA.
That’s one… when you’re just walking around.
In an effort to better understand the constitutional
basis for this debate, I visited the ACLU
of kentucky.
The separation of church and state is part of
how our nation was founded, by individuals
who left a place where there was a government
religion and other religions then were excluded
or ostracized or persecuted.
And founded a nation where everyone would
have the right to practice whatever religion
they wanted.
Can you think of specific examples in Kentucky
of how we're seeing the separation of church
and state not be respected?
Last year we had the Bible literacy bill,
which was, of course, the idea of teaching
the Bible in schools, which opens the door
for there to be problematic experiences in
the schools when it comes to
children feeling isolated.
Kentucky doesn’t exist in a vacuum,
and a lot of this is what we see as
a nationwide
push by certain groups to have
government be explicitly Christian.
I’m curious to hear how Kentuckians really feel about
this topic, or if it’s even on
their minds.
So I hit the streets.
Why is the separation of church and state
important for you?
I don't want the church telling me
what I can do.
Do you think that the church and the state are
quite separate in the state of Kentucky?
Not recently with the whole Planned Parenthood
debate.
When you see “In God We Trust” on money,
how do you interpret that?
Well, I mean, as a Christian that's great, but you've got God.
You've got Yahweh.
You've got Allah.
So many religions out there.
Being a gay man, people try to tell me
that I shouldn't have the right to get married
because of their religious views.
And it’s like, that's shitty.
Yeah.
In an effort to bring this discussion a little closer to
home, I visited my good friend Korey,
a hairstylist in kentucky.
So what are we gonna do with it now?
Well, right now, Korey...
Oh this is bad.
Thank you.
I know it's bad.
That's why I'm here.
To be honest, korey and I don’t agree on much.
We land on opposite ends on a lot of issues.
But korey is one of my most loyal and caring friends.
She stood by me during a *ahem* different time in my life.
Please do not screenshot these photos
and we can talk openly and honestly about
our differences.
You know, I'm pretty strong in what I believe in,
but I also respect someone else's beliefs.
So in a public school, if there was mandated
prayer to Jesus, do you think that that crosses
a boundary of separating the church
from the state?
I'm going to think prayer in school is great.
Yeah.
Because, to me, it's important.
That’s just sort of like where you live, as well.
How often do you come across someone who is
of a different faith than yourself?
Not very often.
Is it sort of assumed when you meet someone
in this area...
That they’re a Christian?
Yeah.
Unless, sort of, proven otherwise.
Yeah.
Right.
Korey, I love you.
I love you, too.
Bye.
Thanks for my hair.
You're welcome.
In a state without a lot of religious diversity,
I noticed that it’s hard to raise awareness
about laws that seem
innocuous to the religious majority, but negatively
impact people of a different belief.
Finally, two kentuckians whose viewpoints
I was the most curious about, my mother and
my father.
What are you doing?
Basically taking a hat and making it look
like a present.
As a naval chaplain, I was curious how my father’s
interfaith background would inform
his thoughts on this topic.
Why is it important for you to be an interfaith
leader as a chaplain?
Language can be inflammatory,
unintentionally, and so I don't pray in this...
in the name of the Father and Son and the
Holy Ghost.
Do you know how I close my prayers in general?
"O Lord, our strength and our redeemer."
My mom was a school teacher most of my life
so I wondered if this was something she
thought about for her students.
Okay, so there is a mandate right now in Kentucky
schools that says you have to display “In
God we Trust.”
I think display is different from
you have to believe that.
Would it be the same if it was in Yahweh we trust,
in Jehovah, in Allah?
When we say in God we trust in the state of Kentucky,
it's a Christian God.
Yeah.
I wondered if it’s really that hopeless?
Is it possible to be interfaith in a state that is
so shaped by Christianity?
At a local mosque here in Paducah
a group of faith leaders started the Abrahamic
Faith Council.
They meet regularly and discuss what it really
means to be interfaith and how to apply that
to their communities.
Judaism, Islam, Christianity,
we share a common foundation.
Love God
and love your neighbor.
When we talk about the separation between
church and state, first of all, is that something
that y'all at this table feel is important?
We say that.
But do we practice that?
If we truly believed that, we would stop saying
we're a Christian nation.
Exactly.
There is kind of a...
An unconscious blindness to the fact that there may be
people who don't see things the
way I do.
We have linguistic colonialism going on where
these people have taken our words and they've
spun them around to be something different.
You know, ask a common Muslim man.
What is jihad means?
You're striving.
It doesn’t mean unmitigated bloodshed of
nonbelievers or infidels.
A third person is dictating what those
terms mean today.
Hassan Ali , the imam at the Islamic Center of Paducah,
gave me a tour.
Is it quite sheltered of me that I've never
been in a mosque before?
It's a sanctuary, it's a God's place, you know.
Anybody's welcome.
So this is the...
So this is facing towards the Kaaba in Mecca.
The leader is on the front mat, the
congregation forms a line behind them.
Interesting, this used to be a church.
I actually, I wasn't going to say... because
I wasn't sure if it was intentional.
We blend in, right?
You blend really in.
The congregation is, you know, maximum of
50 to 60 people.
The issue becomes, you know, like Friday is not a day off.
People have to take time out of their work or,
you know, ask for a lunch break and, you
know, sometimes those things are not aiding
the situation by your employers.
Have you ever had people come to the center
to protest or to...
Because they...
Right.
disagree with y'all being here?
We're lucky because there's a ditch in the road
and they literally would have to stand in the ditch,
or by the side of the road and get hit by the car.
So they decided not to go down here.
There was a huge video out of Arizona where
they showed up with AR-15s and semi-automatics
and they surrounded the mosque and they protested.
What I was asking people was how would the
narrative be if Muslims went armed like that
to a Christian center?
In reflecting on my time in Kentucky and
the slow rolling back of
our first amendment protections,
it feels like we have a short term memory
when we talk about this issue.
There’s no mention of God at all
in the United States constitution.
So why are people so emboldened to perpetuate a
falsehood that the United States is a Christian
nation, rather than a country founded on religious
pluralism?
Obviously, liberty and justice for all
is an American principle.
But what we're seeing with regards to religious
liberty is that liberty and justice for all
is really liberty and justice for most or for some,
because not everyone is given the same freedom.
And a majority religion is making the rules for everybody.
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