Commentary

At the time of America 's founding, about 98% of the nation was Protestant and about 2% was Catholic, while all other religions combined comprised less than 1%. In the 1830's, Irish immigration more than doubled the proportion of Catholics to 5%. During the following decade, Catholics grew to 10% of America 's population, again due to Irish immigration. As the Catholic community grew, so did resentment towards them, especially in the public schools where Catholics rejected the King James version of the Bible.

Following the Civil War, former Confederate soldiers created the Ku Klux Klan (KKK), a virulently racist, anti-Semitic, anti-Catholic, and anti-immigrant organization. The KKK became so violent that President Grant was forced to destroy the group under the Ku Klux Klan Act 0f 1871. However, anti-Catholic sentiment remained high on the national agenda.

In 1875, then Speaker of the House, James Blaine, tried to pass a constitutional amendment (the Blaine Amendment) that would forever ban any public funds or lands from ever being “under the control of a religious sect.” Though the proposal passed almost unanimously in the House, the vote fell four votes shy of the two-thirds majority needed in the Senate.

Supporters then turned to the states where all but eleven states passed “Blaine Amendments” to their state constitutions.

In 1915, inspired by the film, Birth of a Nation, a second Ku Klux Klan was formed. The group reached its peak in the 1920's when they claimed 15% of the adult male “Protestant White” population and included such luminaries as future Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black.

In 1948, Justice Black authored the majority opinion in McCollum V. Board Of Education where the Supreme Court endorsed “a wall of separation between Church and State." Though the concept was plainly contrary to 150 years of judicial history and government practice, Justice Black claimed to find support in a letter written by President Jefferson in 1802 to the Danbury Baptist Association. That President Jefferson was not a member of the Constitutional Convention (he was Ambassador to France at the time) appears to have been ignored by the Supreme Court.

For eighty years, religious bigots used democratic means to prevent public monies from reaching Catholic schools but they didn't achieve complete success until a former member of the KKK created a “wall” between church and state by judicial fiat.

Successive Supreme Court decisions have gradually rolled back many of the restrictions created by the McCollum decision and Blaine Amendments on the basis that the constitution does not allow the government to discriminate against religious groups.

Much of the opposition to school vouchers for private religious schools is grounded in the Blaine Amendments and the McCollum decision's “wall of separation” despite their shared history of religious bigotry. It's time to end the bigotry and allow parents to send their children to any qualified school that will have them.

- editor