by guest blogger Lauren Smith

Do Americans understand the value of religious liberty?

I wish I didn’t have to ask that question, but some new polling data suggest that it’s open to debate.

The First Amendment Center today released its 10th annual report on the state of the First Amendment. In late August, the Center surveyed 1,003 American adults on their views of the Amendment’s actual and proper scope.

The good news is that 97 percent believe the right to practice your chosen religion is “important or essential,” and 89 percent feel that way about the right to practice no religion. Only 6 percent say we have “too much [religious] freedom.”

The bad news is that only a slim majority of Americans believe this right protects all religions. Just 56 percent of those surveyed say that religious groups “that most people would consider extreme or fringe” should enjoy freedom of worship. The poll does not define “extreme,” which is troubling because individual perceptions of “extreme” religious practices vary wildly and have evolved over time.

First Amendment Center Senior Scholar Charles Haynes told USA Today that “many Americans consider Islam extreme, especially since the Sept. 11 attacks…Roman Catholics were viewed that way in the 19th century, and some people still consider Mormons ‘on the fringe.’” Conversely, many Americans consider fundamentalist Christianity, or Christianity itself, “extreme.”

The Supreme Court ruled in 1943 that the Bill of Rights was meant to remove certain subjects from the “vicissitudes of political controversy, to place them beyond the reach of majorities and officials and to establish them as legal principles to be applied by the courts” Fundamental rights such as religious liberty “may not be submitted to vote; they depend on the outcome of no elections.”

So who would define “extreme” — the word with the power to strip us of this fundamental right? The majority, of course.

That’d be the same majority that erroneously believes the Constitution establishes a Christian nation. Indeed, the poll found that 65 percent of American adults believe the Founders intended the United States to be a Christian nation and 55 percent believe the Constitution actually establishes it as such. In fact, the Constitution never mentions Christianity or its teachings; it is a secular document through and through.

The poll also focused on the role of religion in public schools. For over four decades, the Supreme Court has recognized that the Establishment Clause protects public school students from religious coercion by banning school-sponsored religious exercises and indoctrination. No matter, 58 percent of those polled believe public school teachers should be allowed to lead students in prayer.

Half of American adults also believe public schools should be able to “use the Bible as a factual text in a history or social studies class.” Did they consider the logical consequences of teaching the Bible as historical fact? Do they really want biblical stories – including miracles and other matters of faith – taught as historical fact?

It’s difficult for those of us who study the Constitution to comprehend how so few people understand basic tenets of our government’s founding document.

“We are seeing the product of years of not teaching the First Amendment at a young age,” First Amendment Center Executive Director Gene Policinski told the USA Today. “People are applying their own values” because they don’t know any different.

The abysmal lack of constitutional understanding exposed in the 2007 “State of the First Amendment Survey” is the latest in a string of examples of why we need to make the subject a pedagogical priority.

Lauren Smith is in the communications department at Americans United for Separation of Church and State.