If you were to survey 1,000 adults across our fruited plain on the question of whether a public school teacher could actively participate in an explicitly religious club that meets after school on the campus in which she teaches, chances are a majority would guess the teacher is in the wrong.
I say that our mythical survey respondents would “guess” that the teacher is acting illegally because I believe the respondents would have an almost insurmountable internal tension. Part of their freedom-loving soul would no doubt like to think that in the land of the free and the home of the brave, preventing a person from freely exercising their religious beliefs solely because of their employment status is wrong. Yet, the hypothetical survey respondents have probably heard the siren song of “separation of church and state” for so long that they’ve been conditioned to reflexively reject nearly any religious participation by those employed by the state.
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