[return to Part I]

First Amendment to the United States Constitution

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof ...

Utah State Constitution - Article I, Section 1

All men have the inherent and inalienable right .... to worship according to the dictates of their consciences ...

Utah State Constitution - Article I, Section 4

[i] The rights of conscience shall never be infringed. [ii] The State shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; [iii] no religious test shall be required as a qualification for any office of public trust or for any vote at any election; [iv] nor shall any person be incompetent as a witness or juror on account of religious belief or the absence thereof. [v] There shall be no union of Church and State, nor shall any church dominate the State or interfere with its functions. [vi] No public money or property shall be appropriated for or applied to any religious worship, exercise or instruction, or for the support of any ecclesiastical establishment. [vii] No property qualification shall be required of any person to vote, or hold office, except as provided in this Constitution.

Utah State Constitution - Article III

First: -- Perfect toleration of religious sentiment is guaranteed. No inhabitant of this State shall ever be molested in person or property on account of his or her mode of religious worship; but polygamous or plural marriages are forever prohibited.

....

Fourth: --The Legislature shall make laws for the establishment and maintenance of a system of public schools, which shall be open to all the children of the State and be free from sectarian control.

Utah State Constitution - Article X, Section 9

Neither the state of Utah nor its political subdivisions may make any appropriation for the direct support of any school or educational institution controlled by any religious organization.

Utah Code Annotated, Section 53A-13-101

(4) ...[R]espect for and an understanding of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitutions of the United States and the state of Utah ... shall be taught in connection with regular school work,

(6) Except as provided in Section 53A-13-101.1, political, atheistic, sectarian, religious, or denominational doctrine may not be taught in the public schools.

Utah Code Annotated, Section 53A-13-101.1

(1) Any instructional activity, performance, or display which includes examination of or presentations about religion, political or religious thought or expression, or the influence thereof on music, art, literature, law, politics, history, or any other element of the curriculum, including the comparative study of religions, which is designed to achieve secular educational objectives included within the context of a course or activity and conducted in accordance with applicable rules of the state and local boards of education, may be undertaken in the public schools.

(2) No aspect of cultural heritage, political theory, moral theory, or societal value shall be included within or excluded from public school curricula for the primary reason that it affirms, ignores, or denies religious belief, religious doctrine, a religious sect, or the existence of a spiritual realm or supreme being.

(3) Public schools may not sponsor prayer or religious devotionals.

(4) School officials and employees may not use their positions to endorse, promote, or disparage a particular religious, denominational, sectarian, agnostic, or atheistic belief or viewpoint.

The Earth Day ceremony was intended to convey the message that religion based on eco-spirituality is preferred

Government impermissibly endorses religion if its conduct has either (1) the purpose or (2) the effect of conveying the message that "religion or a particular religion" is favored or preferred. Bauchman v. West High School, 132 F.3d 542, 552 (10th Cir. 1997).

The Earth Day ceremony was clearly designed to be religious in nature and to convey the message that eco-spirituality is preferred over other religion or non-religion. SLOC's April 21, 1999 press release emphasized that Native American religious beliefs were a match to SLOC's environmental views and that Indian spirituality, prayers and beliefs are all tied to the land. SLOC's Environmental Department logo, "Spirit of the Land," with its Native American motif, stressed that SLOC's environmental program is based on an eco-spiritual foundation. SLOC's representative stated that trees were chosen as a major thrust of the environmental program because of their historic role in human religion and mythology.

The ceremony included prayers, declarations of religious devotion to Mother Earth, and religious songs and dances of devotion to Mother Earth. Trees to be planted by the students were blessed by Bishop Irish and Clifford Duncan.

The ceremony obviously violated Section 53A-13-101.1(3), Utah Code Annotated, which states, "Public schools may not sponsor prayer or religious devotionals." The ceremony also violated Section 53A-13-101.1(4), which provides, "School officials and employees may not use their positions to endorse, promote, or disparage a particular religious, denominational, sectarian, agnostic, or atheistic belief or viewpoint." Therefore, the ceremony violated the purpose test of Bauchman.

Further, the active participation in the ceremony of a representative from the Governor's Office in the ceremony conveyed the message that the State of Utah favors eco-spirituality, worshiping Mother Earth, blessing trees and Native American religious rituals over other religion or non-religion.

The Earth Day ceremony had the effect of conveying the message that Native American religion and religions emphasizing eco-spirituality are favored or preferred

An objective observer would conclude that the Earth Day ceremony had the principle or primary effect of advancing or endorsing religion over non-religion and of advancing Native American and eco-spiritual religion over other religions. Accordingly, the ceremony violated the effect test of Bauchman.

The Earth Day ceremony resulted in excessive entanglement of public schools in religion

"The entanglement analysis is typically applied to circumstances in which the state is involving itself with a recognized religious activity or institution" and fails to engage in "religiously neutral educational choices." Bauchman at 554. By their uninhibited embrace of Native American religion and related eco-spiritual religious beliefs, school officials and the Governor's Office entangled public school systems and the Governor's Office in such religion.

School Systems' Selective Sponsorship of Devotional Ceremonies Must End

There is a serious inconsistency at work where schools embrace Native American and New Age eco-spirituality while scrupulously barring other religion. Appropriately, no ceremony would be allowed wherein a Mormon bishop offered prayers of thanks for, and Mormons danced and sang praises of, the Sacred Grove where Joseph Smith received his revelations. Nevertheless, schools do not hesitate to violate the Establishment Clause by hosting Native American, Tantric Buddhist and New Age prayers, rituals, symbols, songs and dances. The entire public school system needs to come into compliance with the Establishment Clause. The Earth Day celebrations in the Bedford Central School District and in the Uintah School District are glaring examples of school systems oblivious to constitutional and statutory law.

School Systems Need to Recognize that No Universal Indian Eco-Spiritual Belief System Exists Despite such Implication by the SLOC Environmental Program

The fact that the modern Goshutes, seeking to establish a nuclear waste depository at their reservation in western Utah, were not included in the Earth Day Ceremony reflects the lack of an all-encompassing "Indian eco-spirituality." Further, recorded history shows that 19th century Indians were pragmatic in their use of the environment. In 1855 when Mormon settlers failed to pay Ute Indians for harvesting trees, Utes set the forests on fire, preferring to burn them rather than allow the Mormons to use them for free. [Diary of Andrew Love, 1852-1875, July 26, 1855, LDS church archives; Latter Day Saints Millennial Star, November 17, 1855.]

An assistant professor of anthropology at Utah State University, has written, "One begins to understand white Americans' fascination with American Indians, whom they see not as fellow travelers in the modern world but as the pastoral, romanticized Exotic Other who may be, intentionally or not, co-opted to fill an empty Western cultural and spiritual cup." [Bonnie Glass-Coffin, "Anthropology, Shamanism, and the 'New Age'," The Chronicle of Higher Education, June 15, 1994, page A48.] "Homogenizing the distinctive traditions of American Indians into a kind of Pan-Indian stew is, critics say, a form of cultural genocide." ["American Indians Resent Tradition 'Thievery'," Deseret News, July 13, 1996.]

In "Native Americans and the Environment: A Survey of Twentieth-Century Issues," American Indian Quarterly, Summer 1995, Vol. 19(3), David Rich Lewis, associate professor of history at Utah State University, sympathetically chronicles the vast complexity of Native Americans' interaction with the environment. Therein he states,

"...[E]arly environmentalists found inspiration in Native American cultures. Some was richly deserved while much was based on a cultural misrepresentation of a more complex dynamic whole. The grosser stereotypes depicted Indians as beings without action or agency, who left no mark on the land, who lived in the strictest of natural constraints. These ideas unintentionally denied Native Americans their humanity, culture, history, and most importantly, their modernity.

This stereotypic vision blossomed in the 1960's and 1970's. Indians became symbols for the American counterculture, American environmentalism, and New Age mysticism ... Iron Eyes Cody shedding a tear in television ads as he surveyed a polluted landscape, and an apocryphal speech written as a film script and attributed to Chief Seattle made Indians, 'the mascot of an international ecology movement.' ..."

Public schools and other government institutions are increasingly embracing Indian eco-mythology, thereby violating the Establishment Clause as well as engaging in junk education. School administrators need to stop sponsoring these programs and start establishing appropriate controls to prevent their abuses.

School Systems Need to Identify New Age Eco-Spiritualism Promoted by Reverend Irish

Selected aspects of Indian religious beliefs are increasingly being appropriated by Protestant churches and free-form religious movements. Reverend Irish, who delivered an Earth Day prayer and blessed the trees at Todd Elementary on April 22, 1999, is at the forefront of this trend. Reverend Irish's 1996 ordination as Episcopal Bishop of Utah was accompanied by a processional drum beat led by Ute Indian Clifford Duncan, who also delivered an Earth Day prayer and blessed the trees at Todd Elementary. Reverend Irish has stated that "religion is inescapably interwoven with nature," that the word "ecology" is "very close to what Jesus meant when He spoke of the Kingdom of God" and that "salvation is ecological." [1997 Sterling M. McMurrin Lecture on Religion, Tanner Humanities Center, University of Utah: "Religion and Nature: Perspectives, Reflections, and Invitations by Rt. Rev. Carolyn Tanner Irish.] She has also embraced the religions of pagans and indigenous peoples as more enlightened, tolerant and eco-spiritual than traditional forms of Christianity. [id.] The devotional Earth Day ceremony at Todd Elementary was a complete visualization of Reverend Irish's eco-belief system, representing an alliance, and syncretism, of liberal eco-spirituality and selected aspects of some Native American religion. Reverend Irish, a highly intelligent and learned woman, did not inadvertently offer a prayer in a public school ignorant of Establishment Clause restraints. Rather her unlawful prayer represented the deliberate activism of a zealot who believes that there can be no separation of eco-religion and government inasmuch as religion and nature are "inescapably interwoven" and the ecological salvation of Mother Earth is at stake.

Reverend Irish, daughter of Obert and Grace Tanner, is also chairwoman of the O.C. Tanner Company. SLOC's fund raising efforts had been stalled in a bribery scandal. Three weeks after the Earth Day ceremony at Todd Elementary, on May 13, 1999, Reverend Irish, as chairwoman of O.C. Tanner Company, signed a letter of intent which would provide upwards of ten million dollars to the Olympic games. ("3 Utah companies sign on for 2002," Deseret News, May 15, 1999, page 1.) On May 15, 1999 SLOC unveiled its mascots and countdown clock, all of which were based on ancient Native American motifs. ("1,000 days ... and counting," Deseret News, May 16, 1999, page 1.) On May 30, 1999, Reverend Irish announced that offices of the Native American 2002 Foundation would be located in the Episcopal Diocese's Jubliee Center.

Regardless of how or why Reverend Irish's religious views came to be adopted by SLOC, such religious views may not be sponsored by public schools and other arenas of government.

SLOC Religious Programs Are Inappropriate for Public Schools

There was no need for SLOC's environmental program to be based on eco-religion or simplistic representations of New Age environmental symbols. SLOC could have fostered academically rigorous earth science programs or funded scientific research in Utah's public schools. However, SLOC's decision to center its environmental program around Native American/New Age religion and attendant religious symbols requires that schools avoid sponsoring such programs.

Although SLOC advised the Institute that its future public school activities will consist simply of providing trees to be planted by third-graders, its devotional Earth Day ceremony at Todd Elementary clearly reflected a broader, religious, agenda. Also, SLOC's April 21 news release announced that SLOC's "goal is to create Olympic Groves statewide, outdoor environmental classrooms where teachers and students can develop an appreciation for the beauty and function of trees." Since schools already have trees, just how are Olympic Grove "environmental classrooms" to add to present academic settings? Are Olympic Groves to be places of scientific study, or are they to be temples of eco-spiritual meditation and occult practices?

The original Olympian Games were dedicated to Zeus. At that time, Greek oracles were located at groves where the responses of the god (Zeus) were interpreted by priests from the rustling of oak trees in the wind. [Collier's Encyclopedia, "Oracle"] That SLOC emphasized "the historical role of trees in human religion and mythology" at the Earth Day ceremony only increases concerns about the potential for New Age abuse of Olympic Groves to be planted at all of Utah's public schools.

School Systems Need to Immediately Establish Controls

The Todd Elementary violations, while alarmingly institutional in scope, were at least comforting in their visibility. Unsupervised teachers who advance eco-spirituality in their classrooms free of public scrutiny are an equal threat to students' civil rights. The federal judge in the Bedford Central School District case found that many of the objectionable religious practices were arose from the improper conduct of individual teachers. The judge ordered the school district to establish controls to prevent ad hoc, as well as institution-wide, violations of the Establishment Clause.

The establishment of Olympic Grove classrooms in public schools, if unwisely allowed, would invite New Age teachers to wrap their curricula in eco-spiritual trappings. Controls must be established to prevent, identify and sanction such abuses whether by administrators or individual teachers. Utah school children have been required to construct the same "worry dolls" banned by Judge Brieant. Utah teachers have adorned their classrooms with posters proclaiming, "The Earth is Our Mother" and invited students to recite the fictional Chief Seattle speech. Small students have been instructed to hug trees with their eyes closed and to sense messages from the trees. These and many similar abuses must end.

Native American Devotional Speeches, Songs, Dances and Prayers Must be Excluded from Public Schools the Same as Other Religious Devotionals

The Ute, Shoshone-Bannock and Navajo participants in the Earth Day ceremony were appropriately proud of their religious heritages and understandably honored that such religious heritage was to be the center of SLOC's environmental program. However, the devotional speeches, songs, dances and prayers were not appropriate for a public school setting.

The SLOC news release and newspaper articles emphasized that this was the first time some of these religious ceremonies had ever been performed in public and that such performances were abbreviations of ceremonies which usually last days. Presenting condensed Native American religious ceremonies reflects similar staging by Tantric Buddhists sponsored by actor Richard Gere who are repeatedly touring America. A complete analysis of the Establishment Clause violations inherent in such devotional-cultural arts programs is set forth in the Institute's Report on Establishment Clause Violations Arising from Activities of Tibetan Buddhist Monks in Moab and Salt Lake City, Report No.981117. Since such report was issued, the Slippery Rock School Board in Slippery Rock, Pennsylvania appropriately blocked a scheduled visit to an elementary school by the Tantric monks as a violation of separation of religion and government. ["Religion around the world, Slippery Rock School Board Axes Tibetan Monk's Visit," Deseret News, April 3, 1999]