Welcome back once again Show Mo Facts readers! Today is Indigenous Peoples Day and we would like to acknowledge and pay respect to Tribal Nations and the indigenous history that make up the land now known as Missouri. If you would like to learn more about Indigenous Peoples Day you can do so here.
We are officially less than one month away from Election Day! We would encourage all of our readers to check that they are registered to vote as the deadline to register is October 12th! All information on voting in Missouri can be found here! This week we are going to once again be focusing on Congressional races, and our first ad comes from Mark Alford, the Republican nominee for Missouri’s 4th Congressional district. Alford has been featured before on our blog but we thought this ad earned him another look from us.
In this ad, Alford is highlighting his Christian faith in order to appeal to his largely religious base. Alford makes several claims about the current status of religion in American society as well as its relationship with the government.
Claim: “The woke mob has erased God from our schools…”
Fact: This claim made by Alford is a blatant lie because it disregards the constitutional principle of separation of church and state. Alford has a history of misrepresenting the US Constitution, but this claim is unique because it has absolutely no grounding in constitutional reality.
Let’s first examine where the separation of church and state comes from, then how it applies to schools, and lastly why Alford likely knows this claim is untruthful.
The First Amendment of the United States Constitution contains what is known as the Establishment Clause which is as follows:
“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion…”
This clause prohibits any endorsement of any religion by the US Government. The founders were very clear on their desire to make sure religion and the government were separate entities, Thomas Jefferson wrote on this point that there should be a, “wall of separation between the church and state”. The Supreme Court would later find in Emerson v. Board of Education (1947) that the establishment clause also applied to state governments.
Not only are the federal and state governments not allowed to make any establishment of religion, but schools are also prohibited from endorsing any religion because they are “arms of the state". In the case Lemon v. Kurtzman (1971) the Supreme Court established three criteria by which schools must abide: Schools cannot prohibit or promote any religion, lessons must always have a secular purpose, and they must avoid entanglement with any church or religion. A multitude of other Supreme Court cases has also found religion in public schools to be unconstitutional. Abington School District v. Schempp (1963) banned bible reading, Engel v Vitale (1962) prohibited school-sponsored prayer, and Santa Fe Independent School District v Doe (2000) banned students from offering student-led, student-initiated prayer over school loudspeakers. The law is consistent on this point: schools are prohibited from endorsing or opposing any religion as it violates the First Amendment.
Alford attended Ross S. Sterling High School in Baytown, TX from 1978 to 1982 (see yearbook pictures below from Alford’s senior yearbook). Ross S. Sterling High School, being a public school, would have had to abide by the three criteria established in Lemon v. Kurtzman (1971). This means that while Alford was attending high school, his school was not allowed to make any endorsement of the Christian God and if they did, it was an illegal violation of the First Amendment. Alford is likely aware that it is not a “woke mob” that is preventing Christianity from being taught in school, but instead the First Amendment because he has been a student while this practice was in place.
Alford’s agenda with this ad is pretty clear. He wants to appeal to Missouri’s large Christian population. He thinks if he can convince people a “woke mob” is removing God from schools they will be more likely to vote for Republicans like himself, even when he knows this is untrue because he had a secular education. Because of Alford’s complete disregard for any sort of facts, and his willingness to present information that he likely knows is untrue we rate this ad as CATASTROPHIC on our Pants on Fire O-Meter.
Thank you for reading Show Mo Facts! Be sure to follow us on Twitter as well as like and comment on this post. Also, send us any ads that you see and would like us to cover through our Contact page. If you’d like to check out another blog from our class, we recommend Gateway To Facts. They are fact-checking the MO DNC. Find them here!
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