"Congress shall make no law..."

While there can be little doubt that religion, humanity's most enduring institution, will continue to exist and even thrive, there are plenty of voices clamoring for religion to be left at the church door, rather than brought into public life.

At Fort Dorchester High School in Summerville, some parents objected to a new elective course that would focus on the Bible and its influence on language, art, culture and history. The mere suggestion that high school students might have the option of taking a course where the Bible is required reading was enough to send this particular group of touchy secularists into hysterics. The Washington D.C.-based Americans United for Separation of Church and State even intervened, writing a strongly-worded letter to the religious fanatics of Dorchester County, reprimanding them for their audacity.

According to the Post and Courier, Americans United has filed lawsuits in other church and state disputes around the country. Their willingness to go to court should be taken as a hint that they would do so here, dragging Dorchester County into a time-consuming and expensive legal battle.

But why such rage at a high school elective? Why such concern that students may be exposed to the Bible in a context? After all, the Bible influenced the course of Western civilization to a degree unparalleled by any other text ever written. No English lit reading can match the Bible in terms of cultural significance. Students with a solid grasp of the Bible will be better equipped to interpret everything from art to history to modern politics.

A Sept. 15 article in the Washington Post found that non-believers are increasingly vocal, a reaction to the excesses of organized religion. Whether they call themselves atheists, humanists, secularists or rationalists, these people are most clearly identified by their distinct disdain for all forms of organized religion.

The recent glut of atheist books proclaiming God either dead or dysfunctional suggests that it may be open season not just on Christianity, often a subject worthy of tittering in for the elites of academia and media, but organized religion in general.

These newly outspoken atheists form their opinions about religion based on radical Muslims who become suicide bombers or fundamentalist Christians who want to stop biology from being taught in schools. But they are only getting a fraction of the whole story.

Arthur Brooks wrote a book titled Who Really Cares? that examines the charitable giving habits of America. He found that the single best predictor of whether a person would give to charity is their religious participation. The religious don't just give to their own churches; they are more likely to give to even non-religious charities than their non-religious peers. Brooks also found that that people who held explicit religious beliefs were more likely to volunteer than their peers who said that religion doesn't matter as long as you are a good person. These finding have been confirmed by separate studies in other countries as well. Long before there were government-sponsored safety nets, there were religious communities encouraging charity and taking care of the less fortunate.

Using data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, researcher Patrick Fagan found that teens from families with frequent religious attendance were less likely than their non-religious peers to have ever been drunk, less likely to have been expelled or suspended from school, less likely to have shoplifted and less likely to have used drugs. Religious attendance was also correlated to a lower number of sex partners for both girls and boys.

Christianity in particular has a long history of fighting for human rights. Christian groups began the fight to end the slave trade, both in England and in the United States. More recently, Christian legislators and groups have been at the forefront of efforts to eliminate the trafficking of women and children sold into sexual slavery, promote religious freedom around the world, end prison violence and rape and force reform of Third World prisons.

The Washington Post article cites several secular groups concerned about the power of the faithful in the political process. One British convert to atheism, Graham Wright, even declared that "one has to step up and stem the rise of religious influence." Right here on the C of C campus, a student writing to the George Street Observer went so far as to claim that her rights include not having to listen to preachers standing on street corners.

At its core, the anger that religion engenders results from the demands religion places on people. Religion holds its adherents to a strict moral code. In contrast, a secular moral code is more likely to shift based on what the individual wants at any particular time.

No one likes to hear that their view of life is flawed, or that their actions are immoral, especially when the immoral actions often seem like the most fun. And certainly, no one wants to hear that their actions will be judged when they die and determine their eternal fate.

But that's exactly what organized religion does: it calls people to change their behaviors and even their thoughts to match an ideal. Most religions set the bar high enough that the average person will fall more often than they reach it. And it is the act of reaching for that ideal that drives religious people to contribute more to society than their secular brethren.