The Fraternal Order of Eagles is not a religion or a church – just members getting together, having fun and, from time to time, “people helping people.”[1]
However the myth that The Eagles are Not a Religious Organization raises the question of: What does an organization have to do be a “particular something?” Let’s start off with Chief Justice Rehnquist’s description of the Eagles in his Van Orden v. Perry. He called them “a national social, civic, and patriotic organization.”[2]
First and foremost, as its name implies, the Fraternal Order of Eagles is an adult fraternity or social club. Eagles members are into NASCAR, bingo and beer drinking – the usual. Nothing wrong with those activities. And I won’t quibble with the organization also being described as “civic,” inasmuch as, it has donated millions of dollars to charities. And it is a flag waving “patriotic” organization. OK, too. Thus, Rehnquist’s statement is literally true – but only as far as it goes.
The Eagles are more. To be fairly described as something, an organization merely has to do that something with some regularity or minimal frequency.
And here is what the Chief Justice intentionally left out – the Eagles are also a religious organization. His convenient amnesia was necessary because a full characterization of the Eagles would have seriously undermined (1) the secular purpose he attributed to the state of Texas for accepting the Eagles Ten Commandments monument and (2) his holding that Texas’s display of the monument on its capitol grounds did not violate the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment. The omission is serious and, I believe, indicative of a series of deceptions in the Chief Justice’s opinion in Van Orden.
I believe that the following endeavors that the Eagles have engaged in constitute the necessary regularity or minimal frequency necessary for it to be called religious:
1. Require its members believe in a “supreme being” as a
condition of membership.
2. Distributed nearly10,000 Ten Commandment plaques in
1954 and additional thousands of other copies over the years to schools,
courthouses and other public buildings for the purpose of promoting God’s laws.
3. Erected the first Eagles-donated Ten Commandments
monument in a memorial park in Ambridge, Pennsylvania in 1955; the first
Eagles-donated Ten Commandments monument placed on the grounds of a state capital,
Denver, also in 1955. Between 1955 and
the 1980s, the Eagles donated more than 150 Ten Commandment granite monoliths to
state and local governments in 34 states.
4. Have (or did have) a position of chaplain and have
religious activities such as prayer at their new member initiation ceremonies.
5. Distributed 250,000 copies of On Eagles Wings to the Boy Scouts.
The comic book is about a Catholic priest who introduces boy (juvenile offender) to the Ten Commandments on a fishing. (1958)
6. Sponsor an annual God, Flag and Country speech
completion for kids 10-15 years old.
7. Filed an amicus
brief in Elk Grove United School District
v. Newdow in support of the “under God” in the Pledge of Allegiance.
8. Filed an amicus brief in Van Orden v. Perry arguing that the Ten Commandments monument does
not violate the Establishment Clause.
9. Re-dedicated a Ten Commandments monument at its international
headquarters in Grove City, Ohio in 2005.
These religious activities by the Eagles taken collectively over a period of time earn them the religious merit badge. More importantly, by ignoring this core aspect of the Eagles organization, the majority in Van Orden was able to surreptitiously mask both the Eagles motive for donating the Decalog and Texas’s motive for accepting it -- to promote the Christian values set forth on the Texas Ten Commandments monument.
[1] See the F.O.E.’s news webpage “People Helping
People” at http://www.foe.com/e-news/people-helping-people.aspx.
[2] Van
Orden v. Perry, 545 U.S. 677, 682 (2005).
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