Aging & Wisdom Quote by Dixie Lee Ray

The line reads like a legal hack dressed up as common sense: if you can rename something, you can launder it through the Constitution. Dixie Lee Ray is staking out a maneuver familiar to American governance in the late 20th century, when public schools and public institutions were skittish about prayer but oddly comfortable with “values,” “character,” and, later, “mindfulness” so long as nobody called it religion. Her intent is narrowly strategic: carve out an exemption by insisting that certain spiritual practices are merely “activities,” and therefore safe to sponsor, teach, or endorse with public power.

The subtext is sharper. Ray isn’t really arguing about theology; she’s arguing about categories and who gets to control them. “So-called” is doing a lot of work, signaling suspicion toward “New Age” culture while also dismissing critics who frame it as religious. That double move protects the state from Establishment Clause challenges and protects the favored practice from being treated like “real religion,” a status that would trigger scrutiny. It’s a rhetorical loophole: secularize the practice when you need permission, spiritualize it when you need appeal.

Context matters: Ray governed in a period when the culture wars were hardening and public institutions were becoming battlegrounds for symbolic legitimacy. Her formulation reveals how church-state debates often turn less on belief than on labeling. If the state can define what counts as religion, it can also decide which worldviews get institutional oxygen and which are policed as improper “mingling.”