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Public schools may be more religion-friendly when students return to class this fall. President Clinton, speaking at a Virginia high school in July, spelled out how religion can be integrated into public education without running afoul of First Amendment restrictions or recent Supreme Court rulings.

Yet many conservatives say the President's assurance that "the First Amendment does not convert our schools into religion-free zones" is too little, too late to defuse gop efforts to pass a religious-equality amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

Following on the heels of a half-dozen Supreme Court rulings that bar governments from pleading the First Amendment's Establishment Clause as an excuse to forbid religious expression in forums open to other topics, Clinton unveiled his list of religion "do's and don'ts" before an audience of 600 leaders at James Madison High School in Vienna, Virginia.

"It appears that some school officials, teachers and parents have assumed that religious expression of any type is either inappropriate, or forbidden altogether, in public schools," Clinton said. However, he explained, the First Amendment not only permits, but protects a wide range of religious expression in public schools, including private prayer and Bible reading; expression of religious beliefs in homework and artwork assignments; the wearing of religious clothing and messages; discussion of religion among students; and lessons about the role of religion in American culture and literature.

"I hadn't quite realized there's as much running room as the President pointed out," conceded education leaders like Frank Newman, president of the Education Commission to the States, an educational policy organization.

"There does tend to be a fair amount of confusion about what is permissible," Judith Winston, general counsel at the U.S. Department of Education, told Christianity Today. "And most often it seems that school officials err in the direction of limiting religious expression rather than in the other direction," she says.

CLEARING UP CONFUSION: The Education Department will take no action other than delivering the President's message to the 15,000 school districts in the nation before the start of the new school year. "We believe this is all we need to do to clear up much of the confusion," Winston concludes.

"It is an important step when the President of the United States informs all the school districts of what the law is," confirms Charles Haynes, visiting professional scholar at the Freedom Forum's First Amendment Center at Vanderbilt University. "But it's just a first step," Haynes cautions. "If it's not followed up by real action and commitment to applying the principles of the First Amendment, then it will not mean very much."

Haynes is editor of "Finding Common Ground: A First Amendment Guide to Religion and Public Education," a step-by-step road map to building consensus about religious liberty issues in education, which has been endorsed by organizations as politically diverse as the National Association of Evangelicals, American Civil Liberties Union, Christian Legal Society, and Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism.

"It would be tragic for schools to misinterpret the President's directive to mean all they have to do is understand the law," Haynes says. "Schools have an obligation under the First Amendment to be proactive," which he suggests means making sure curriculums treat religion with fairness, understanding what the Equal Access Act means, and making sure schools follow both "the letter and the spirit of the law."

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August 1 1995, Vol. 39, No. 9