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The Jackson Sun said Paige's remarks are "an insult to teachers and students in the nation's public schools. Paige should apologize. He also deserves a reprimand from the Bush administration. … Public schools cannot become purveyors of Christianity as he espouses."

But wait, Paige didn't say that they should be. In fact, quite the opposite.

"I understand completely and respect the separation of church and state," he said at Wednesday's press conference. Starnes had asked for his personal views on "how I would deal with issues," he said. "This has no connection to how I perform my duties as secretary of education." He added that he wasn't encouraging parents or students to choose private schools over public ones.

Asked if he would apologize the remarks, Paige replied, "I don't think I have anything to apologize for. What I am doing is clarifying my remarks. I think anybody who fairly reads those remarks or hears the clarification would agree with that, assuming they have no other agenda." He also challenged his critics to show "any modicum of a situation where there was some imposition of my views on another person."

Others came to Paige's defense.

"It's an innocent statement by a decent and honorable man that was taken out of context," Rep. John A. Boehner (R- Oh.), the chairman of the House Education and the Workforce Committee, told Education Week.

"He'd prefer to have a child in a school that has a strong appreciation for the values of the Christian community. Who's opposed to that?" William Bennett remarked to the Associated Press.

Southern Baptist Convention spokesman William Merrell said the criticisms levied against Paige were merely "anti-Christian drivel."

But if they were just drivel, why were they so strong and widespread? A statement by the American Civil Liberties Union is instructive on this point. In this dispute, the ACLU is actually far more moderate than Paige's critics. ACLU legislative Terry Schroeder told the San Francisco Chronicle that the group wasn't all that concerned about Paige's remarks, but "takes issue with guidelines on prayer in school that Paige recently sent out to schools across the country."

Others seem to want to paint Paige as a religious bigot as an effort to stifle religious freedoms. "Too many in the administration seem more interested in fostering a divisive competition between church and state at taxpayers' expense through proposals to bolster, with public subsidies, religion's role in prisons, housing construction and other sensitive areas," says The New York Times editorial. "Routine statements of belief in pluralism sound hollow coming from public servants who make a habit of wearing a particular faith on their sleeves."

In other words, in the view of the Times and other critics, if you're religious, you're not allowed to talk about religion.

In related news
By the way, credit the Anti-Defamation League with actually listening to Paige—eventually.

"We do not share his view that public schools should be teaching children to have 'a strong faith' or values 'of the Christian community," ADL National Director Abraham H. Foxman said in a press release Wednesday.

But after Paige's press conference, the group issued another press release, saying it "welcomed Secretary of Education Rod Paige's efforts to clarify his remarks about the role of faith in public education, and his statement that he understands and respects the separation of church and state."

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April (Web-only) 2003, Vol. 47