Protestant Strategy in California

“If it will hurt the Catholics, I’m for it!” The minister who expressed this frank but enthusiastic lack of moral discrimination reflects the thinking of an impressive segment of California’s Protestant clergy. I have heard a reasonable facsimile of this viewpoint in the last 18 months from more Protestants than I care to remember.

The remark concerned a November 4 ballot issue in California which has split the Protestant community. Both sides are campaigning vehemently to increase their Protestant support, for this will be decisive. The position of the Roman Catholic church is united and unequivocal, but it represents only 20 per cent of the population.

The controversial measure, an initiative constitutional amendment, is officially known as “Proposition No. 16.” Thus it gained its place on the ballot through petitions circulated more than a year ago among the voters of the state. It seeks to place in the California State Constitution a provision to deny property tax exemption to all nonprofit, nonpublic schools from kindergarten through grade 12, except those for the handicapped. Once in the Constitution this denial of exemption will be out of the reach of the Legislature and can be altered or reversed only at another general election.

This is not a new issue. After the State Legislature by a vote of 108 to 3 granted tax exemption in 1951 to nonprofit private schools below collegiate grade, a Protestant group disapproving this measure sponsored a referendum. At the polls in 1952 the electorate upheld the action of their lawmakers although the contest was close. Advocates of taxing schools then took the matter to the courts where they were again defeated. The California and the United States Supreme courts in effect affirmed constitutionality of the exemption.

As a study in Protestant strategy, Proposition No. 16 has serious significance beyond the confines of the Golden State. In the face of mounting tensions in its relations with Roman Catholicism, the need of American Protestantism for a sound and effective strategy is obvious. The fundamental importance of this ballot measure lies in what light it can shed on Protestant tactics vis-a-vis Rome. Thus it provides a laboratory situation which may yield data of real value to guide Protestantism in what undoubtedly will be a long period of stress.

As is inevitable in any controversial matter, there are infinite nuances of opinion and many fine gradations of thought. It is not possible in a brief report to do them all justice. At best we can indicate only the main battle lines, primarily as they have been defined by the major opposing Protestant groups in the struggle. In being true to the main over-all outlines of conviction, we may not present accurately any particular Protestant minister’s viewpoint, whether he is for or against Proposition No. 16.

Rome The Decisive Issue

The decisive issue in Proposition No. 16 is the Roman Catholic church. If there were not 643 Roman Catholic elementary and high schools in California to be taxed, the measure certainly would not be on the ballot. Those who have once again placed this before the voters renounce subtlety and are quite frank and open about this. The official ballot argument they prepared quotes liberally from a textbook used in some Roman Catholic schools, including certain words from Pope Pius XI. They do not permit their campaign literature and public speeches to leave any doubt about their target. In one pamphlet they put it quite bluntly: “However, regrettable as it is from the standpoint of what some unthinking voters may misconstrue as intolerance, the question of tax exemption for nonpublic schools cannot be divorced from the rigid and unyielding objectives of the Roman Catholic Church.”

While proponents of Proposition No. 16 have taken the name “Californians for Public Schools,” their main purpose admittedly is not to increase revenue for public schools. Their state campaign director has said: “Actually the amount of money we are talking about is not too great.” The $1,175,000 that would result from the repeal of private school exemptions (1.43 per cent of the total exemptions granted in the state) wouldn’t mean very much to California’s burgeoning public school system which requires the establishment of 37 new schools each week.

Nor can the advocates of taxing private education point to any “clear and present danger” to the state’s public school system. As of March 31, 1958, there were 117,841 public school children on half-day sessions. In the past five years public school enrollment in Los Angeles County alone increased by 453,859, while private schools added 60,780 children. In 1952 nonpublic schools educated 8.3 per cent of all elementary and high school pupils. Five years later their share had increased to only 8.9 per cent. In California there have been no unfortunate actions detrimental to public education involving Roman Catholics. While there is the fashionable grumbling about rising taxes, educational extravagance and ineffectiveness, both the financial undergirding and the general moral support for California’s public schools are quite healthy and adequate. It is impossible out here to get the impression that they may be forced out of business. While they are beset by problems of growth, they are doing well and everyone knows it.

Fear of Rome supplies the teeth in the arguments advanced by “Californians for Public Schools” to justify taxing nonprofit schools. The true focus of their concern is Rome, not public education. If anxiety over Roman Catholicism is removed, so is the bite of their logic. Lacking a clear and autonomous position of their own, they represent reaction.

Their basic position can be fairly stated by stringing together some sentences from their own literature: “Shall California subsidize private and parochial schools with tax property exemption?… Should you pay public funds through tax exemption to support parochial schools that indoctrinate ideas alien to America?… Rome has the biggest stake in tax exemption.… Tax exemption is the opening wedge to full tax support later on.”

This thinking reflects the viewpoint of the Protestant minister who said to me: “If it will hurt the Catholics, I’m for it!” It also involves the reverse: “If it will benefit the Catholics, I’m against it!” This reactionary position, pure and simple, threatens to inflict greater harm on Protestantism than it ever will on Roman Catholicism. When you leave Rome out of the case for placing mandatory property taxes on nonprofit schools it collapses completely.

Protestants who uphold tax-free schools and oppose Propostion No. 16 have sought to establish their basic position independent of Rome. “Protestants United Against Taxing Schools” has adopted three basic convictions to guide its campaign: 1. Strong support of the public schools by every citizen whether or not he has children in them; 2. Opposition to the use of public monies to support nonpublic schools, including textbooks, bus transportation and teachers’ salaries; 3. Tax-equality for religious-sponsored and nonsectarian schools below grade 12 with similar educational institutions above this level.

They maintain that tax-free education is a Protestant tradition in America older than the republic itself, now universally honored in all 48 states. Not even their opponents can deny this. That the exemption is constitutional and does not violate proper separation of Church and State has already been decided in the courts.

Opponents of Proposition No. 16 are pointing out the tremendous danger that confronts Protestantism in the philosophy that a tax exemption is a subsidy. If this view is accepted, then all churches, educational units, fellowship halls, colleges, seminaries, hospitals, homes for the aged, orphanages and camps are being subsidized by the state. Recognizing the weight of this logic some leaders of “California for Public Schools,” like Dr. Abbott Book and Walter Hancock, have publicly advocated taxation of all property of every description owned by any church. Many Protestants in the state go along with them on this, since “it will hurt the Catholics.”

“Protestants United Against Taxing Schools” is stressing the perilous fallacy of defining principles of social justice by statistics. That 89 per cent of the nonpublic school enrollment is Roman Catholic has no relevance one way or other to the basic question of taxing education. We might as well tax churches, since a greater proportion of Roman Catholics than Protestants is reputed to be in their respective pews on Sunday. Indeed, by a quantitative determination of right and wrong, Protestantism itself never could have come into being, for it represented only a small segment of Christendom at the start. Obviously all that matters is that the tax exemption be available to all nonprofit schools, Catholic or Protestant, on equal terms and this unquestionably prevails in California.

The thorny point in the campaign centers in Rome’s future intentions regarding education and taxation and its conflicting position on separation of Church and State. On this the Protestant leaders of the tax-free school forces take a very “existential” position. Affirming their faith in the strength of Protestantism, they believe that the fairest way to handle problems of this type is individually and concretely in the courts. The Constitution of California is quite intransigent in prohibiting the appropriation of public money for the support of any religious sect or church or for any sectarian or denominational school (Art. 4, Sec. 30 and Art. 9, Sec. 8). The present law is both adequate and proper. Protestants should be vigilant about its enforcement. They should not, however, deny justice to Roman Catholics now simply because there may be further demands in the future.

This much is clear from the California situation: The strategy of “If it hurts the Catholics, I’m for it” only divides Protestantism and weakens its effectiveness. Triumphant tactics spring not from fear but from confidence. Therefore the starting point for sound Protestant strategy is not what Rome is doing nor yet what it might do. The proper starting point is a deep appreciation of historic Protestant convictions and an abiding passion for social justice regardless of what Rome does or does not do now or in the future.

If the Protestant position on any given issue is determined by the position the Roman Catholics take, then Rome determines Protestant strategy by negativity. This has happened to some Protestant groups in California as it has to some across the nation. Yet to assume that Rome is always wrong is to come as definitely under papal control as to assume that it is always right.

These days of mounting tensions call for an autonomous and authentic Protestant strategy that issues from the deep places of its own soul. The development and the pursuit of such a strategy demand both courage and objectivity. Thus we will serve our God far better by thinking more about justice and less about Rome.

END

The Rev. Kenneth W. Cary has been Rector of St. Matthew’s Episcopal Church, Pacific Palisades, California. Currently he is serving as State Chairman of “Protestants United Against Taxing Schools,” an organization formed to defeat a ballot measure that would deny property tax exemption in California to nonprofit schools. He is a graduate of Occidental College, Los Angeles, and Union Theological Seminary, New York.

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