Religion in the Schools

Third in a Series

The schempp decision explicitly makes four points about classroom engagement with religion and the Bible; it holds out the clear possibility, moreover, of their entry into a secular program of education in a way compatible with the First Amendment. It affirms:

1. “One’s education is not complete without a study of comparative religion or the history of religion and its relationship to the advancement of civilization.” This premise offers full opportunity for presenting the rise and growth of Judeo-Christian religion and for comparing and contrasting its special tenets and influence with those of other world religions.

2. “The Bible is worthy of study for its literary and historic qualities.” The Court, therefore, did not rule against all reading of the Bible in the public schools; it ruled against Bible readings as part of a school-sponsored religious exercise. Studying the Bible is justified not simply because of its merits as literature but also for its historic qualities.

3. “Such study of the Bible or of religion, when presented objectively as part of a secular program of education, may … be effected consistent with the First Amendment.” The qualifications here stipulated are that study of the Bible or of religion must be (a) presented as part of a secular program of education and (b) presented objectively.

Before we go on to the fourth point in the Schempp decision bearing on religious concerns, it may be well to review the three points already mentioned and to ask what requirements they imply or impose for public in contrast to church-related education.

Public and private schools alike need to reassess their course offerings in view of the first point, which says that a complete education must include study of comparative religion or the history of religion in relation to the development of civilization. Both private and public education are free to study any and all religions, and to investigate a vast variety of religious phenomena world-wide, both past and present.

There is, moreover, no reason why church-related institutions and state institutions cannot teach such courses with equal academic respectability. It is true, of course, that church institutions are free to seek a faculty with a common religious identity and even to require their subscription to a doctrinal statement; church schools can also openly declare a posture of advocacy. It should be noted that some institutions that are only nominally religious do none of these things. The reference to advocacy, however, requires further comment. Many evangelical schools reject the implication that they are “special pleading” institutions that present alternatives only in “straw man” caricature, and that they do not examine and criticize their own positions. Although espousing a particular view, these schools see themselves, rather, as “faith-affirming” institutions. Academic sensitivity requires such institutions no less than the secular schools to protect the student’s right to hold another point of view without penalty.

Public schools readily proclaim their differences from church schools on the matter of advocacy. But any institution—and particularly a liberal-arts college—is a value-structured institution. Even if it does not openly declare its beliefs, it nonetheless has specific attitudes and practices, states of mind and mores that can be identified even where educators hesitate to formulate them explicitly.

In recent years, to be sure, diversities of background and conflicts of community values have made it increasingly difficult to formulate any statement of common beliefs and ideals; differences over values now deprive many institutions of a consensus on academic aims and of a covering philosophy of education. As campuses resign themselves to this plight, the notion gains currency that values are subjective options only, and that human autonomy and personal creativity are to be the basic determinants of social participation. Let us not deceive ourselves into thinking that this state of affairs involves no advocacy posture.

The distinctive attitude of public education toward religion must not be that public education is concerned more with other world religions than with the Judeo-Christian heritage. After all, the Judeo-Christian tradition is still the most significant religious option for most American citizens. Furthermore, only in this Judeo-Christian context can our national heritage and cultural background be intelligibly understood. The American classroom cannot do its best to serve the people unless it illumines the religious and cultural background of the nation’s heritage and life, unless it deals with the religious options actually represented in the local community and classroom, and unless it assesses contemporary trends according to the ongoing sweep of history.

It is assuredly not the task of public education to engender personal religious decision. The role of the public institution should be to teach about religion, not to instill or to dislodge a particular religion. Yet it is noteworthy that in a day when the younger generation in America was widely thought to be lost to religious interests, the Jesus movement has enlisted hundreds of thousands of high school and college students. What does it say about public education that many of these students sat through high school courses in Western history without hearing the name of Jesus of Nazareth (and is that any less objectionable than sitting through a course in American history and hearing no reference to the black man)? Some high school, college, and university students now question the relevance of much of their classroom study to the spiritual and moral crisis of our times; large numbers of them attend non-credit Bible-study classes, determined to hear what the biblical writers say rather than what the twentieth-century critics say.

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