Public Schools: Equal Time for Evangelicals

Bible-believing Christians are convinced that morality and values are rooted in religion. A society may enjoy the fruit of civilized mores for a while after the root of religious commitment is cut, but in time the fruit will wither away.

The enemy that insidiously gnaws at the religious root is secularization. To gain objectivity in defining this problem, let me go outside the realm of evangelical faith to consult Bernard Eugene Meland, distinguished professor at the University of Chicago. In The Realities of Faith: The Revolution in Cultural Forms (Oxford, 1962), Meland observes:

“A full account of the evolving cultural experience of the west would reveal the Bible to be the primary document of western culture … The Bible, and its tradition, has a priority in our cultural experience which no other document shares; it cannot be dissolved or denied without serious loss and possible radical dissolution of the controlling sensibilities of our common life” (p. 45).

Later in the book he says this about secularization:

“In defining secularization as a pathology in the social process affecting taste and judgment, following from a truncation of human experience in which ideal and spiritual values are disregarded or denied to man, one is not so apt to interpret its meaning within a single point of view or philosophy. Instead one will see that it is a condition and response within human existence which disregards all intrinsic meaning as this applies to man, and thus deprives him of dignity and of a personal destiny. So defined, the term secularization can have meaning to Christian and non-Christian alike as a threat to man’s spiritual life” (p. 63).

Has this pathology taken control of the public school? Michael B. McMahon, writing in Intellect, says: “So great has been the reliance on objectivity and scientism in modern education that not only learning experiences, but the whole enterprise of schooling have been cast in a positivistic mold” (“Religion, Scientific Naturalism, and the Myth of Neutrality,” Intellect, April, 1974, p. 431). “Questions of a spiritual or religious nature are a vital part of every student’s experience,” McMahon says, but modern education has ignored this dimension by “uncritical and slavish allegiance … to the canons of scientific analysis.” It is dedicated, he says, “to the postulates that man is self-sufficient, that human society is the arbiter of its own morality, and that knowledge is exclusively the product of scientific inquiry.”

Up to this point in our discussion of religion, morality, and the public schools, most evangelicals would be in agreement: moral values are enduring only when rooted in religious commitment, and the secularization of the public schools is a basic problem. But when we move into the area of solutions, the consensus dissolves.

True, all evangelicals would agree that basic responsibility lies with the home and church. The home and church should be able to produce children who are resistant, if not immune, to viral secularism. Some evangelicals believe that these institutions are all that is necessary for the moral and religious training of children and that banning religion from the public schools is a good thing.

Many others, however, cannot acquiesce in the secularization of education. Education that leaves God out is not true education, they feel, for it deals with only part of reality. And worse, to deal with the material dimension alone is to distort even the truth about that. These evangelicals are responsible for the phenomenal growth of private Christian schools in the last decade. Schools associated with various national Christian-school organizations increased from 652 in 1971 to 2,428 in 1975; they are estimated to number 4,000 today. And many more are unaffiliated and are identified only with local churches. The National Observer (January 15, 1977) reported that this movement is considered by some “the most significant trend in American education.” The Observer estimated that two new private Christian schools open in the nation every day.

These educators do not feel they are doing an un-American thing. They point out that education in America began with evangelicals. They have watched the historical process by which evangelical faith has been replaced by secular humanist faith and reluctantly concluded that John Stuart Mills’s judgment expressed more than a century ago is true: state-sponsored education “is a mere contrivance for moulding people to be exactly like one another: and as the mould in which it casts them is that which pleases the predominant power in the government, whether this be a monarchy, a priesthood, an aristocracy, or the majority of the existing generation, in proportion as it is efficient and successful, it establishes a despotism over the mind.”

Other evangelical Christians are unwilling to give up so easily on the public schools. A more moderate approach was reflected in an editorial in the National Courier:

“The high courts did not ban prayers in the schools; it only put a ban on those prayers dictated, written or prescribed by State authorities. And contrary to the general notion, the court did not prohibit the study of religion and the Bible in the public schools; it simply ruled against using these studies in publicly financed schools to propagate the doctrinal ideas of any single religious faith.… Prayer in the schools is acceptable by the Supreme Court, as long as the prayers are voluntary.… What this country needs at this point then is a loud and persistent public demand that the Bible be brought back into the schools and that religion be taught within the guidelines set by the court” (February 4, 1977, p. 5).

Others in this camp are not so irenic. They would like to take the initiative and capture public schools for Christ. “Impeach Warren”—the chief justice of the Supreme Court at the time of the school prayer ruling—used to be their rallying cry. Today they provide muscle behind the promotion of the so-called prayer amendment to the Constitution. In a Christian society, the schools ought to be Christian, they hold. The separation of church and state was never meant to mean total banishment of God from government or governmental functions.

These are the three main evangelical views of what should be done about religion and morality in the public schools. Now we are hearing an increasingly strong fourth voice that unifies those from all three camps: the religion of secularism must be disestablished. Judeo-Christian religion and, along with it, religious values and Christian morality have been barred from many public schools, while at the same time the frankly secularistic position has been established. And yet secularism is religious in nature. Man-centered and limited to the realm of the material, it has all the basic elements of religion: absolutes based on faith, values based on these absolutes, ultimate allegiance, evangelistic fervor, and an emerging “priesthood.”

There is growing sentiment and activity among evangelicals to disestablish humanistic secularism in the public schools. This goal is being pursued by congressmen at the legislative level and by parents’ action groups at the local level, as well as in the evangelical press and pulpit. For example, in May, 1976, an anti-secular-humanism amendment was passed by the United States House of Representatives by a vote of 222 to 174. No similar amendment was offered in the Senate, and so the proposal died. But the action, initiated by an evangelical congressman, shows the strength of the opposition to secular humanism. The establishment of humanistic secularism as the only legitimate faith is being identified by increasing numbers of Christian and non-Christian thinkers as the great hypocrisy of the twentieth century.

Evangelicals think the Constitution is on their side. And some are convinced that the Supreme Court decisions on the issue are on their side, too. Gerald J. Stiles made this point to the Virginia board of education:

“Legally, the situation is in conflict with the U.S. Constitution as interpreted by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1954 and 1963. In Brown v. Board of Education (1954) the court stated that free public school education can no longer be considered a ‘privilege’; that it is a basic ‘right’ and must be made available without discrimination due to (among others) ‘creed’ (religious belief). In Abington-Schempp (1963), Justice Clark giving the majority opinion stated that the ‘state may not establish a “religion of secularism” or prefer those who believe in no religion over those who do believe.’ Justice Goldberg, in a concurring opinion, went further and said that the government cannot work ‘deterrence to any religious belief.’ He further warned: ‘Untutored devotion to the concept of neutrality can lead to invocation or approval of results which partake not simply of that noninterference and noninvolvement with the religious which the Constitution commands, but of a brooding and pervasive devotion to the secular and a passive, or even active hostility to the religious. Such results are not only not compelled by the Constitution, but, it seems to me, are prohibited by it’ ” (“Presentation to the State Board of Education of the Commonwealth of Virginia,” January 24, 1975, pp. 3, 4).

Just as the more universal and enduring faiths have been disestablished, so should secular faith. Discrimination should not be tolerated. I suggest that we seek for a true pluralism in our educational system, at least commensurate with the pluralism of our society, using two simultaneous approaches:

1. If the public-school system cannot be truly pluralistic, public-school educators should join with legislators to ensure a continuing private-school alternative for the citizens. I think that the Christian school movement should not be harassed, denigrated, or oppressed in any way, directly or indirectly. For the true liberal, the private school and particularly the Christian school may emerge as the only hope that a free pluralistic society will remain free and pluralistic. Without the Christian alternative in education, our society may well become a secular monolith in which the person of religious faith is not considered a first-class citizen.

The Supreme Court, in a landmark decision in 1925 (Pierce v. the Society of Sisters), declared it was beyond the power of the state to compel all children to attend public schools. According to that decision, “the child is not the mere creature of the state.” The court held that a 1922 Oregon statute requiring that each child of school age attend a public school “unreasonably interferes with the liberty of parents and guardians to direct the upbringing and education of children under their control.”

In a thorough analysis of the history and implications of the Pierce decision, Stephen Arons seeks to establish not only the right of private schools to exist but also the responsibility of the government to provide this alternative, lest the poor be discriminated against. I will quote at some length from this important study, published in the Harvard Educational Review (Vol. 46, No. 1 [February, 1976], p. 76 ff.):

“Individual parents have rarely been able to feel that their particular values have prevailed in the schooling of their children. In almost all the struggles over the content, structure, and methods of public schools, the under lying agreement among the combatants has been that majoritarian political control of the school system is appropriate.… This commitment to majoritarian control over what basic values are institutionalized by public schools is made tolerable to some parents because Pierce guarantees their right to choose a non-public school that better reflects their values.… The First Amendment encompasses a right of individual consciousness to be free of government coercion. The specific application to schooling of this right would describe a right of educational choice by parents wherever values or beliefs were at stake in schooling.

“Reading Pierce as a First Amendment case and taking account of the nature of schooling suggests that Pierce principles reached the basic value choices on which school policy and practice are based. The result of such a reading is that it is the family and not the political majority which the constitution empowers to make such schooling decisions. A First Amendment reading of Pierce suggests, therefore, that the present state system of compulsory attendance and financing of public schools does not adequately satisfy the principle of government neutrality toward family choice in education.…

“Because value inculcation cannot be eliminated from schooling, the notion of value-neutral education implicit in the legal distinction between religion and secular education is untenable.

“Up to this point, the effect of the court schooling cases has been to uphold and entrench the legal fiction that schooling can be value neutral.…

“Parents, social commentators, anthropologists, sociologists, psychologists, and others who have done research on schooling have all understood its value-laden nature. Seemingly, only the law continues to avoid incorporating this understanding into its deliberations. When the court’s well-developed doctrine of government neutrality in First Amendment issues concerning manipulation of beliefs is combined with the social scientists’ and parents’ understanding of schooling as a value-inculcating process, some extensive restructuring of compulsory education may be constitutionally required and publicly acceptable” (pp.97, 100).

Evangelical schools are not pressing for the government funding Professor Arons feels is constitutionally demanded. But they do ask for freedom in the fullest sense.

2. Because of the double cost to parents who send children to a private school—they must continue to pay taxes to support the public school—and because the issues are not clearly perceived, most children of evangelicals will continue to attend public schools. So I offer an additional proposal for this major segment of our society, people of Christian faith whose children are educated in a system that officially treats God as irrelevant to life. I suggest that the public school system itself be thoroughly pluralized. There are two ways of doing it.

a. Recognizing that every teacher has a value system and is communicating it, we should reopen the doors psychologically (if legal doors are in truth open) for the Christian teacher to share his or her Christian values freely. Someone objects: what if children are indoctrinated in religious convictions and morality with which the parents do not agree? That is my point; this is precisely what is happening.

Recently I was told by a parent of an experience his eleven-year-old son had at a school in Florida. A small group of students was to devise solutions to real-life problems, such as, “What if you were eighteen years old and found yourself pregnant?” The eleven-year-olds who were to solve these problems were given no guidance except one rule: “You may not say that any problem or solution is right or wrong.” This is moral and religious teaching of the most profound sort, and the approach is typical of what is taking place in classrooms throughout the United States. Such “values clarification” courses typically establish moral relativism as an absolute norm; the Christian alternative is simply not allowed.

Several years ago my daughter, Jan, was studying sociology in a high school in Columbia, South Carolina. The teacher often spoke against marriage and said that his most valued possession was his divorce certificate. Once when Jan tried to defend marriage, a discussion of human nature ensued in which she said, “I am a product of my heredity, my environment, and the choices I have made.” The teacher responded, “Heredity, yes. Environment, yes. But no choices.” This is very potent moral education. It is not only anti-Christian but also desperately anti-human, in that it locks a person into a deterministic box.

Moral neutrality is impossible. Moral values are being taught in the public schools. I am simply appealing for equal time. Free the Christian teacher to teach his religious and moral convictions as the secular humanist is free to teach his. This freedom must be established by law. If, as many authorities claim, the Supreme Court has already affirmed this freedom, means must be devised to restrain the omnipresent and omnipotent Department of Health, Education, and Welfare. Bureaucrats, from Washington to local school boards, must learn law or be controlled in their application of it.

b. Another alternative would be to renew the old released-time concept but with a crucial change: it would be under the auspices of the school itself. Any group of parents would be authorized to provide a teacher for an elective course in religion and morals. This approach recognizes that value-neutral instruction is a fiction and that true freedom in the area of religion and morals exists only if parents and students have a choice of instructor.

The current discrimination against traditional values and morals is a trend that threatens the fabric of our society. It establishes the faith of secularism, which can offer no sure word about morals or values. I am urging, not the Christianization of all education, but rather concerted effort to provide true freedom. Legislators, the courts, and government agencies must work to provide freedom for private Christian schools by refraining from regulatory or economic harassment. Educators must give administrative encouragement rather than subtle opposition or mere tolerance to the private-school alternative to cultic secularization.

But more important to the future of our republic, I urge that we work toward providing true freedom for alternatives within the public-education system through the pursuit of true pluralism. There are two ways to do this: make Christian teachers as free legally and psychologically as atheists are to teach their faith and morality, and offer elective courses in religion and morality taught by adherents of the faith who are chosen by parents.

Western society—and American society in particular—is reaping the first fruits of materialistic thinking. The full harvest may be the dissolution of civilization as we know it. People of integrity and courage must unite to unmask the hypocrisy of so-called moral neutrality and to disestablish secularism as the religion of the state.

Expedition

and this is how it was:

we were climbing along a

high sheltered ledge

when we heard his

thin and distant screams

from below pinioning rifts of debris

deserves it, said some of us;

he caused the avalanche himself

didn’t he? a stupid novice, surely

no rescue equipment, said some of us

come on, come on; no time to fritter

if we’re going to reach the Peaks

but you and you could not go on (nor I)

I reached; you took ahold of my two hands

and spoke invoking words

that turned my bones and muscles

into long and looping ladders

of nylon ropes

you flung me down

the shattered granite cliff

and he climbed up, climbed up

the ropes made for those moments

out of mortal me; now, now

he climbs beside us toward the upper Peaks

and

this is how

it was

ELYA MCALLASTER

D. Bruce Lockerbie is chairman of the Fine Arts department at The Stony Brook School, Stony Brook, New York. This article is taken from his 1976 lectures on Christian Life and Thought, delivered at Conservative Baptist Theological Seminary in Denver, Colorado.

Have something to add about this? See something we missed? Share your feedback here.