Celebrating Christmas in Public Schools

Each year around this time, Jordan Lorence receives a flurry of telephone calls from parents whose children attend public schools.

He says the alarmed callers have a similar story: A parent objects when the school choir sings Christmas carols, and civil liberties lawyers challenge the activity. “… The school officials freak out and censor all the religious songs,” says Lorence, a legal counsel to Concerned Women for America (CWA,) a conservative Christian activist organization.

This Christmas season, CWA is spearheading a campaign to support activities such as caroling and displaying nativity scenes in public schools. The organization is distributing a booklet titled Christmas in the Public Schools, which describes what CWA says are constitutional ways to observe the holidays in public schools.

Critics charge that activists like Lorence are less interested in constitutionality than in getting religion into public schools through the back door. Barry Lynn, a spokesman for the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU,) said his organization will oppose CWA’S efforts as a threat to the constitutional separation of church and state.

Season Of Ill Will?

Conflict between church and state has become a predictable feature of the season. Disputes extend beyond schools to other public places where symbols of Christ’s birth appear. At issue is the First Amendment ban on any government establishment of religion.

In August, a federal appeals court ruled that the City of Chicago could not continue to erect a crèche at City Hall. The court said the presence of the crèche on public property represented a government endorsement of Christianity.

But some of the most emotional disputes center on public schools. CWA contends that school officials, under pressure from militant church-state separationists, have wrongly barred such practices as exchanging Christmas cards and singing religious songs. CWA says a public-school teacher in Florida ordered an eighth-grade student to tear up a picture of the nativity that she had made for an art contest.

The organization is trying to combat such incidents, telling parents the U.S. Constitution does not prohibit crèche displays in schools and student gatherings held to “celebrate the birth of Christ.” CWA cites a federal appeals court ruling that permitted the study and performance of religious songs, such as Christmas carols. The court said such activities do not violate the Constitution if their purpose is education, and not religious indoctrination. Pointing to a 1984 Supreme Court ruling that allowed the city of Pawtucket, Rhode Island, to sponsor a crèche displayed on private property, CWA says public-school nativity scenes may be erected for educational purposes.

Last year, the Seminole County, Florida, school district backed off its ban against exchanging Christmas cards after CWA filed a lawsuit against the prohibition. And Lorence said at least one school district—in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania—has dropped its policy against singing Christmas carols, in response to CWA’S booklet regarding holiday observances in public schools.

Saying most of these issues have yet to be settled by the Supreme Court, the ACLU’S Lynn argues that Christmas carols have no place in public schools. “When you have Christmas carols, you have sung prayers—explicit religious messages put to music,” he says. (In the early 1960s, the Supreme Court banned organized prayer in public schools.) Lynn also takes exception to the CWA booklet, saying it “seems designed more to propagate the faith than to explain the law.”

But Lorence insists that is not the case. “We’re not trying to get religion into the schools,” he says. “We’re trying to help schools and parents avoid the censorship that’s going on.”

By William Bole.

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