The Crusade to Christianize Public Schools
by Robert Crux | 5 September 2024 |
Do students still have the constitutional right to a public education free from religious indoctrination and discrimination? Or do public school officials have free rein to promote their religious beliefs and practices to students?
Could American public schools become religious public schools?
We may now be living in a society that is willing to allow naked religiosity in America’s public school classrooms—where “separation of church and state” is no longer the guiding principle in our democracy.
Paving the way
There has been a flurry of policy activity recently, both in national courts and in state policy, allowing religious indoctrination in public schools. The recent and ongoing invasion of public schools by evangelical Christians is being done with the belief that it will make America more Christian. And it is being done by Christians who believe state power can be used to promote people’s spiritual well-being.
This has caught the attention of legal experts and religious liberty advocates who value a healthy separation of church and state. Yet the religious right’s crusade to stamp their own brand of religion and politics upon our country’s public schools has been reinforced by a sympathetic and affirming conservative Supreme Court.
The religious war in America has now come to the gates of its public schools, and it has become a fight for the heart and soul of the country.
A constitutional oxymoron
A religious school can’t be a public school, nor a public school a religious school—at least that is what we have always believed under the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment. The mere notion there can be such a thing as a religious public school denies the integrity of America’s public school system, and becomes a constitutional oxymoron. Yet, government officials in more than a few conservative states are not just blurring the lines separating church and state; they are attempting to completely eviscerate them by allowing religious indoctrination in their public schools.
Although the U.S. Supreme Court has consistently rejected efforts to teach religion in the public schools, teaching about various world religions in public schools has been deemed appropriate. But efforts to instruct students to adhere to a national religion have been rejected by the courts—until recently. The line between literacy about religion versus instruction in religion has become blurred in favor of the extreme right-wing conservative idea that in order to be a true American citizen you must accept the national religion as part of the curriculum in public schools.
Liya Cui and Joseph Ax reporting for Reuters in their August 7, 2024, piece state:
“Lawmakers in 29 states have proposed at least 91 bills promoting religion in public schools this year, according to Americans United for Separation of Church and State, an advocacy group backing a lawsuit challenging Louisiana’s law…. The movement is fueled by opposition to what conservatives call liberal curriculums, including a focus on diversity and LGBT rights, and by the U.S. Supreme Court’s willingness to overturn precedent as it moves American law rightward.”
A PBS News article by Adam Kemp reports that
“The Oklahoma Statewide Virtual Charter School Board voted in June 2023 to approve an application to create the first ever fully public, taxpayer-funded and explicitly religious Catholic charter school. This decision is being challenged in court, and the court’s treatment of fully religious public charter schools likely will have vast implications for similar programs in other states.”
Has the church failed?
When the church needs the state to promote prayer, the Ten Commandments, and the Bible, it is an admission that the church has failed. It is also a sign the church has abandoned faith in God and put its faith in princes (Psalms 146:3). When Christians become more confident of their political opinions than they are of Christ and His kingdom they have abandoned their faith in God.
Faith is personal, and Christians should not rely on the state—and that includes conservative judges and lawmakers who have recast religious neutrality as anti-Christian bigotry. In an article of the Watchman, May 1, 1906, Ellen White, American writer and co-founder of the Seventh-day Adventist Church, stated:
“The present effort of the church to get the state to … introduce the teaching of Christianity into state schools, is but a revival of the . . . doctrine of force in religious things, and as such it is anti-Christian.”
Ellen White’s appraisal of enforced religious observance in public schools during her time was unambiguous. She could have easily been talking about the current effort by Christian nationalists and extreme right conservative politicians to Christianize public schools in 2024.
Any legislation that introduces a particular brand of religion into public schools sends a dangerous message to our school children. If you’re not a Christian, or if you’re not part of a narrow slice of conservative Christianity, you’re not necessarily a full American, and you’re not necessarily a full citizen.
Worst of all, you may not be completely welcome in your own school.
In the name of religious freedom
Prominent and mainstream Republicans increasingly support the tenets of the Christian nationalist movement, mistakenly interpreting its religious values as American values. The way they interpret that freedom could lead to prayer and Bible lessons becoming commonplace in public schools all over the country.
In the name of religious freedom, four states are preparing to make religion part of their public-school curriculum:
- Louisiana will require schools to display the Ten Commandments.
- Oklahoma has mandated that schools teach the Bible, highlighting its cultural/historical significance.
- Texas school curriculum now includes Bible lessons.
- Florida now allows chaplains in public schools.
This kind of Christo fascism and other religious extremism should be called out for what it is: the blatant erosion of religious freedom.
Advocates of the separation of church and state fear that long-standing protections for young atheists—people who belong to no religion—and religious minorities will be eroded until these protections disappear.
In recent years, right wing political groups have agitated for the freedom and the right to take away books they do not want public school students to read. They have monopolized and dictated how teachers should teach, and specifically what American history is appropriate to teach. Schools are forced to restrict societal change by ignoring differences that make us who we are.
In the name of religious freedom, right wing politicians have sought to control school curricula in an effort to increase their future base of voter support.
Mike Hixenbaugh, a senior investigative Reporter for NBC News, writes:
“At a time when conservatives nationally are fighting what they portray as liberal indoctrination in schools, some parents and critics see the opposite playing out…using schools to draw children into an evangelical faith tradition whose members overwhelmingly vote Republican.”
The Christianizing of public schools is seen by right wing political groups as an ethical obligation to return America to its Christian nation status as God originally intended. It presumes that their current social norms and values are legitimate. Their concept of justice sees no tension between their faith and forcing their brand of religious beliefs on others.
Peter Greene, writing for the Bucks County Beacon (Oklahoma), says:
“Not sure how the Founding Fathers are going to get us there, but in their decisions so far, the court has made it clear where they’d like to go—a country where taxpayers are required to finance religious education, either through supporting traditional public schools that have had Christianity forcibly injected into them, or through supporting explicitly religious schools.”
Living in a social system that can deny the humanity and freedom of some people ultimately leads to a notion of justice that legitimizes oppression and domination. The Christian nationalism movement that is now knocking on the doors of the nation’s public schools seeks to threaten freedom of belief and free exercise of religion with an “our-way-or-the-highway” culture.
No religious coercion
The crusade to Christianize public schools has now come to the forefront of the Christian nationalist movement: some are advocating for one national religion. But influencing students in a particular belief, or urging their acceptance of religion, is not the purpose of state schools. Dedicating class time to indoctrinate students to a particular brand of Christianity is not in the interest of the cultural diversity of the taxpayers who fund public schools.
Coercing religion in public schools leads to some children’s feeling excluded.
Public schools educate more than 81.9 percent (65.1 million) students, in a society that is growing more diverse every day. Families entrust public schools with the understanding that the classroom should not be used to promote religious views that may conflict with the private beliefs of the student and his or her family.
Remember: attendance in public schools is involuntary, and parents rely on the state to uphold the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment to the Constitution. The United States Supreme Court’s decision Edwards v. Aguillard, 482 U.S. 584 (1987), reaffirmed and referenced its precedent for keeping divisive forces (i.e., religion) out of public schools when it stated:
“The State exerts great authority and coercive power through mandatory attendance requirements, and because of the students’ emulation of teachers as role models and the children’s susceptibility to peer pressure…. The public school is at once the symbol of our democracy and the most pervasive means for promoting our common destiny. In no activity of the State is it more vital to keep out divisive forces than in its schools….” Illinois ex rel. McCollum v. Board of Education, 333 U. S. 203, 333 U. S. 231 (1948) (opinion of Frankfurter, J.).
With the renewed pressure by right wing evangelicals to coerce religious instruction in public schools, Seventh-day Adventists and other religious liberty advocates have a moral responsibility to defend the separation of church and state. Even if the place where you live hasn’t been affected by these policy changes, the freedom of all freedoms is religious liberty, and it should not be co-opted into religious privilege for some.
Historical records and research over past centuries demonstrates that religious coercion of any kind undermines democracy, human rights, inter-religious amity, women’s empowerment, and economic growth. Families and faith communities, not the government, should be responsible for the spiritual development of children.
Society should not determine your religiosity, nor that of your children or grandchildren. That is way too much power to be given to people whose worldview seems incredibly naïve, parochial, and self-serving.
Robert D. Crux, Ed.S, worked as a teacher, principal, and superintendent of schools over a period of 35 years in Adventist education before retiring in 2016 to Lawton, Michigan, where he enjoys writing, reading, biking, model railroading, and, most of all, his grandchildren.
