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ESSAY I: PUBLIC EDUCATION RELIGION
STUDIES
Religion studies in public schools are legal, appropriate, and of significant public worth when they are conducted in accordance with certain basic guidelines.
Some of these guidelines have been established by a series of Supreme Court decisions which have interpreted the establishment clause of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution. (See Thayer S. Warshaw, Religion, Education, and the Supreme Court (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1979.) The climax of this series seems clearly to be the 1963 Abington School District v. Schempp decision which ruled unconstitutional the state sponsorship of a non-denominational prayer. The majority opinion of the court interpreting that decision drew a clear distinction between the teaching of religion -- in the sense of instruction in a particular set of religious convictions, which as a direct expression of religious faith is entirely inappropriate for the state to sponsor -- and teaching about religion -- in the sense of an impartial and academic study of religion on secular grounds (i.e., grounds that are neutral as regards religion), which is entirely appropriate for the state to sponsor. Indeed, concurring opinions in that decision suggested that the state would be irresponsible if it failed to sponsor certain courses of study about religion.
Current legal interpretation sets out three criteria that instruction about religion in public schools must meet to satisfy the establishment clause of the First Amendment.
1. Its nature, intent, and purpose (which should be made explicit) must be secular -- in the sense that it must intend neither the promotion nor the hindrance of religion, whether religion in general or any religion in particular, or irreligion.
2. Its primary effect must be secular in the same sense: it must neither directly advance nor directly inhibit religion or irreligion.
3. The manner of offering the course of study about religion must avoid excessive entanglement between the state and any religious organization (as, e.g., in contracting with ministers to teach such courses).
It is clear that these criteria call for a simple, clear, and generally intelligible conception of the secular aim of public education religion studies: one that would readily meet the legal requirements and yet be accessible enough for the non-professional to dispel controversy before it can arise and one that teachers, school administrators, and parents of whatever faith could affirm without in the least having to be defensive.
Although there have been various attempts to articulate such a conception, few of them come close to meeting all of these needs. It is my conviction that the following statement comes closest to what is needed.
Public education religion studies affords an opportunity to study and gather vitally important information about aspects of our world, other cultures, and our own history and culture. But beyond this informative purpose, and ideally directing it, the purpose of public education religion studies is to prepare young people for confrontation with religious diversity within the public realm and enable them to handle it without having to be either offensive or defensive about religion. Such study contributes directly to the building of a worthwhile public order in which all persons are welcome to participate, so far as each in turn welcomes others. Public education religion studies when conducted appropriately helps young people learn to deal sensitively with religion and religious differences in such a way as to promote mutual understanding and tolerance, overcome stereotypes which lead to prejudice and discrimination, and develop the kind of sympathy that gives serious hearing to diverse points of view within the public order.
This conception of religion studies finds eloquent expression in the following statement by Jacob Neusner ["Stranger at Home: The Task of Religious Studies," inaugural lecture of the Department of Religious Studies at Arizona State University, Tempe, Arizona, October 25, 1979, p. 13]: "The critical task facing this country in the world and in our life as a nation is to learn to confront difference. Our society now recognizes that there is no single normative culture for all of us to accept. Twenty per cent of the population speaks Spanish. Nearly twelve percent is black. Three per cent is Jewish. There is a growing minority of Moslems and Buddhists, both native and immigrant. . . . The world in which we live no longer concedes that one way of life or one system is valid for all. The world for which our students now prepare demands, therefore, the capacity to take two steps, first, to discover oneself in the other, so that the alien seems less strange, and second, to discover the other in oneself, so that the self seems more strange. When our students study a religion other than the one in which they were brought up, they discover themselves in what is different. . . . When they study the religion in which they were brought up and for the first time undertake the task of sympathetic, academic analysis and interpretation, they discover the alien in what they thought belonged to them. . . . The alien is within. Where we are most at home, there we are mostly strangers."
For further specification of guidelines for public education religion studies, see the handbook for Oregon state school personnel on their rights and responsibilities in the area of teaching about religion, Teaching About Religion by Dale W. Cannon and Ross R. Runkel (Monmouth, OR: Oregon College of Education, 1979). Also consult the useful comprehensive anthology, Public Education Religion Studies: An Overview, edited by Paul Will (Chico, CA: Scholars Press, 1982). See the 1987 report of the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development, "Religion in the Curriculum," which upon reviewing the state of curricular treatment of religion in American public education, call for national action to end what amounts to a virtual silence on the topic in every relevant subject area. It includes a number of practical proposals and answers almost all of the usual arguments against the inclusion of religion, as long as it is treated objectively. (This report is published, among other places, in the Journal of the American Academy of Religion LV:3 (Fall 1987), pp. 569-588.)
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Last Modified 3/30/98