Redressing the balance of community schooling and religion in the USA¹

1. Paper delivered at the The D. J. Willower Center for the Study of Leadership and Ethics of UCEA, 9th Annual Values, Ethics & Leadership International Conference, October 2004, Barbados, West Indies.

Abstract

The varying definitions and conceptions of secularism are explored in terms of government interpretation and legal response. It is argued that issues of state neutrality towards religion can be balanced with religious expression within the context of community schooling in the USA. Examining a more balanced approach of effects of government action or inaction as it pertains to the Establishment Clause can help create a clearer understanding of the proper philosophical and legal place of religious expression within the public spaces of government schooling.

Notes

1. Paper delivered at the The D. J. Willower Center for the Study of Leadership and Ethics of UCEA, 9th Annual Values, Ethics & Leadership International Conference, October 2004, Barbados, West Indies.

2. The reference to public schools or schooling has a very different connotation in the U.K. References to public schooling are better understood, depending on the reader, as government schooling or the community school.

3. Torcaso v. Watkins, 367 U.S., 1961; Abington School District v. Schempp, 374 U.S. 203, 1963; Smith v. Board of School Commissioners, 827 F.2d, 11^th Cir., 1987

4. Tenets include nontheism (no personal God or Supreme Being), rejection of supernatural religion (superstition and dogmatism are enemies of free inquiry), naturalism (world not created and is imbued with meaning from evolved human beings), emphasis on humankind (progress, no higher source of truth), reason (truth not acquired through special revelation but through scientific evidence), science (the scientific method and technology will solve humanity’s challenges), human nature and evolution (human beings are good, ascending, and progressing with no Cartesian duality of the res extensa [material world] and the res cogitans [human mind] governed by the res infinita [God]), ethics (human fulfillment and reason applied to particular contextual facts), enjoyment of life (death is the end of individual conscious personality), liberty (full range of civil liberties without external restraint), equality (all persons are morally equal), democracy (participatory democracy extended worldwide), separation of church and state (state should not favor any religion and must accommodate a wide range of belief and practice), and world community (divisions, such as nationalism, disrupt humankind’s unity and are impediments to progress and worldwide cooperation) (Mitchell, 1987).

5. Some modes of perceived secularistic religious establishment that have been argued before the courts or recognized in federal statue are not as subtle and include curriculum pertaining to evolution (Edwards v. Aguillard, 107, S. Ct. 2573, 1987; Wright v. Houston Indep. School District, 366, F. Supp. 1208, 1972), family life and sex education (Smith v. Ricci, 446, A. 2d. 501, 1982), values education (Smith v. Board of School Commissioners, 872, F. 2d. 684, 1987), and children’s literature (Grove v. Mead School District, 753, F. 2d., 9th Cr., 1985) along with a corresponding conspicuous absence of other religious thought and expression within schools (Crockett v. Sorenson, 568, F. Supp. 1426, 1983; Equal Access Act [EAA], Pub. L. No. 98–377, 20 U.S.C. § 4071 et seq.).

6. Readers should be aware that the US Supreme Court has, in some recent cases, drawn back from the Lemon Test and formulated two other tests: coercion and endorsement. These tests are a result of criticism over Lemon’s sufficiency as a framework for analyzing Establishment Clause violations (Lee v. Weisman, 112 S. Ct. 2649, 2664–67, 1992; Santa Fe Independent School District v. Doe, 530 US 290, 305–08, 2000).