Culture War Skirmishes in Public Schools: The Experiences of Evangelical Christian Administrators

Abstract

The intent of this exploratory, descriptive narrative inquiry was to understand the experiences of evangelicals serving as public school administrators leading in the midst of culture war skirmishes involving conservative Christians and public schools. The stories of leaders from Texas, Southern California, and the South, the Midwest, and the Pacific Northwest were gathered. Each participant shared a skirmish narrative that included rich descriptions of the cultural and geographic context. In the process, work–faith relationships and the inner worlds of each administrator were also illuminated. Themes were identified within each narrative and across all narratives.

Keywords:

• Culture
• war
• conflict
• school administrators
• evangelicals

Notes

Notes

1 David B. Tyack and Elisabeth Hansot. Managers of Virtue: Public School Leadership in America, 1820-1980. (New York: Basic Books, 1982).

2 James Davison Hunter, Culture Wars: The Struggle to Define America: Making Sense of the Battle Over the Family, Art, Education, Law, and Politics. (New York: Basic Books, 1991).

3 James W. Fraser, Between Church and State: Religion and Public Education in a Multicultural America.  (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1999); Eugene F. Provenzo, Religious Fundamentalism and American Education: The Battle for the Public Schools. (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 1990); Jonathan Zimmerman, Whose America? Culture Wars In the Public Schools. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2002).

4 Hunter, Culture Wars.

5 James Davidson Hunter, Before the Shooting Begins: Searching for Democracy in America’s Culture War. (New York: The Free Press, 1994), 4.

6 Morris Fiorina, Samuel Abrams, and Jeremy Pope, J., Culture War? The Myth of a Polarized America 3rd ed. (Boston, MA: Longman, 2011); N. J. Demerath. “The Battle Over a US Culture War: A Note on Inflated Rhetoric Versus Inflamed Politics.” The Forum 3, no. 2 (2005): 1–11; Alan Wolfe, One Nation After All: What Middle-Class Americans Really Think About: God, Country, Family, Racism, Welfare, Immigration, Homosexuality, Work, the Right, the Left, and Each Other. (New York: Viking Penguin, 1998).

7 Alan Abramowitz and Kyle Saunders. “Is Polarization a Myth?” The Journal of Politics, 70, no. 2 (2008): 542–555; Davis Barker, Jon Hurwitz, and Traci Nelson. “Of Crusades and Culture Wars: ‘Messianic’ Militarism and Political Conflict in the United States.” The Journal of Politics 70, no. 2 (2008): 307–322; David Campbell. “A House Divided? What Social Science Has to Say About the Culture War.” William and Mary Bill of Rights Journal 15, no. 1 (2006): 59–74. Gertrude Himmelfarb, One Nation, Two Cultures: A Searching Examination of American Society in the Aftermath of Our Cultural Revolution. (New York: Knopf, 1999); Geoffrey Layman and John Green. “Wars and Rumours of Wars: The Contexts of Cultural Conflict in American Political Behaviour.” British Journal of Political Science 36, no. 1 (2005): 61–89.

8 Hunter, Culture Wars, 201.

9 Provenzo, Religious Fundamentalism.

10 John Clifford Green, Mark J. Rozell, and Clyde Wilcox, The Christian Right in American Politics: Marching to the Millennium. (Washington DC: Georgetown University Press, 2003).

11 Steven K. Green, “All Things Not Being Equal: Reconciling Student Religious Expression in the Public Schools,” UC Davis Law Rev. 42 (2009): 843–887; Kristin Luker, When Sex Goes to School: Warring Views on Sex–and Sex Education—Since the Sixties. (New York: WW Norton & Company, 2007); Mark A. Chancey, „The Bible, the First Amendment, and the Public Schools in Odessa, Texas.” Religion and American Culture 19, no. 2 (2009): 169–205; Michael Berkman and Eric Plutzer, Evolution, Creationism, and the Battle to Control America's Classrooms (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010); Ian K. Macgillivray. “Religion, Sexual Orientation, and School Policy: How the Christian Right Frames Its Arguments.” Educational Studies 43, no. 1 (2008): 29–44.

12 Examples of such views are common, but for a unique articulation by a former public school administrator, see Michael J. Metarko’s letter of resignation (2010) retrieved from http://www.ncfic.org/weblogmodule/view/id/548/src/@random493e73d2154bd/ 

13 Irving Seidman, Interviewing as Qualitative Research: A Guide for Researchers in Education and the Social Sciences. (New York: Teachers College Press, 2013.)

14 John W. Creswell, Qualitative Inquiry and Research Design: Choosing Among Five Approaches. (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, 2007).

15 Ibid., 170.

16 Michael O. Emerson and Christian Smith, Divided by Faith: Evangelical Religion and the Problem of Race in America. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000).

17 Betty Malen and Melissa Vincent Cochran. “Beyond Pluralistic Patterns of Power: Research on the Micropolitics of Schools.” Handbook of Education Politics and Policy (2008): 149.

18 Hunter, Culture Wars, 43–48.   

19 James K. Wellman, Evangelical Versus Liberal. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008): 253.  

20 Michael Lipsky, Street-Level Bureaucracy: Dilemmas of the Individual in Public Services. (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 2010); Elaine B. Sharp, ed., Culture Wars and Local Politics. (Lawrence, KS: University of Kansas Press, 1999).

21 Sheryl Boris-Schacter and Sondra Langer, Balanced leadership: How effective principals manage their work (New York: Teachers College Press, 2006).

22 Cynthia X. Beekley, “Navigating Religious Expression in Public School: A Case Study.” Religion & Education 40, no. 3 (2013): 315–327.

23 Ibid., 326. 

24 Tom Bennett and George Foldesy. “A Study of the Religious Orientation of Public School Districts Located in the Bible Belt of the United States.” Journal of the European Teacher Education Network 9, no. 1962 (2014): 12–21; Berkman and Plutzer. Evolution, Creationism; Kevin McGuire. “Public Schools, Religious Establishments, and the U.S. Supreme Court: An Examination of Policy Compliance.” American Politics Research 37, no. 1 (2009): 50–74; Nicholas Weldy. Knowledge of and Attitudes Toward Graduation Prayer in Ohio Public Schools. (Doctoral dissertation, University of Dayton, 2011).