References
- The “Religious Right” did not invent the idea that secularism is a religion. Many historians and sociologists of religion have written about Marxism, Humanism, Scientism, and Secularism as religions (or “functional” religions). To pick just two examples. In 1961 the sociologist Will Herberg wrote that when “Protestantism was extruded from the schools, it was replaced, however unintentionally, by the substitute-religion of secularism, which may, I think, be accurately defined as the theory and practice of human life conceived as self-sufficient and unrelated to God.” [“Religion and Education in America,” in Religious Perspectives in American Culture , eds. James Ward Smith and A. Leland Jamison , ( Princeton , NJ : Princeton University Press , 1961 ), p. 28 .] The first “Humanist Manifesto” (1933) refers repeatedly to humanism as a religion.
- Smith v. School Commissioners, 827 F. Supp. 684 (1987). The quotation from Justice Jackson is from Everson, 330 U.S.I, 23–24 (1947). One year later Jackson showed considerably more insight when he wrote: “The fact is that, for good or for ill, nearly everything in our culture worth transmitting, everything which gives meaning to life, is saturated with religious influences …. One can hardly respect a system of education that would leave the student wholly ignorant of the currents of religious thought that move the world society … .” McCollum v. Board of Education, 333 U.S. 203, 236 (1948) .
- Arguably the dates of Presidential terms might be considered religiously loaded because our dating system is based on the birth of Jesus. Some religions and cultures use different dating systems for precisely this reason. No doubt the courts would view our calendar as a sufficiently secularized tradition not to raise First Amendment questions .
- See, e.g., John Hick , An Interpretation of Religion (New Haven , Connecticut : Yale University Press, 1989 ), Chapters 17 and 18, and especially p. 306 .
- Eastern conceptions of Karma are as hard to reconcile with purposeless evolution as Western ideas of a god who creates a world in which all things work toward that which is good.
- Lemon v. Kurtzman, 403 U.S. 602, 612-13 ( 1971 ).
- Yudof suggests that my study confirms the diagnosis of some Christian parents that the courts are at least partially responsible for the secularism of public education. My argument is that publishers, textbook authors, and our culture more generally are responsible. True, the courts have removed the practice of religion from the schools, but they have had much less impact on the content of textbooks .