role of religion in education essay

The Role of Religion in the Schools Essay

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Introduction

Religion in schools, teachers and their religious beliefs, sharing religious beliefs.

The process of education is a complex and intricate effort to equip students with necessary and sophisticated knowledge. The primary goal of schools is to make the learners competent in the future in terms of being skilled in the labor market as well as when making important life decisions. Religions rarely constitute the workforce demands and only comprise a small fraction of jobs. However, they should be taught since they can have a profound impact on the cohesiveness of the population.

The proper role of religion in schools should be introductory in order to inform students about each particular religious thought, philosophy, and set of beliefs. In other words, it should enter the curriculum in the area of academics only. The latter means that no student should be compelled to practice a specific religion due to a school’s bias. Although some fervent atheists criticize religion in schools as being unnecessary, the subject needs to be a part of the curriculum since religions are unavoidable. Practically all nations have a significant portion of the population identifying with one religion or another (Biesta, 2020). Being aware of their beliefs and perspectives on the issues is not only useful for avoiding unnecessary conflicts but serving their needs as well. School graduates eventually become entrepreneurs and employees, where the essential aspect is to serve the customers. Since a large portion of the population is religious, having strong religious knowledge is useful for the primary purpose of the school. In addition, schools are designed to equip learners with the skills which are necessary to make competent decisions in life.

Religion in schools should be taught from a neutral ground in order to ensure that these classes are not simply indoctrination sessions. A teacher on religion should be educated and trained to avoid expressing their faith when teaching about the subject. In addition, they should be restricted in expressing bias towards one religion over the other. However, it is permissible for a student to share his or her religious beliefs with the class as long as it is not disrupting the lessons and the learning environment (Biesta, 2020). As a part curriculum, a teacher on religion should invite religious representatives from different religions at least once during the process of education. Since the teacher provides an objective, unbiased, and purely academic take on religion, these representatives will fill the gap in terms of spiritual and practical aspects of being a religious person.

Whenever a student decides to share his or her religious beliefs, it is important that such a revelation does not disrupt the class. It additionally means that teachers should not engage in the subject to analyze, scrutinize, or criticize one religious belief, especially since it is a student (Biesta, 2020). In other words, students should be allowed to express themselves however and whichever way they prefer, but teachers teaching religion should not avoid bias and indoctrination in their work.

In conclusion, the proper way to teach religion is by providing students with objective, non-judgmental, and purely academic competencies on a wide variety of religions. Thus, students should graduate from their schools by being completely aware and knowledgeable about different religions and their set of beliefs. While learning, students should be able to express themselves freely, including religiously, but the learning process must not be disrupted.

Biesta, G. (2020). Religion and education: The forgotten dimensions of religious education? Brill.

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Bibliography

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Religion in the Public Schools

More than 55 years after the Supreme Court issued its landmark ruling striking down school-sponsored prayer, Americans continue to fight over the place of religion in public schools. Questions about religion in the classroom no longer make quite as many headlines as they once did, but the issue remains an important battleground in the broader conflict over religion’s role in public life.

Some Americans are troubled by what they see as an effort on the part of federal courts and civil liberties advocates to exclude God and religious sentiment from public schools. Such an effort, these Americans believe, infringes on the First Amendment right to free exercise of religion.

Many civil libertarians and others, meanwhile, voice concern that conservative Christians and others are trying to impose their values on students. Federal courts, they point out, consistently have interpreted the First Amendment’s prohibition on the establishment of religion to forbid state sponsorship of prayer and most other religious activities in public schools.

This debate centers on public schools; very few people are arguing that religious doctrine cannot be taught at private schools or that teachers at such schools cannot lead students in prayer. And even in public institutions, there is little debate about the right of individual students, teachers and other school employees to practice their religion – by, say, praying before lunch or wearing religious clothing or symbols.

Moreover, as a 2019 survey of American teens shows some forms of religious expression are relatively common in public schools. For instance, about four-in-ten public school students say they routinely see other students praying before sporting events, according to the survey. And about half of U.S. teens in public schools (53%) say they often or sometimes see other students wearing jewelry or clothing with religious symbols.

About this report

This analysis, updated on Oct. 3, 2019, was originally published in 2007 as part of a larger series that explored different aspects of the complex and fluid relationship between government and religion. This report includes sections on school prayer, the pledge of allegiance, religion in school curricula, and the religious liberty rights of students and teachers.

The report does not  address questions of government funding for religious schools (that is, school vouchers and tax credits) because the schools in question are largely private, not public. For a discussion of vouchers and similar issues, see “ Shifting Boundaries: The Establishment Clause and Government Funding of Religious Schools and Other Faith-Based Organizations .” Because that analysis was published in 2009 and has not been updated, it does not include a discussion of more recent Supreme Court voucher rulings or upcoming cases .

Conflicts over religion in school are hardly new. In the 19th century, Protestants and Catholics frequently fought over Bible reading and prayer in public schools. The disputes then were over which Bible and which prayers were appropriate to use in the classroom. Some Catholics were troubled that the schools’ reading materials included the King James version of the Bible, which was favored by Protestants. In 1844, fighting broke out between Protestants and Catholics in Philadelphia; a number of people died in the violence and several Catholic churches were burned. Similar conflicts erupted during the 1850s in Boston and other parts of New England. In the early 20th century, liberal Protestants and their secular allies battled religious conservatives over whether students in biology classes should be taught Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution.

The Pillars of Church-State Law

The Legal Status of Religious Organizations in Civil Lawsuits March 2011 Are legal disputes involving churches and other religious institutions constitutionally different from those involving their secular counterparts, and if so, how?

Government Funding of Faith-Based Organizations May 2009 The debate over the meaning of the Establishment Clause.

Free Exercise and the Legislative and Executive Branches October 2008 A look at state and federal statutes that protect religious freedom.

Free Exercise and the Courts October 2007 The courts have grappled with the meaning of the Free Exercise Clause.

Religious Displays and the Courts June 2007 Government displays of religious symbols have sparked fierce battles.

The Supreme Court stepped into those controversies when it ruled, in  Cantwell v. Connecticut  (1940) and  Everson v. Board of Education of Ewing Township  (1947), that the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause and Free Exercise Clause applied to the states. The two clauses say, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” Before those two court decisions, courts had applied the religion clauses only to actions of the federal government.

Soon after the Everson decision, the Supreme Court began specifically applying the religion clauses to activities in public schools. In its first such case ,  McCollum v. Board of Education  (1948), the high court invalidated the practice of having religious instructors from different denominations enter public schools to offer religious lessons during the school day to students whose parents requested them. A key factor in the court’s decision was that the lessons took place in the schools. Four years later, in  Zorach v. Clauson , the court upheld an arrangement by which public schools excused students during the school day so they could attend religious classes away from school property. (The new Pew Research Center survey finds that one-in-ten religiously affiliated teens in public school leave the school for religious activities.)

Beginning in the 1960s, the court handed religious conservatives a series of major defeats. It began with the landmark 1962 ruling, Engel v. Vitale , that school-sponsored prayer – even nonsectarian prayer – violated the Establishment Clause. Since then, the Supreme Court has pushed forward, from banning organized Bible reading for religious and moral instruction in 1963 to prohibiting school-sponsored prayers at high school football games in 2000. (The new survey finds that 8% of teens in public school have ever seen a teacher lead the class in prayer, and the same share have ever had a teacher read to the class from the Bible as an example of literature.)

In these and other decisions, the court has repeatedly stressed that the Constitution prohibits public schools from indoctrinating children in religion. But it is not always easy to determine exactly what constitutes indoctrination or school sponsorship of religious activities. For example, can a class on the Bible as literature be taught without a bias for or against the idea that the Bible is religious truth? Can students be compelled to participate in a Christmas-themed music program? Sometimes students themselves, rather than teachers, administrators or coaches, bring faith into school activities. For instance, when a student invokes gratitude to God in a valedictory address, or a high school football player offers a prayer in a huddle, is the school legally responsible for their religious expression?

The issues are complicated by other constitutional guarantees. For instance, the First Amendment also protects freedom of speech and freedom of association. Religious groups have cited those guarantees in support of student religious speech and in efforts to obtain school sponsorship and resources for student religious clubs.

The right of a student or student club to engage in religious speech or activities on school property may, however, conflict with other protections, such as the right of students to avoid harassment. In one case, for example, a federal appeals court approved a high school’s decision to prohibit a student from wearing a T-shirt containing a biblical passage condemning homosexuality. Because the student had graduated by the time the Supreme Court granted his appeal, the Supreme Court ordered the lower court to vacate its ruling and dismiss the case.

In another instance of conflict, some student religious groups want the right to exclude students who do not share the groups’ beliefs, specifically on questions of sexuality. For example, the Christian Legal Society (CLS), which has chapters in many law schools, requires those who serve in leadership positions to agree to a statement that renounces “unbiblical behaviors,” such as engaging in sexual relationships outside of heterosexual marriage. CLS sued a number of law schools after they denied the group official recognition because this leadership policy violated the schools’ nondiscrimination policies. In one of these cases, the Supreme Court ruled against CLS, stating that these nondiscrimination policies were constitutional so long as they were viewpoint neutral and fairly applied to all groups seeking recognition on campus.

As these more recent controversies show, public schools remain a battlefield where the religious interests of parents, students, administrators and teachers often clash.  The conflicts affect many aspects of public education, including classroom curricula, high school football games, student clubs, graduation ceremonies.

Prayer and the Pledge

School prayer.

The most enduring and controversial issue related to school-sponsored religious activities is classroom prayer. In  Engel v. Vitale  (1962), the Supreme Court held that the Establishment Clause prohibited the recitation of a school-sponsored prayer in public schools. Engel involved a simple and seemingly nonsectarian prayer composed especially for use in New York’s public schools. In banning the prayer exercise entirely, the court did not rest its opinion on the grounds that unwilling students were coerced to pray; that would come much later. Rather, the court emphasized what it saw as the wrongs of having the government create and sponsor a religious activity.

The following year, the high court extended the principle outlined in  Engel  to a program of daily Bible reading. In  Abington School District v. Schempp , the court ruled broadly that school sponsorship of religious exercises violates the Constitution. Schempp became the source of the enduring constitutional doctrine that all government action must have a predominantly secular purpose – a requirement that, according to the court, the Bible-reading exercise clearly could not satisfy. By insisting that religious expression be excluded from the formal curriculum, the Supreme Court was assuring parents that public schools would be officially secular and would not compete with parents in their children’s religious upbringing.

With Engel and Schempp, the court outlined the constitutional standard for prohibiting school-sponsored religious expression, a doctrine the court has firmly maintained. In  Stone v. Graham  (1980), for instance, it found unconstitutional a Kentucky law requiring all public schools to post a copy of the Ten Commandments. And in  Wallace v. Jaffree  (1985), it overturned an Alabama law requiring public schools to set aside a moment each day for silent prayer or meditation. However, in a concurrent opinion in Wallace, Justice Sandra Day O’Connor  suggested that a moment of silence requirement might pass constitutional muster if it had a “secular purpose.” And in a subsequent 2009 case, Croft v. Perry , the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit upheld a Texas law mandating a moment of silence because it determined that, in passing the law, the state legislature had sufficiently articulated a secular purpose.

But while courts have given states some latitude in crafting moment of silence statutes, they have shown much less deference to laws or policies that involve actual prayer. In 2000, for instance, the Supreme Court ruled in  Santa Fe Independent School District v. Doe  that schools may not sponsor student-recited prayer at high school football games.

More sweeping in its consequences is  Lee v. Weisman  (1992), which invalidated a school-sponsored prayer led by an invited clergyman at a public school commencement in Providence, Rhode Island. The court’s 5-4 decision rested explicitly on the argument that graduating students were being forced to participate in a religious ceremony. The case effectively outlawed a practice that was customary in many communities across the country, thus fueling the conservative critique that the Supreme Court was inhospitable to public expressions of faith.

So far, lower appellate courts have not extended the principles of the school prayer decisions to university commencements (Chaudhuri v. Tennessee, 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, 1997; Tanford v. Brand, 7th Circuit, 1997). The 4th Circuit, however, found unconstitutional the practice of daily prayer at supper at the Virginia Military Institute. In that case, Mellen v. Bunting (2003), the appellate court reasoned that VMI’s military-like environment tended to coerce participation by cadets. The decision was similar to an earlier ruling by the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, which found unconstitutional a policy of the U.S. service academies that all cadets and midshipmen attend Protestant, Catholic or Jewish chapel services on Sunday (Anderson v. Laird, 1972). For the court, the key element was the service academies’ coercion of students to attend the religious activity.

Most recently, in 2019, the Supreme Court declined to review a 9th Circuit Court of Appeals decision upholding the firing of a football coach at a public high school for praying on the field with his players after games. However, in a statement accompanying the denial of review, Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. (joined by fellow conservative justices Clarence Thomas, Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh) indicated the high court would be open to reviewing other cases involving similar issues. Alito wrote that the court denied review in this case due to “important unresolved factual questions,” and that “the 9th Circuit’s understanding of free speech rights of public school teachers is troubling and may justify review in the future.”

The Pledge of Allegiance

In 1954, Congress revised the Pledge of Allegiance to refer to the nation as “under God,” a phrase that has since been recited by generations of schoolchildren. In 2000, Michael Newdow filed suit challenging the phrase on behalf of his daughter, a public school student in California. Newdow argued that the words “under God” violated the Establishment Clause because they transformed the pledge into a religious exercise.

The case,  Elk Grove Unified School District v. Newdow , reached the Supreme Court in 2004, but the justices did not ultimately decide whether the phrase was acceptable. Instead, the court ruled that Newdow lacked standing to bring the suit because he did not have legal custody of his daughter. In concurring opinions, however, four justices expressed the view that the Constitution permitted recitation of the pledge – with the phrase “under God” – in public schools.

While the issue never reached the Supreme Court again, it continued to be litigated in the lower courts. In Myers v. Loudoun County Public Schools (2005), the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld recitation of the pledge in Virginia, but a U.S. district court in California ruled the other way in another suit involving Michael Newdow and other parents. However, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in 2010 reversed the district court decision, ruling that the recitation of the pledge did not constitute an establishment of religion.

School officials and student speech

The courts have drawn a sharp distinction between officially sponsored religious speech, such as a benediction by an invited clergyman at a commencement ceremony, and private religious speech by students. The Supreme Court made clear in Lee v. Weisman (1992) that a clergyman’s benediction at a public school event would violate the separation of church and state. Judges usually reach that same conclusion when school officials cooperate with students to produce student-delivered religious messages. But federal courts are more divided in cases involving students acting on their own to include a religious sentiment or prayer at a school commencement or a similar activity.

Some courts, particularly in the South, have upheld the constitutionality of student-initiated religious speech, emphasizing the private origins of this kind of religious expression. As long as school officials did not encourage or explicitly approve the contents, those courts have upheld religious content in student commencement speeches.

In Adler v. Duval County School Board (1996), for example, the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals approved a system at a Florida high school in which the senior class, acting independently of school officials, selected a class member to deliver a commencement address. School officials neither influenced the choice of speaker nor screened the speech. Under those circumstances, the appeals court ruled that the school was not responsible for the religious content of the address.

Other courts, however, have invalidated school policies that permit student speakers to include religious sentiments in graduation addresses. One leading case is ACLU v. Black Horse Pike Regional Board of Education (1996), in which the senior class of a New Jersey public high school selected the student speaker by a vote without knowing in advance the contents of the student’s remarks. The 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals nevertheless ruled that the high school could not permit religious content in the commencement speech. The court reasoned that students attending the graduation ceremony were as coerced to acquiesce in a student-led prayer as they would be if the prayer were offered by a member of the clergy, the practice forbidden by Weisman in 1992. (Supreme Court Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr., who was then a member of the appeals court, joined a dissenting opinion in the case, arguing that the graduating students’ rights to religious and expressive freedom should prevail over the Establishment Clause concerns.)

Similarly, in Bannon v. School District of Palm Beach County (2004), the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that Florida school officials were right to order the removal of student-created religious messages and symbols from a school beautification project. The court reasoned that the project was not intended as a forum for the expression of students’ private views but rather as a school activity for which school officials would be held responsible.

Religion in the curriculum

The Supreme Court’s decisions about officially sponsored religious expression in schools consistently draw a distinction between religious activities such as worship or Bible reading, which are designed to inculcate religious sentiments and values, and “teaching about religion,” which is both constitutionally permissible and educationally appropriate. On several occasions, members of the court have suggested that public schools may teach “the Bible as literature,” include lessons about the role of religion and religious institutions in history or offer courses on comparative religion.

Creationism and evolution

Courts have long grappled with attempts by school boards and other official bodies to change the curriculum in ways that directly promote or denigrate a particular religious tradition. Best known among these curriculum disputes are those involving the conflict between proponents and opponents of Darwin’s theory of evolution , which explains the origin of species through evolution by means of natural selection. Opponents favor teaching some form of creationism, the idea that life came about as described in the biblical book of Genesis or evolved under the guidance of a supreme being. A recent alternative to Darwinism, intelligent design, asserts that life is too complex to have arisen without divine intervention.

The Supreme Court entered the evolution debate in 1968, when it ruled, in  Epperson v. Arkansas , that Arkansas could not eliminate from the high school biology curriculum the teaching of “the theory that mankind descended from a lower order of animals.” Arkansas’ exclusion of that aspect of evolutionary theory, the court reasoned, was based on a preference for the account of creation in the book of Genesis and thus violated the state’s constitutional obligation of religious neutrality.

Almost 20 years later, in  Edwards v. Aguillard  (1987), the Supreme Court struck down a Louisiana law that required “balanced treatment” of evolution science and “creation science,” so that any biology teacher who taught one also had to teach the other. The court said the law’s purpose was to single out a particular religious belief – in this case, biblical creationism – and promote it as an alternative to accepted scientific theory. The court also pointed to evidence that the legislation’s sponsor hoped that the balanced treatment requirement would lead science teachers to abandon the teaching of evolution.

Lower courts consistently have followed the lead of Epperson and Edwards. As a result, school boards have lost virtually every fight over curriculum changes designed to challenge evolution, including disclaimers in biology textbooks. One of the most recent and notable of these cases, Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District (2005), involved a challenge to a Pennsylvania school district’s policy of informing high school science students about intelligent design as an alternative to evolution. After lengthy testimony from both proponents and opponents of intelligent design, a federal district court in Pennsylvania concluded that the policy violates the Establishment Clause because intelligent design is a religious, rather than scientific, theory.

Kitzmiller may have been the last major evolution case to make national headlines, but the debate over how to teach about the origins and development of life in public schools has continued in state legislatures, boards of education and other public bodies. In 2019, for instance, policies that could affect the way evolution is taught in public school (often by limiting discussion of “controversial issues”) were introduced and in some cases debated in several states, including Arizona, Florida, Maine, Oklahoma, South Dakota and Virginia.

Study of the Bible

Courts have also expended substantial time and energy considering public school programs that involve Bible study. Although the Supreme Court has occasionally referred to the permissibility of teaching the Bible as literature, some school districts have instituted Bible study programs that courts have found unconstitutional. Frequently, judges have concluded that these courses are thinly disguised efforts to teach a particular understanding of the New Testament.

In a number of these cases, school districts have brought in outside groups to run the Bible study program. The groups, in turn, hired their own teachers, in some cases Bible college students or members of the clergy who did not meet state accreditation standards.

Such Bible study programs have generally been held unconstitutional because, the courts conclude, they teach the Bible as religious truth or are designed to inculcate particular religious sentiments. For a public school class to study the Bible without violating constitutional limits, the class would have to include critical rather than devotional readings and allow open inquiry into the history and content of biblical passages.

Holiday programs

Christmas-themed music programs also have raised constitutional concerns. For a holiday music program to be constitutionally sound, the courts maintain, school officials must ensure the predominance of secular considerations, such as the program’s educational value or the musical qualities of the pieces. The schools also must be sensitive to the possibility that some students will feel coerced to participate in the program (Bauchman v. West High School, 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, 1997; Doe v. Duncanville Independent School District, 5th Circuit, 1995). Moreover, the courts have said, no student should be forced to sing or play music that offends their religious sensibilities. Therefore, schools must allow students the option not to participate.

Multiculturalism

Not all the cases involving religion in the curriculum concern the promotion of the beliefs of the majority. Indeed, challenges have come from Christian groups arguing that school policies discriminate against Christianity by promoting cultural pluralism.

In one example, the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals considered a New York City Department of Education policy regulating the types of symbols displayed during the holiday seasons of various religions. The department allows the display of a menorah as a symbol for Hanukkah and a star and crescent to evoke Ramadan but permits the display of only secular symbols of Christmas, such as a Christmas tree; it explicitly forbids the display of a Christmas nativity scene in public schools.

Upholding the city’s policy, the Court of Appeals reasoned in Skoros v. Klein (2006) that city officials intended to promote cultural pluralism in the highly diverse setting of the New York City public schools. The court concluded that a “reasonable observer” would understand that the star and crescent combination and the menorah had secular as well as religious meanings. The judicial panel ruled that the policy, therefore, did not promote Judaism or Islam and did not denigrate Christianity.

In another high-profile case, Citizens for a Responsible Curriculum v. Montgomery County Public Schools (2005), a Maryland citizens’ group successfully challenged a health education curriculum that included discussion of sexual orientation. Ordinarily, opponents of homosexuality could not confidently cite the Establishment Clause as the basis for a complaint, because the curriculum typically would not advance a particular religious perspective. However, the Montgomery County curriculum included materials in teacher guides that disparaged some religious teachings on homosexuality as theologically flawed and contrasted those teachings with what the guide portrayed as the more acceptable and tolerant views of some other faiths. The district court concluded that the curriculum had both the purpose and effect of advancing certain faiths while denigrating the beliefs of others. The county rewrote these materials to exclude any reference to the views of particular faiths, making them more difficult to challenge successfully in court because the lessons did not condemn or praise any faith tradition.

Rights in and out of the classroom

At the time of its school prayer decisions in the early 1960s, the Supreme Court had never ruled on whether students have the right of free speech inside public schools. By the end of that decade, however, the court began to consider the question. And the results have made the rules for religious expression far more complex.

Rights of students

The leading Supreme Court decision on freedom of student speech is  Tinker v. Des Moines School District  (1969), , which upheld the right of students to wear armbands protesting the Vietnam War. The court ruled that school authorities may not suppress expression by students unless the expression significantly disrupts school discipline or invades the rights of others.

This endorsement of students’ freedom of speech did not entirely clarify things for school officials trying to determine students’ rights. Tinker supported student expression, but it did not attempt to reconcile that right of expression with the Supreme Court’s earlier decisions forbidding student participation in school-sponsored prayer and Bible reading. Some school officials responded to the mix of student liberties and restraints by forbidding certain forms of student-initiated religious expression such as the saying of grace before lunch in the school cafeteria, student-sponsored gatherings for prayer at designated spots on school property, or student proselytizing aimed at other students.

After years of uncertainty about these matters, several interest groups devoted to religious freedom and civil liberties drafted a set of guidelines, “Religious Expression in Public Schools,” which the U.S. Department of Education sent to every public school superintendent in 1995. The department revised the guidelines in 2003, placing somewhat greater emphasis on the rights of students to speak or associate for religious purposes. The guidelines highlight these four general principles:

• Students, acting on their own, have the same right to engage in religious activity and discussion as they do to engage in comparable secular activities.
• Students may offer a prayer or blessing before meals in school or assemble on school grounds for religious purposes to the same extent as other students who wish to express their personal views or assemble with others. (The new survey finds that 26% of religiously affiliated teens in public school say they often or sometimes pray before eating lunch.)
• Students may not engage in religious harassment of others or compel other students to participate in religious expression, and schools may control aggressive and unwanted proselytizing.
• Schools may neither favor nor disfavor students or groups on the basis of their religious identities.

A case decided by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals underscores the difficulties that school officials still can face when students exercise their right to religious expression on school property. In this case, gay and lesbian students in a California high school organized a Day of Silence, in which students promoting tolerance of differences in sexual orientation refrained from speaking in school. The following day, Tyler Harper, a student at the school, wore a T-shirt that on the front read, “Be Ashamed, Our School Has Embraced What God Has Condemned,” and on the back, “Homosexuality Is Shameful, Romans 1:27.” School officials asked him to remove the shirt and took him out of class while they attempted to persuade him to do so.

The Court of Appeals, in Harper v. Poway Unified School District (2006), rejected Harper’s claim that the school officials violated his First Amendment rights. Judge Stephen Reinhardt, writing for a 2- 1 majority and citing Tinker, argued that students’ constitutional rights may be limited to prevent harming the rights of other students. He concluded that the T-shirt could be seen as violating school policies against harassment based on sexual orientation.

Writing in dissent, Judge Alex Kozinski asserted that the school’s sexual harassment policy was far too vague and sweeping to support a restriction on all anti-gay speech. He also argued that the school district had unlawfully discriminated against Harper’s freedom of speech. By permitting the Gay and Lesbian Alliance to conduct the Day of Silence, Kozinski said, the district was choosing sides on a controversial social issue and stifling religiously motivated speech on one side of the issue.

Harper petitioned the Supreme Court to review the appeals court decision. But Harper graduated from high school, and the case took a different turn. The Supreme Court, in early 2007, ordered the lower court to vacate its ruling and dismiss the case on the grounds that it had become moot.

Harper highlighted a tension – one that may yet recur – between the rights of students to engage in religious expression and the rights of other students to be educated in a non-hostile environment. The Supreme Court eventually may clarify school officials’ power to suppress speech as a means of protecting the rights of other students. For now, cases like Harper illustrate the difficulties for school officials in regulating student expression.

Rights of parents

Parents sometimes complain that secular practices at school inhibit their right to direct the religious upbringing of their children. These complaints typically rest on both the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment and the 14th Amendment’s Due Process Clause, which forbids the state to deprive any person of “life, liberty or property without due process of law.” The Supreme Court has interpreted them as protecting the right of parents to shape and control the education of their children. When they object to certain school practices, the parents often seek permission for their children to skip the offending lesson or class – to opt out – rather than try to end the practice schoolwide.

The first decision by the Supreme Court on parents’ rights to control their children’s education came in  Pierce v. Society of Sisters  (1925), which guarantees to parents the right to enroll their children in private rather than public schools, whether the private schools are religious or secular. In  West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette  (1943), the court upheld the right of public school students who were Jehovah’s Witnesses to refuse to salute the American flag. The students said the flag represented a graven image and that their religion forbade them from recognizing it. The court’s decision rested on the right of all students, not just those who are religiously motivated, to resist compulsory recitation of official orthodoxy, political or otherwise.

Of all the Supreme Court rulings supporting religious opt-outs, perhaps the most significant came in  Wisconsin v. Yoder  (1972), which upheld the right of members of the Old Order Amish to withdraw their children from formal education at the age of 14. The court determined that a state law requiring children to attend school until the age of 16 burdened the free exercise of their families’ religion. The Amish community had a well-established record as hardworking and law-abiding, the court noted, and Amish teens would receive home-based training. The worldly influences present in the school experience of teenagers, the court said, would undercut the continuity of agrarian life in the Amish community.

In later decisions, lower courts recognized religious opt-outs in other relatively narrow circumstances. Parents successfully cited religious grounds to win the right to remove their children from otherwise compulsory military training (Spence v. Bailey, 1972) and from a coeducational physical education class in which students had to dress in “immodest apparel” (Moody v. Cronin, 1979). In Menora v. Illinois High School Association (1982), the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the Illinois High School Association was constitutionally obliged to accommodate Orthodox Jewish basketball players who wanted to wear a head covering, despite an association rule forbidding headgear. The Menora case involves a narrow exception from the dress code, rather than a broader right to opt out of a curriculum requirement.

A great many school districts, meanwhile, have recognized the force of parents’ religious or moral concerns on issues of sexuality and reproduction and have voluntarily provided opt-outs from classes devoted to those topics. Under these opt-out programs, parents do not have to explain their objection, religious or otherwise, to participation by their children. On other occasions, however, parental claims that the Constitution entitles them to remove their children from part or all of a public school curriculum have fared rather poorly.

The issue of home schooling is a good example. Before state legislatures passed laws allowing home schooling, parents seeking to educate their children at home were often unsuccessful in the courts. Many judges distinguished these home schooling cases from Yoder on the grounds that Yoder involved teenagers rather than young children. The judges also noted that Yoder was concerned with the survival of an entire religious community – the Old Order Amish – rather than the impact of education on a single family. Indeed, in virtually all the cases decided over the past 25 years, courts have found that the challenged curriculum requirement did not unconstitutionally burden parents’ religious choices.

The most famous of the cases is Mozert v. Hawkins County Board of Education (1987), in which a group of Tennessee parents complained that references to mental telepathy, evolution, secular humanism, feminism, pacifism and magic in a series of books in the reading curriculum offended the families’ Christian beliefs. The school board originally allowed children to choose alternative reading materials but then eliminated that option.

The 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in the county’s favor on the grounds that students were not being asked to do anything in conflict with their religious obligations. Furthermore, the court said, the school board had a strong interest in exposing children to a variety of ideas and images and in using a uniform series of books for all children. Because the books did not explicitly adopt or denigrate particular religious beliefs, the court concluded, the parents could insist neither on the removal of the books from the schools nor on their children opting out.

The 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals reached a similar conclusion in a case involving a public high school in Massachusetts that held a mandatory assembly devoted to AIDS and sex education. In that case, Brown v. Hot, Sexy, and Safer Productions (1995), the court rejected a complaint brought by parents who alleged that exposure to sexually explicit material infringed on their rights to religious freedom and control of the upbringing of their children. The court concluded that this one-time exposure to the material would not substantially burden the parents’ freedom to rear their children and that the school authorities had strong reasons to inform high school students about “safe sex.”

More recently, parents and students have, on religious liberty and other grounds, sued school districts that accommodate transgender students by allowing them to use bathroom and locker facilities that match their current gender identity rather than their sex at birth. Some parents and students argue that the new arrangements violate their religious liberty rights because the school policy forces them to accommodate a set of moral and religious beliefs they disagree with.

So far, however, federal courts have sided with school districts that have accommodated transgender students. For instance, in Parents for Privacy v. Dallas School District No. 2, a federal district court dismissed a suit against Oregon’s Dallas school district, stating that accommodating transgender students does not impinge on the religious rights of other students or their parents. And in 2019, the Supreme Court declined to review Doe v. Boyertown Area School District, letting stand a 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruling upholding a Pennsylvania school district’s policy to accommodate transgender students.

Rights of teachers and administrators

Without question, public school employees retain their rights to free exercise of religion. When off duty, school employees are free to engage in worship, proselytizing or any other lawful faith-based activity. When they are acting as representatives of a public school system, however, courts have said their rights are constrained by the Establishment Clause.

This limitation on religious expression raises difficult questions. The first is what limits school systems may impose on the ordinary and incidental expression of religious identity by teachers in the classroom. Most school systems permit teachers to wear religious clothing or jewelry. Similarly, teachers may disclose their religious identity; for instance, they need not refuse to answer when a student asks, “Do you celebrate Christmas or Hanukkah?” or “Did I see you at the Islamic center yesterday morning?”

At times, however, teachers act in an uninvited and overtly religious manner toward students and are asked by school administrators to refrain. When those requests have led to litigation, administrators invariably have prevailed on the grounds that they are obliged (for constitutional and pedagogical reasons) to be sensitive to a teacher’s coercive potential.

In Bishop v. Aronov (1991), for example, the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a set of restrictions imposed by the University of Alabama on a professor of exercise physiology. Professor Phillip Bishop had been speaking regularly to his class about the role of his Christian beliefs in his work and had scheduled an optional class in which he offered a “Christian perspective” on human physiology. The court recognized the university’s general authority to control the way in which instruction took place, noting that Bishop’s academic freedom was not jeopardized since he retained the right to express his religious views in his published writing and elsewhere.

In Roberts v. Madigan (1990), a federal district court similarly upheld the authority of a public school principal in Colorado to order a fifth-grade teacher to take down a religious poster from the classroom wall and to remove books titled “The Bible in Pictures” and “The Life of Jesus” from the classroom library. The court also backed the principal’s order that the teacher remove the Bible from his desktop and refrain from silently reading the Bible during instructional time. The court emphasized that school principals need such authority to prevent potential violations of the Establishment Clause and to protect students against a religiously coercive atmosphere.

That much is clear. What is less clear is how public school systems should draw the line between teachers’ official duties and their own time. That was the key question in Wigg v. Sioux Falls School District (8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, 2004), in which a teacher sued the South Dakota school district for refusing to allow her to serve as an instructor in the Good News Club (an evangelical Christian group) that met after school hours at various public elementary schools in the district.

A federal district court ruled that the teacher, Barbara Wigg, should be free to participate in the club but said the school district could insist that the teacher not participate at the school where she was employed. The appellate court affirmed the decision but went further in protecting the teacher’s rights, concluding that the school district could not exclude her from the program at her own school. The court reasoned that once the school day ended, Wigg became a private citizen, leaving her free to be a Good News Club instructor at any school, including the one where she worked. The court ruled that no reasonable observer would perceive Wigg’s after-school role as being carried out on behalf of the school district, even though the club met on school property.

In general, then, the courts have ruled that public schools have substantial discretion to regulate the religious expression of teachers during instructional hours, especially when students are required to be present. The courts have also ruled, however, that attempts by schools to extend that control into non-instructional hours constitute an overly broad intrusion on the teachers’ religious freedom.

Religious activities and the principle of equal access

Over the past 20 years, evangelical Christians and others have advanced the rights of religious organizations to have equal access to meeting space and other forms of recognition provided by public schools to students. These organizations have consistently succeeded in securing the same privileges provided by public schools to secular groups.

Their victories have not been based on a claim that religious groups have a right to official recognition simply because they want to practice or preach their religion; instead, these cases have been won on free-speech grounds.

Whenever public schools recognize student extracurricular activities (for example, a student Republican club or an animal rights group), the schools are deemed to have created a forum for student expression. The constitutional rules governing the forum concept are complicated, but one consistent theme is that the state may not discriminate against a person or group seeking access to the forum based on that person’s or group’s viewpoint. In a now-lengthy line of decisions, the Supreme Court has ruled consistently that religious groups represent a particular viewpoint on the subjects they address and that officials may not exclude that viewpoint from a government-created forum for expression or association.

The first major decision in this area was  Widmar v. Vincent   (1981), , in which the Supreme Court ruled that the University of Missouri could not exclude from campus facilities a student group that wanted to use the school’s buildings for worship and Bible study. The university had refused the group access, asserting that the Establishment Clause forbade the use of a public university’s facilities for worship. The court rejected this defense, ruling that the university had allowed other student groups to use university property and that the complaining group could not be excluded on the basis of its religious viewpoint.

The Supreme Court later extended Widmar’s notion of equal access to nonstudent groups. They, too, should have access to public space, the court said. Despite the decision in Widmar, however, some public high schools continued to refuse access to student religious groups. Those schools took the view that prayer and Bible reading in public schools were constitutionally impermissible, even if wholly student initiated. At least one court of appeals has upheld that argument.

Congress responded by passing the Equal Access Act of 1984. As a condition for receiving federal financial aid, the law required that public secondary schools not discriminate on the basis of religion or political viewpoint in recognizing and supporting extracurricular activities. This law has benefited a variety of student organizations, from gay and lesbian groups to evangelical Christian clubs.

In 1985, a year after Congress passed the equal access law, school officials in Omaha, Nebraska, refused a student request for permission to form a Christian club at a public high school. The club’s activities included reading and discussing the Bible and engaging in prayer. The students filed suit under the Equal Access Act, and the school officials responded that allowing such a club in a public school would violate the Establishment Clause.

In the court case, Board of Education v. Mergens (1990), the Supreme Court upheld the Equal Access Act. The 8-1 majority reasoned that high schools were indistinguishable from universities for purposes of equal access to public facilities. Because there were many student groups devoted to different and frequently opposing causes, the court determined that no reasonable observer would see the school’s recognition of a religious group as an official endorsement of the group’s religious views.

The limits of  Widmar  and  Mergens  were later put to the test in  Rosenberger v. University of Virginia  (1995) and  Good News Club v. Milford Central School District  (2001). In Rosenberger, the Supreme Court held 5-4 that the Free Speech Clause of the First Amendment required a state university to grant the same printing subsidy to an evangelical journal that it made available to all other student journals. The dissenters argued, unsuccessfully, that state financial support for a proselytizing journal violated the Establishment Clause. In Good News Club, a 6-3 majority held that the Free Speech Clause prohibited an elementary school from excluding an evangelical Christian program for children from the list of accepted after-school activities.

These equal access decisions have led to new controversies in the lower courts. In Child Evangelism Fellowship of Maryland v. Montgomery County Public Schools (2006), for instance, a federal appellate court extended the equal access principle to fliers that schools distributed to students to take home for the purpose of informing parents about after-school activities. For years the county had distributed fliers for children’s sports leagues and activities like the Boy Scouts. But it refused to distribute fliers for the after-school programs of the Child Evangelism Fellowship of Maryland, which are not held on school property. The 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals held that the county’s flier distribution policy was unconstitutionally discriminatory.

The presence of student religious groups in public schools has raised one additional issue. At times these groups insist that their officers make specific religious commitments, such as accepting Jesus Christ as savior and maintaining sexual abstinence outside of heterosexual marriage. As a result, some students are excluded from joining the group or from its leadership ranks. In Hsu v. Roslyn Union Free School District No. 3 (1996), the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals held that the federal Equal Access Act gave students in an evangelical Christian group the right to maintain religious criteria for office. The court said the school’s policy against religious discrimination by student groups was unenforceable in this instance.

The issue arrived at the Supreme Court in 2010 in a case involving a public law school’s decision to deny official recognition to the Christian Legal Society (CLS), a nationwide, nondenominational organization of Christian lawyers, judges and law students. Although the case, Christian Legal Society v. Martinez, involved just one law school (the University of California, Hastings College of Law), other law schools around the country also had been sued by the organization for similar reasons. By the time the Supreme Court agreed to hear Martinez, lower federal courts in different cases had ruled both for and against the organization.

The case centered on Hastings’ policies toward student organizations. Student groups that are officially recognized by Hastings enjoy certain privileges, including access to school facilities and funding. But CLS membership requirements effectively bar non-Christians from becoming voting members and non-celibate gays and lesbians from assuming leadership positions, which conflicts with the law school’s stated policy of requiring registered student groups to accept any students as members. After Hastings refused to exempt CLS from the policy – known as the “all-comers” policy – the group sued, claiming the policy violated its First and 14th Amendment rights to free speech, expressive association and freedom of religious expression. A federal district court and the Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit sided with Hastings, and CLS appealed to the Supreme Court.

The case was widely viewed as a contest between the right of free association and nondiscrimination policies. In its ruling, however, the court did not resolve any broad questions raised by this conflict. Instead, the 5-4 majority handed down a narrowly tailored decision that upheld the specific policy of Hastings Law School – the “all-comers” policy – as long as it is applied in an evenhanded manner.

Writing for the high court’s majority, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said that Hastings’ policy requiring officially registered student groups to allow anyone to join does not unconstitutionally discriminate against groups with particular viewpoints or missions. Quite the contrary, she wrote, the policy is completely neutral since it requires all organizations to open their membership and leadership to all students. Ginsburg argued that it is CLS that wants an exemption from the policy and thus threatens its neutrality. Moreover, she wrote, an “all-comers” policy is reasonable for an educational institution because it encourages all groups to accept and interact with students who hold diverse views. Finally, Ginsburg noted that even though the Christian Legal Society has been denied official recognition by the law school, the group can, and still does, freely operate on campus and is even allowed to use school facilities to hold meetings.

Writing for the dissent, Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. argued that by affirming Hastings’ policy, the majority sacrificed core First Amendment principles in favor of political correctness and armed “public educational institutions with a handy weapon for suppressing the speech of unpopular groups.” In addition, Alito asserted, the majority overlooked certain evidence demonstrating that Hastings had singled out CLS because of its beliefs. Prior to the lawsuit, he said, many officially recognized groups on the Hastings campus – not just CLS – had membership requirements written into their bylaws that were discriminatory. Justice Alito also disputed the majority’s contention that CLS, even without official recognition, can still effectively operate on campus, noting that the administration has ignored requests by the group to secure rooms for meetings and tables at campus events.

This report was written by Ira C. Lupu, F. Elwood and Eleanor Davis  Professor Emeritus of Law at George Washington University Law School; David Masci, Senior Writer/Editor at Pew Research Center; and Robert W. Tuttle, David R. and Sherry Kirschner Berz Research Professor of Law & Religion at George Washington University Law School.

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Article contents

Religion in schools in the united states.

• Suzanne Rosenblith Suzanne Rosenblith Clemson University
• https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190264093.013.46
• Published online: 28 June 2017

The relationship between religion and public education has been fraught with misunderstanding, confusion, tension, and hostility. Perhaps more so than other forms of identity, for many, religion evokes a strong sense of exclusivity. Unlike other forms of identity, for many, particularly the religiously orthodox, religious identity is based on a belief in absolute truth. And for some of the orthodox, adherence to this truth is central to their salvation. Further, unlike cultural identity, religion is oftentimes exclusive in its fundamental claims and assertions. In short, matters of religious faith are indeed high stakes. Yet its treatment in public schools is, for the most part, relatively scant. Some of this is because of uncertainty among educators as to what the law permits, and for others it is uncertainty of its rightful place in democratic pluralistic schools.

• public education
• first amendment

Introduction

This article seeks to provide an overview of the historical, legal, and curricular relationship between religion and public schooling in the United States. This relationship, often fraught with tension, attempts to reconcile often incommensurable public goals. The article begins with a review of the history of religion in the public domain. Since public schools are often thought of as microcosms of society, it is important to understand the relationship of religion within society. Following this overview, the article delves more deeply into seminal court cases that have more or less cemented the legal constraints of religion in public education. With legal parameters in mind, the next section explores the relationship of religion in public schools from curricular perspectives. Moving beyond a discussion of creationism in science class, this section aims to examine the benefits of broader inclusion of religious perspectives as a way to approximate pluralistic and democratic schools. The final section explores broader concerns for a liberal democracy—pluralism, autonomy, and respect—as it wrestles with the appropriateness of religion and religious identity in public schools.

History of Religion in the Public Sphere

To understand the contemporary relationship between religion and public schooling requires a review of the history of religion in the public sphere. Many schoolchildren in the United States have been taught that the first European settlers to the colonies fled Europe and the Church of England to seek freedom to exercise their religious beliefs. And while this is true, far from the feel-good narrative that some like to extend (Baritz, 1964 ), the first settlers, the Puritans, were an extremely rigid and dogmatic group of religious believers who settled in the colonies not for freedom of religion but to practice and entrench their religious beliefs (Kaveny, 2013 ). They did not believe in a secular state but rather believed their version of Christianity to be predominant, and as far as they could see, the only justifiable established religion (Fiske, 1889 ). The Puritans believed Satan lurked around every corner and that religion was the essential tool to ward off Satan’s trickery. This in fact was the basis for the 1647 Old Deluder Satan Act (Constitution Society, 1647 ).

Common School Movement

As time progressed after the American Revolution, leaders like Horace Mann and Benjamin Rush made calls for a more organized public school system (Rudolph, 1965 ). Horace Mann famously called for the creation of the Common School (Hinsdale, 1898 ). Though Mann grew up, like so many, in a deeply religious home, he did not think these new public schools needed to be centrally religious. That is, their focus was not to be on inculcating biblical views, but rather for Mann, the focus of the Common School was to cultivate a tolerant, what we might call today, pluralistic, citizenry (Mann & Massachusetts Board of Education, 1957 ). Morality, more so than literal scriptural reading, was what Mann called for. For Mann, the chief concern in creating this Common School was attending to the increasing social strife that came as a result of the development of industry (Mann, 1965 ). Further, Mann was concerned about racial/ethnic hostility as the newest waves of immigrants to the United States were from Southern and Eastern Europe. Not only did they look different than the Northern and Western European immigrants, but they came with different languages, customs, and cultures. Assimilating them into a decidedly American culture was a goal for Mann and his allies (Hayes, 2006 ). All in all, the most orthodox religious believers were supportive of Mann’s efforts because these common schools exuded what was considered a nondenominational Protestantism (Moore, 2000 ). On the one hand was the belief that if you wanted the kind of hard-working, morally upright, conscientious citizens, then religion necessarily needed to be a part of the Common School. On the other hand, the religion that was foundational to the school did not need to be sectarian so as to privilege one group to the exclusion of others.

And so the Common School and then the Public School very much functioned with a role for religion—in many/most states, the school day began with a biblical recitation. In many schools, particularly in the late 19th and early 20th centuries , McGuffey Readers were the main textbook (Westerhoff, 1978 ). The Readers , unlike their predecessor the New England Primer , mirrored this nondenominational Protestantism by inculcating morality through a veiled Christianity as opposed to a direct and overt use of the King James Bible in efforts to educate young citizens to become literate. For example, the New England Primer had a solemn prayer to be recited everyday, which states, “Oh Lord God, I beseech thee, of thy fatherly goodness and mercy to pardon all my offenses which in though, word, or deed, I have this day committed against thee and thy holy law” ( The New England Primer , 1805 ). The McGuffey Reader , in comparison, invoked a more nondenominational, less orthodox, religious tone. In one of its lessons it states, “I hope you have said your prayers and thanked your Father in Heaven for all his goodness … for your good health, and a blessing of home” (McGuffey, 1836 ).

Modernization and Industrialization

A significant, some might argue fatal, shift for those advocating the centrality of religion to public schools came in the early mid- 20th century . As has always been the case, public schools, serving as microcosms of society, reflect not just the dominant values and ethos of society, but also serve an important economic and intellectual purpose. That is, to the degree that the needs of society change, so must the public schools. Public schools were the central place to prepare the young for future citizenship. While an important part of that citizenship was moral and social, increasingly with industrialization, that role was also intellectual and economic (Fraser, 2001 ). The frame through which public schools cultivated curriculum changed substantially. For example, the type of citizen and future worker needed expanded from someone who was morally upright to someone who could contribute to the burgeoning Scientific and Industrial Revolutions. Shifting from the absolutism and fixidity of religion to the flexibility and tentativeness of science required a rethinking of pedagogy and curriculum (Greene, 2012 ). Further, with the country’s religious diversity increasing and the country itself maturing, religion seemed to be less central to the public schools. In contrast, understanding that ethical decision-making required an understanding of the context in which a person might find herself as opposed to the absolutes favored by religious belief, required a more open-ended, what today we might call, critical reasoning approach, to teaching and learning (Sears & Carper, 1998 ). The idea that the world was not absolute and fixed but ever changing, caused a real need for a different sort of education. As nondenominational Protestantism lost its stronghold over public schools in favor of a more science-focused secularism, Christian Orthodox—the Evangelical—become its harshest critics. They argue that the removal of God (religion) from the public sphere is a threat to their faith and a violation of their rights (Larson, 1997 ). Court cases related to religion and public education seem to lend some credence to their claims. The tension between the religiously orthodox, specifically evangelical Christians, and the secular public schools began in the mid- 20th century and has persisted to the present day (Deckman, 2004 ).

To survey popular media, particularly cable news, one might depict the current state of tension between those advocating for more religion in public schools and those advocating for its removal in the following way. On the one hand you have religious zealots making calls for prayer, creationism, released time, religious clubs, posting the Ten Commandments (Rogers, 2010 ; Shreve, 2010 ) and to the other extreme you have atheist zealots who refuse to consider any idea that has some association with religion as appropriate for public schools (Hedges, 2008 ). While these caricatures might fit some in each of these groups, contrary to the popular media depiction is, instead, a conflict built upon a reliance on different aspects of the first part of the First Amendment. That is, those advocating for more religion in public schools cite the “Free Exercise Clause” as the basis for their demands (Hodgson, 2004 ), while those arguing for a relatively “religious free public school” argue that anything less than this would be an instantiation of government support or “Establishment” of religion (Long, 2012 ). Given this, it is important to understand the legal context in which these tensions arise.

Religion and the Law

Perspectives on establishment.

The first part of the first amendment to the U.S. Constitution reads, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof” (U.S. Const. amend. I). The establishment clause , as it is commonly called, is meant to protect individuals from the establishment of an official state religion. In contrast, the function of the free exercise clause is to protect individual religious freedom. In terms of legal impact, the establishment clause has historically garnered more attention because of the wide-sweeping impact a legal decision will have. In contrast, free exercise cases address issues that pertain largely to religious minorities, so the impact is smaller and more context dependent.

Typically, when justices decide Establishment Clause cases they are asked to determine whether an enactment effectively establishes, or supports, a state religion. There are generally three different judicial perspectives on establishment, strict separation, accommodation, and neutral separation. Strict separationists invoke the idea of a wall separating Church and State. For strict separationists there is no instance in which an enactment would be tolerated (Neuhaus, 2007 ). Accommodationists point to the Framers’ “original intent” and argue that the only thing the Framers were concerned about in terms of the role of religion in government was the establishment of an official State Church. Barring this, certain accommodations are permissible as long as government does not prefer one religion to another (Massaro, 2005 ). Finally, the neutral separation position examines enactments with a slightly different lens arguing that what is most important is official State neutrality between religion and non-religion and thus argue that to adhere to the establishment clause may mean at times accommodating religion if it is to maintain neutrality between religion and non-religion (Fox, 2011 ; Temperman, 2010 ). Generally speaking, when focusing on the major court cases that have impacted public education, the neutral separation position has carried the day when it comes to issues such as school prayer, religious instruction, and released time.

Immediately following the Civil War, Congress passed the 14th amendment that states, “No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States … ” What this means is one’s national citizenship is one’s highest source of rights. The degree to which state laws contradict federal/constitutional laws, state laws must give way. For our discussion this is important because it is the application of the 14th amendment to the 1st amendment that holds public schools and public school employees to the restrictions of the 1st amendment ( Everson v. Board of Education ). The 14th amendment application to the 1st amendment is also essential since it is the states, rather than the federal government, that hold substantive influence over public school curriculum and policy.

Several watershed cases have firmly established the preference for the neutral separation position. In McCollum v. Board of Education ( 1948 ), the court struck down an Illinois program that provided time during the school day on school premises for “released time” for religious instruction. Arguing that school personnel were involved with the administration and execution of this program was tantamount to supporting religion it was found unconstitutional. In contrast, the courts sided with the school district in Zorach v. Clauson ( 1952 ) where students were released from the school premises (with parental permission) during the school day for religious instruction arguing that it was the school’s job to maintain neutrality between religion and non-religion, and since it was the parents and students who voluntarily signed up for the released time program, the school did not violate the establishment clause by permitting such a program to continue.

Key Court Cases

In the middle of the 20th century it was commonplace for the school day to begin with a religious prayer or invocation. Beginning in 1962 , cases made their way through the courts, and in every instance the court found such prayers violated the establishment clause. Engel v. Vitale ( 1962 ) concerned a New York State Board of Regents Prayer that was to be read over the intercom system in every New York public school at the start of each school day, “Almighty God, we acknowledge our dependence upon Thee, and we beg Thy blessings upon us, our parents, our teachers, and our country. Amen.” The court ruled that the prayer violated the establishment clause because although, nondenominational (in a sense), it still favored religion over non-religion. Further, because the prayer was broadcast at the start of the school day, students had no choice (captive audience) but to listen. The following year, the court in an 8-1 decision in Abington School District v. Schempp ( 1963 ) determined that a commonwealth of Pennsylvania law that read, “Ten verses from the Holy Bible shall be read without comment at the opening of each public school on each school day” was unconstitutional. Of greater importance in this case was the distinction made between the unconstitutionality of practicing religion in public school with the constitutionally permissible act of studying religion in public school. That is, if there is an educational purpose to studying religion, then presumably this would be permissible. The fact that the law included the clause “without comment” made it appear to the majority of justices that it served a devotional, rather than an educational, purpose. The second significance of this case is that it offered the first two of what later became a three-prong test used to adjudicate Establishment clause cases. The first prong asks what is the primary purpose of the enactment? Is it religious or secular? The second prong asks what is the primary effect of the enactment—religious or secular? In cases where the primary purpose and effect are secular the enactment is said to be permissible. This formula is particularly useful when determining whether curriculum, such as evolution or creationism, for example, is permitted. Epperson v. Arkansas ( 1968 ) addressed the matter of an Arkansas law prohibiting the teaching of evolution. The law was ruled unconstitutional on the grounds that the primary purpose of the law was to advance and protect a religious view. Following the Epperson decision was the famous case Lemon v. Kurtzman ( 1971 ). It was famous mainly because of the establishment of the third prong used to adjudicate establishment clause cases. At issue in this case was the question of whether public schools could reimburse private schools for the salaries of their teachers who taught secular subjects. Since the majority of the private schools were parochial, the matter fell under establishment. In deciding that it was unconstitutional for the public schools to pay the salaries of the parochial school teachers, the court determined that while primary purpose and primary effect were central to deciding constitutionality, a third prong, which says that the enactment must not foster an excessive entanglement between religion and government was needed. Paying the salaries of private school teachers who teach secular subjects may not serve a primarily religious purpose or have a primarily religious effect, but it certainly would foster an excessive entanglement between government and religion in that government would be very involved with accounting for their investments in a parochial school.

Contemporary Tensions

Other important Establishment Clause cases related to education include Wallace v. Jaffree ( 1985 ). This case dealt with the constitutionality of moments of silence. In this case, the state of Alabama allowed for a moment of silence for the purpose of meditation or private prayer. While moments of silence with no explicit purpose have been found constitutional, this law was found unconstitutional on the grounds that it had a clear religious purpose. Edwards v. Aguillard ( 1987 ) concerned a Louisiana “balanced treatment act,” a law that required creationism be taught alongside evolution to maintain neutrality. The court, in a 7-2 decision found the law unconstitutional according to all three prongs of the Lemon test. The courts have ruled similarly in more recent court cases such as Selman v. Cobb County School District ( 2006 ), which ruled that “warning labels” on evolution texts violated the Establishment Clause as well as Freiler v. Tangipahoa Parish Board of Education ( 1997 ) where the majority ruled that a “disclaimer” teachers were required to read before teaching evolution was unconstitutional.

In summary, since the 1940s when the 14th amendment was applied to the 1st amendment, public schools have been limited in what counts as permissible in relation to religion and public schooling. Summing up the legal parameters nicely is a document issued by the federal government entitled, “Federal Guidelines for Religious Expression in Schools ( 1997 ).” These guidelines, developed by a wide ranging panel first commissioned during the Clinton administration and then reauthorized under George W. Bush, emphasize that restrictions on religious expression are limited to school personnel while in their official capacity. Students, in contrast, have free range to express their religious beliefs in public schools, “short of harassment.” So although the religious orthodox have claimed that God has been removed from the public schools, the legal record tells us that free exercise has only been limited in the case of school officials and not students. For example, under the Equal Access Act ( 1984 ), student-initiated religious groups are permitted at schools. However, teachers cannot create or lead these groups, though they are allowed to monitor them.

Free Exercise

It is worth mentioning briefly the role of the free exercise clause in public schools. The chief function of the free exercise clause is to provide protection to religious minorities where laws created by the majority might serve unintentionally to restrict their free exercise. The most famous free exercise case related to public schools is, Wisconsin v. Yoder ( 1972 ). In this case, members of the Amish community requested an exemption from state compulsory attendance laws. Wisconsin law required all students to attend school until the age of 16. The Amish requested an exemption from the last two years of schooling (what essentially would have amounted to the first two years of high school). Their rationale was that the exposure Amish children would have could undermine their very way of life; indeed they claimed it threatened their survival. Ultimately, the court sided with the Amish for two very different reasons. First, acknowledging the importance of an education for participation in public life, the court reasoned that because the Amish live a self-sufficient life and by all outward expressions are a successful social unit, the exemption was warranted. Second, they reasoned that laws should not serve to threaten the very way of life of a religious minority group and the state ought to be respectful, not hostile, to minority religious views.

The law, then, sets clear parameters for what constitutes an establishment of religion and when individual free exercise should take precedent over generally applicable laws. One can conclude from this discussion that, contrary to the claim made by the religiously orthodox, public schools are not hostile to religion but rather are welcoming of religion in the public school in so far as it serves an educational purpose. This next section treats curriculum. Where, if at all should religion reside in the curriculum? What are the strengths and limitations of its inclusion? And finally, how does its inclusion contribute to cultivating a democratic ideal?

Curriculum serves as a battleground in education. Perhaps more than other dimensions of schooling, it tells us what is worth knowing and understanding. Curriculum, however, does not exist in a vacuum. Curriculum can be a deeply political issue, especially when dealing with the topics of science, history, and religion (Erekson, 2012 ). There is also significant discussion on who should set the curriculum priorities (the local school district, the states, or the federal government) as well as how much freedom teachers should have to move away from the set curriculum (Webb, 2002 ). How the curriculum treats religion has often created controversy. This is an even more complex issue in a society that is becoming both more non-religious as well as more religiously diverse (Pew Religious Center, 2015 ). Herbert Kliebard, the preeminent American curriculum historian, identifies four primary groups who have vied for supremacy in schools. These groups sought to define the U.S. educational curriculum in the late 19th and early 20th centuries . They were humanists, social meliorists, those focused on child development, and social efficiency educators (Kliebard, 2004 ; Labadee, 1987 ). Depending on which view enjoyed currency at a particular time in history, could determine whether religion, in some form, found its way into the formal narrative of schooling. Whereas the humanists were primarily concerned with fostering in students intellectual skills through the traditional disciplines, social meliorists thought curriculum should have a focus on activism—social improvement. Developmentalists thought that it was important to design curriculum around the development of the individual learner and social efficiency advocates thought curriculum should be limited to preparation for the workforce. As one examines different movements to include religion within the curriculum it is valuable to note which theoretical model is invoked. For these curricular approaches provide a lens into the view of religion with respect to larger society.

Religious Ways of Knowing

Discussions about the place of religion in the public schools are generally limited to robust discussions of the relevance and place of creationism in science classes (Berkman & Plutzer, 2010 ). Limiting discussions to creationism and science misses far more consequential arguments for an important and relevant role for religion in the public schools. Warren Nord has made perhaps the most convincing and comprehensive arguments for the centrality of religious ways of knowing to all disciplines (Nord, 2010 ). Nord argues that we fail to adequately teach common disciplines such as history and economics if we do not also provide religious ways of examining these disciplines (Nord & Haynes, 1998 ). For Nord it is not so much that religious perspectives have a stronger purchase on the truth of things, but rather the religious lens or a religious lens asks different sorts of questions than non-religious lenses and thus enlarges the conversations about various historical perspectives, economic theories, etc. For example, religion can serve as a type of critique of our current market-driven society or it can enlarge conversations related to scientific development, environmental sustainability, etc. (Nord, 1995 ). Nord, however, is not alone in his calls for including religion (religious perspectives) in the public school curriculum. Stephen Prothero and others have made a strong call for religious literacy (Prothero, 2007 ). Particularly since the terrorist attacks of 2001 in the United States, there has been a collective realization that, generally speaking, Americans are largely ignorant when it comes to understanding much about religion (Moore, 2007 ). Politicians and media outlets have often exploited this ignorance to create fear about Muslims, refugees, and the religious other. The contention goes, the more illiterate we are, the more religious intolerance predominates. This illiteracy is not limited to Islam, but can be said to be a general religious illiteracy (Wood, 2011 ). Nel Noddings has also made a forceful case for providing students with opportunities to explore existential questions in the public school classroom (Noddings, 2008 ). She argues that students already come to school bogged down with these types of questions, so schools have an obligation to help students make sense of them (Noddings, 1993 ). The Bible Literacy Project, an ambitious project endorsed by a wide range of academics and theologians provides a well-sourced textbook that can be used in schools (Bible Literacy Project, 2015 ). Though, their intentions may be less educational and more religious, many states have passed legislation permitting the teaching of the Bible in public schools (Goodman, 2006 ). The Bible used for literary or historical reasons seems justifiable (and fully constitutional). Furthermore, a “policy of inclusion” toward religion is vital for the “demands of a liberal, pluralist state” (Rosenblith, 2010 ).

Multiculturalism

A recent text by philosopher Liz Jackson makes the case that Muslims, in particular, are done a disservice when schools do not attend substantively to the study of Islam in schools. Her argument is based on three essential claims. First, in the absence of a substantive treatment in schools, citizens are left with popular culture depictions of Muslims (Jackson, 2010 ). These characterizations typically misrepresent Muslims. Second, the ways in which Muslims are depicted in social studies textbooks also take a narrow view. That is Muslims and Islam are largely depicted beginning in 2001 through the lens of terrorism (Jackson, 2011 ). Finally, Jackson argues that preservice teacher preparation programs do not do sufficient work in preparing future social studies teachers to be knowledgeable about Muslims and Islam, and therefore they are ill-equipped to disrupt the narratives perpetuated in textbooks or through popular culture (Jackson, 2011 ). It was not until the 2007 edition of the Banks and Banks Handbook on Multicultural Education that religion was even included as a form of identity (Banks & McGee Banks, 2007 ). Perhaps, U.S. schools should set up a system to certify teachers in the area of religious studies as they will “need to have the knowledge, skills, and dispositions” that would be expected in other disciplines (Rosenblith & Bailey, 2008 ). Other nations with liberal and pluralistic traditions such as Great Britain have been able to integrate religion into the curriculum while still embracing diversity and civic values (Rosenblith & Bailey, 2008 ).

Curricular Opportunities

There are many ways in which religion can be addressed in public school curricula that are both constitutionally permissible and educationally justifiable. Schools could provide world religion survey courses so that students have at least a superficial understanding of the range of religions in the world. Schools could offer controversial issues classes where religion could serve as both a topic and a perspective. Schools can study religious perspectives on a variety of current issues. Discussing religion does not need to lead to conflict or violence but can rather create an environment for “healthy, robust dialogue” (Rosenblith, 2008a ). In an increasingly diverse society, the ability to understand the perspectives of those from other faiths is vital for social cohesion and peace. Ignoring differences does not make intolerance dissipate but often allows stereotypes and antagonism to flourish. A pluralism that merely engages in “eschewing matters of truth, is wholly inadequate. It is inadequate because it fosters ignorance” (Rosenblith, 2008a ).

Central to carving out a curriculum that is both constitutionally permissible and educationally justifiable is framing it within a theory that honors the pluralistic and democratic commitments of public schools. Religious curriculum should contribute “to the public good” by helping students “develop knowledge and dispositions to resist religious intolerance and bigotry” and to understand and respect the “religious other” (Rosenblith, 2008b ).

Democracy, Autonomy, Pluralism

A central question when considering the role of religion in public education is grounded in questions about the role of the school, the rights of individuals, and the rights of groups. Perhaps more than many other forms of identity, religion casts the inherent tensions in bold terms. To paraphrase John Rawls’s central question in Political Liberalism , how does a society deeply divided on doctrinal grounds learn to get along (Rawls, 2005 )? To complicate matters further, even if we were to determine a mutually agreeable way forward for groups who are deeply divided by religious and political beliefs, what role would even more diverse individuals within those groups have in articulating their vision for a good life? These questions figure centrally in an understanding of religion and public schools.

Political theorists take a variety of perspectives on these matters. For some, the purpose of the public school is to privilege the pluralism of the nation and thus must be accommodating to such a degree that all particular groups feel included and valued (Kymlicka, 2001 , 2015 ). For others, the chief purpose of public schools is fundamentally civic and to that end, while schools should try to accommodate differences, they must not do so to such a degree that it jeopardizes a sense of civic identity and the values of a liberal democracy (Macedo, 1995 , 2000 ). While there are still others who fall somewhere in the middle, arguing that schools ought to promote a shared civic identity, but not at the expense of citizens finding the public school inhospitable to their particular religious views. In these instances, schools ought to accommodate religious believers by using levers such as opt-outs for curricular materials they find religiously objectionable if these levers prevent the groups from exiting the public schools (Gutmann, 1995 ). Others stress the importance of individual autonomy for students as the most important goal when looking at the often conflicting values of multiculturalism and civic liberalism (Reich, 2002 ).

Others are concerned about minority voices within particular religious groups (Okin, 1998 ). As Susan Okin points out, out of a desire to accommodate the free exercise of religious minority groups, there can be a denial of the individual rights that are the cornerstone of a liberal society. She asks what societies should do with religious groups that promote forced marriages, remove students from formal education, or prevent any outside socialization (Okin, 2002 ). Even though defenders of religious minorities may say that individuals have exit rights, Okin is concerned if this is truly an option for most people, especially young women who are the most oppressed in these systems. As she states, “even if it were feasible or even possible in a practical sense, exit may not be an option at all desirable, or even thinkable, to those most in need of it” (Okin, 2002 ). She does not believe the state should make special exemptions for religious groups if it endangers individual liberty. To fail to enforce these individual rights is “to let toleration for diversity run amok” (Okin, 2002 ). The prototypical example of this tension can be found in the famous case, Wisconsin v Yoder ( 1972 ). The majority decision sided with the Amish who only wanted their children to study in public schools until the age of 14 out of religious concerns ( Wisconsin v. Yoder , 1972 ). While the case is a moot issue today in an age where the option to homeschool is relatively simple (Gaither, 2008 ), it still generates significant discussion in relation to discussions of individual rights. Certainly the parents have rights that are distinguishable from the state, but many will argue that children have rights distinct from their parents (Worthington & Fineman, 2009 ). While it might be the parents’ interest in securing protection from exposing their kids to ways of life contrary to their own, the question becomes whether children have rights as individual agents and do the parents’ decisions overly determine their children’s futures. This leads to some of the deeper philosophical questions in public education. What role does the state and family play in making sure children have an environment that is both secure and open to individual autonomy?

Exit Rights, Civic Education, and Religious Orthodoxy

This concern spills over into discussion of exit rights. Do children have a right to an education that might lead them to exit their religious group (Lester, 2004 )? Might a robust civic education provide new and different lenses through which children see the world that might make their home belief system less compelling? Should public schools in a pluralist state provide individuals with the kind of education that might lead to their exit from their home faith? Should public schools refrain from a robust civic education in order to protect and allow religious ideologies to flourish? To whom does the public school primarily answer? When is a religious ideology so extreme that to accommodate it seriously undermines the ideals of the American society? These are not easy questions to address and while they are difficult questions to wrestle with in terms of identity broadly understood, they are that much more vexing when it comes to religion. The reason being that religion, unlike culture, rests on epistemological foundations that for those who identify as religiously orthodox, are exclusive, inalienable, and unchanging. Educators are mistaken in simply “conflating” religion as another aspect of culture as it “strips religion” of its “essential qualities” (Rosenblith, 2008a ). This makes the project of civic education, for some, in many ways incommensurable with fostering religious identity. If the idea of a public school is, in part, to bring together people with very different visions of the good life and figure out ways forward, those who believe their very salvation hangs in the balance of one particular vision are understandably not going to be flexible in terms of tolerance and respect for a wide range of beliefs or for the very idea that public schools espouse—good citizenship hangs on an individual’s ability to respect and tolerate those with whom we disagree. In short, the problem becomes a non-starter for the most orthodox, making the civic project that much more difficult. This is of special difficulty for teachers as they seek to “navigate” the tensions between “the religiously orthodox and pluralist public schooling” (Bindewald & Rosenblith, 2015 ).

Religion, Schooling, and Indoctrination

One of the conflicts with integrating religion in schools is whether it is perceived as exposure or indoctrination. A suspicion of indoctrination can create angst in both the non-religious and the deeply orthodox. An extreme example of this fear occurred this past year when a father threatened a teacher because she was teaching about Islam in the class. It led to the closure of a whole school district (Robertson, 2015 ). If we are to have classrooms, which are filled with vibrant students who are open to critical thought, we have to move beyond the anxiety that any discussion on religion is the same as indoctrination. This is why the “trump card” of parental rights in preventing students from being exposed to materials that may conflict with private teachings is problematic (Rosenblith & Bindewald, 2014 ).

If educators approach religion appropriately in the classroom, it should not lead to a concern of indoctrination. Rather, it can be a tool that helps students become more religiously literate and “resist religious intolerance and bigotry and instead learn about the religious other” (Rosenblith, 2008b ). Are we limiting the possibilities for educational vibrancy and civic and multicultural understanding due to an exaggerated fear of religion in the classroom? What if the reasons for teaching religion in the classroom were not an attempt of “relativizing truth” or wanting to “coax students away from the religion of their parents” but rather helping to garner “fair depictions of the other” (Rosenblith & Bindewald, 2014 ). Perhaps, this is the approach to religion in the classroom that the majority of society could agree to.

Within the literature, far less attention has been given to treating the problem than has been given to identifying the problem. Diana Hess and Rob Kunzman have addressed ways forward. Suzanne Rosenblith and Benjamin Bindewald have as well. Hess argues for encouraging a discussion of controversial issues in the classroom as controversy is not an “unfortunate byproduct” of democracy but rather one of its “core and vital elements” (Hess, 2004 ). Hess argues that these controversial conversations should be the “students’ forum” where the teachers’ views do not directly impact the discussion but are integral for the discussions chosen (Hess, 2002 ).

Kunzman argues for “loosening liberal boundaries” in allowing for alternative and more orthodox perspectives in classroom discussion. After all, there is no consensus on what is “reasonable” when it comes to the discussion of religion and controversial issues. A truly civic education can work against the “disenfranchisement” of religious perspectives in the public sphere (Kunzman, 2005 ). He also argues that there will inherently be conflict in a religiously diverse society. Instead of ignoring this, educators should teach students how to navigate these conflicts and help create a greater understanding of religious diversity (Kunzman, 2006 ). He suggests using activities such as role play and field experience to create a more “empathetic understanding” of the other and move students “beyond knowledge to appreciation” (Kunzman, 2006 ). He also suggests letting students be the “source of insider perspective” when it comes to their own religious traditions (Kunzman, 2006 ).

Rosenblith and Bindewald look at this issue from a slightly different angle. They explore how teachers should handle exclusive comments made by the religiously orthodox that may be offensive to other students. They use the example of a student using the Bible to justify statements against homosexuality. They suggest for teachers to not simply ignore or downplay these types of comments, but rather make the distinction regarding arguments based on reason versus those based purely on religious belief. While giving the students the freedom to discuss the issues, teachers can and often should deal with these issues “directly” and with a level of “certitude” (Bindewald & Rosenblith, 2015 ). In another text, they argue for “mutuality,” which is a type of middle ground between “mere tolerance” and “robust respect” (Rosenblith & Bindewald, 2014 ). They see this mutuality as a willingness to engage in a relationship with the religious other (Rosenblith & Bindewald, 2014 ). It means that differences are not necessary “resolved” or “trivialized” but rather students engage in “a process of mutual reciprocity and understanding” (Rosenblith & Bindewald, 2014 ). The ultimate hope is that this will lead to “to a greater realization of justice and tolerance in the larger public sphere” (Rosenblith & Bindewald, 2014 ).

In our increasingly diverse, global, and interdependent society, confronting, understanding, and respecting the religious other is of paramount importance. In the United States, this places a particular obligation on the public schools to rethink its role in helping young citizens understand the history, complexity, and contributions of religion historically as well as in contemporary contexts. The relationship between religion and public education is one that has been inexorably tied to politics—religious and secular politics. This has led to a relatively ineffective exploration of religion in public schools. Recognizing the direct connection between religious illiteracy and religious intolerance, one can hope that a reconceptualization of the role of religion and public schools, one that takes religion, education, democracy, and pluralism seriously is near. In treating religion, education, democracy and pluralism seriously, the public schools can come closer to fulfilling their obligations to attend at once to individual and collective goals.

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• Webb, P. T. (2002). Teacher power: The exercise of professional autonomy in an era of strict accountability. Teacher Development , 6 (1), 47–62.
• Westerhoff, J. H. (1978). McGuffey and his readers: Piety, morality, and education in nineteenth century America . Nashville: Abingdon.
• Wisconsin v. Yoder, 406 U.S. 205 (1972).
• Wood, S. K. (2011, Winter). Religious illiteracy . Marquette Magazine .
• Worthington, K. , & Fineman, M. (2009). What is right for children? The competing paradigms of religion and human rights . New York: Routledge.
• Zorach v. Clauson, 343 U.S. 306 (1952).

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Four Reasons Why You Should Teach About Religion in School

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Understanding and weighing perspectives—from different people, cultures, and schools of thought—are important global competence skills that all student should develop. I’m happy to have Mark Fowler and Marisa Fasciano guest blog today to help us understand why and how to teach about religion in schools.

For a variety of reasons, many educators are understandably reluctant to raise the topic of religion in the classroom. They may worry about offending a student, misrepresenting a tradition, or favoring one belief system over another. If you’re unsure of the legal guidelines pertaining to religion in public schools, you might take the separation of church and state to its literal extreme and steer clear of the topic altogether.

Addressing and overcoming this reluctance is essential to the creation of respectful learning environments that adequately prepare students for an increasingly diverse and connected world. Not only is it perfectly legal to teach about religion in unbiased and academically sound ways, but educators have a responsibility to do so. Here are four reasons why:

1. Religiously motivated hate crimes are on the rise.

According to the U.S. Department of Justice’s Hate Crime Victimization report, the percentage of hate crimes that were motivated by religious bias was nearly three times higher in 2012 (28%) than in 2004 (10%). Many violent hate crime perpetrators are school-age: in 2012, nearly one in five were under the age of 18. By encouraging students to understand and respect people of different religious beliefs, educators are combatting these disturbing statistics and contributing to a more peaceful world.

2. Our student body is more diverse.

In 1970, a little fewer than 5 percent of the U.S. population was foreign born. The majority of them were Christian Europeans whose cultural and religious practices blended into the mainstream. By 2010, our foreign-born population has nearly tripled , and the proportion from Latin America (54%) and Asia (28%) greatly surpassed the proportion from Europe (13%).

To ensure that students of less familiar cultures and religious traditions feel included and safe in their learning communities, teachers need to provide opportunities for all students to share unique aspects of their identities. As their classmates become more educated about these differences, the likelihood of exclusivity and bullying diminishes.

3. Religious literacy is key to a well-rounded education.

If students are to function as globally competent citizens, they need to understand religion’s profound impact on history, politics, society, and culture. They should know basic religious facts and principles and recognize the diversity that exists within each belief system across time and place. Familiarity with central religious texts is also important, and it’s legal to study these texts in public schools, as long as the purpose is educational and not personal or devotional. For example, the Bible can be studied as a piece of literature that has influenced many classic works.

4. Students have a First Amendment right to religious expression in school.

The U.S. Constitution contains two clauses, known as the religion clauses, which inform the relationship between religion and public schools.

The Establishment Clause: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion,...”

The Free Exercise Clause: "...or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.”

As government employees, public school teachers and administrators are subject to the Establishment Clause and thus required to be neutral about religion while carrying out their duties. The Establishment Clause prevents public school staff from

• mandating or organizing prayer;
• praying in the presence of students;
• indoctrinating students in a particular religious belief;
• religiously observing holidays;
• erecting religious symbols on school property;
• distributing religious literature for persuasive purposes; or
• displaying a preference for religion over non-religion, or vice versa.

The Free Exercise Clause, on the other hand, affirms that certain religious activity in public schools is protected. As long as students do not coerce or otherwise infringe on the rights and learning of their schoolmates, they can

• engage in private prayer during the school day;
• express their religious beliefs in homework, artwork, and other written and oral assignments that meet educational goals; and
• obtain excusals from specific classroom discussions or activities for religious reasons.

Even though these guidelines may seem clear in the abstract, applying them to real-life situations often leaves room for interpretation and comes down to a judgment call. Educators can find it challenging to balance the requirements of the Establishment Clause, and the desire to protect students’ from unwelcome religious persuasion, with the right to free expression. To better prepare for this challenge, educators need to create conditions in their schools that allow for regular and sensitive communication about religious differences. That way, if religious tensions arise, they can be resolved more skillfully and effectively.

Dr. James Banks, a renowned expert in social studies and multicultural education, states “The world’s greatest problems do not result from people being unable to read and write. They result from people in the world-from different cultures, races, religions, and nations-being unable to get along and to work together to solve the world’s intractable problems.” By replacing anxiety about religion with a thoughtful strategy for promoting students’ religious literacy, educators are taking a step towards a better world.

The opinions expressed in Global Learning are strictly those of the author(s) and do not reflect the opinions or endorsement of Editorial Projects in Education, or any of its publications.

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Religion in K-12 Schools

This page will introduce you to academic research and policy debates about the role of religion in American education, including pedagogic and constitutional questions surrounding the study of religion in US public schools.

The first set of texts focuses on religious studies pedagogy.  These aren’t exactly teachers’ guides, although most include practical discussions of curriculum development and classroom teaching, along with research and reflection on the importance of K-12 teaching about religious diversity.  You can also click here for concise and downloadable teachers’ guides to the study of religion in K-12 schools.  The second set of texts looks beyond the classroom, exploring debates over religious expression in public schools — including prayer in schools, Bible reading, holiday observance, and other heated issues.

For a deeper dive into current research on religion and education, you might also want to check out recent works published in the Routledge Research in Religion and Education scholarly book series.

K-12 Religious Studies Pedagogy

Policy Debates about Religion in Schools

Three Essays on Religion

Author:  King, Martin Luther, Jr.

Date:  September 1, 1948 to May 31, 1951 ?

Location:  Chester, Pa. ?

Genre:  Essay

Topic:  Martin Luther King, Jr. - Education

In the following three essays, King wrestles with the role of religion in modern society. In the first assignment, he calls science and religion “different though converging truths” that both “spring from the same seeds of vital human needs.” King emphasizes an awareness of God’s presence in the second document, noting that religion’s purpose “is not to perpetuate a dogma or a theology; but to produce living witnesses and testimonies to the power of God in human experience.” In the final handwritten essay King acknowledges the life-affirming nature of Christianity, observing that its adherents have consistently “looked forward for a time to come when the law of love becomes the law of life.”

"Science and Religion"

There is widespread belief in the minds of many that there is a conflict between science and religion. But there is no fundamental issue between the two. While the conflict has been waged long and furiously, it has been on issues utterly unrelated either to religion or to science. The conflict has been largely one of trespassing, and as soon as religion and science discover their legitimate spheres the conflict ceases.

Religion, of course, has been very slow and loath to surrender its claim to sovereignty in all departments of human life; and science overjoyed with recent victories, has been quick to lay claim to a similar sovereignty. Hence the conflict.

But there was never a conflict between religion and science as such. There cannot be. Their respective worlds are different. Their methods are dissimilar and their immediate objectives are not the same. The method of science is observation, that of religion contemplation. Science investigates. Religion interprets. One seeks causes, the other ends. Science thinks in terms of history, religion in terms of teleology. One is a survey, the other an outlook.

The conflict was always between superstition disguised as religion and materialism disguised as science, between pseudo-science and pseudo-religion.

Religion and science are two hemispheres of human thought. They are different though converging truths. Both science and religion spring from the same seeds of vital human needs.

Science is the response to the human need of knowledge and power. Religion is the response to the human need for hope and certitude. One is an outreaching for mastery, the other for perfection. Both are man-made, and like man himself, are hedged about with limitations. Neither science nor religion, by itself, is sufficient for man. Science is not civilization. Science is organized knowledge; but civilization which is the art of noble and progressive communal living requires much more than knowledge. It needs beauty which is art, and faith and moral aspiration which are religion. It needs artistic and spiritual values along with the intellectual.

Man cannot live by facts alone. What we know is little enough. What we are likely to know will always be little in comparison with what there is to know. But man has a wish-life which must build inverted pyramids upon the apexes of known facts. This is not logical. It is, however, psychological.

Science and religion are not rivals. It is only when one attempts to be the oracle at the others shrine that confusion arises. Whan the scientist from his laboratory, on the basis of alleged scientific knowledge presumes to issue pronouncements on God, on the origin and destiny of life, and on man’s place in the scheme of things he is [ passing? ] out worthless checks. When the religionist delivers ultimatums to the scientist on the basis of certain cosomologies embedded in the sacred text then he is a sorry spectacle indeed.

When religion, however, on the strength of its own postulates, speaks to men of God and the moral order of the universe, when it utters its prophetic burden of justice and love and holiness and peace, then its voice is the voice of the eternal spiritual truth, irrefutable and invincible.,

"The Purpose of Religion"

What is the purpose of religion? 1  Is it to perpetuate an idea about God? Is it totally dependent upon revelation? What part does psychological experience play? Is religion synonymous with theology?

Harry Emerson Fosdick says that the most hopeful thing about any system of theology is that it will not last. 2  This statement will shock some. But is the purpose of religion the perpetuation of theological ideas? Religion is not validated by ideas, but by experience.

This automatically raises the question of salvation. Is the basis for salvation in creeds and dogmas or in experience. Catholics would have us believe the former. For them, the church, its creeds, its popes and bishops have recited the essence of religion and that is all there is to it. On the other hand we say that each soul must make its own reconciliation to God; that no creed can take the place of that personal experience. This was expressed by Paul Tillich when he said, “There is natural religion which belongs to man by nature. But there is also a revealed religion which man receives from a supernatural reality.” 3 Relevant religion therefore, comes through revelation from God, on the one hand; and through repentance and acceptance of salvation on the other hand. 4  Dogma as an agent in salvation has no essential place.

This is the secret of our religion. This is what makes the saints move on in spite of problems and perplexities of life that they must face. This religion of experience by which man is aware of God seeking him and saving him helps him to see the hands of God moving through history.

Religion has to be interpreted for each age; stated in terms that that age can understand. But the essential purpose of religion remains the same. It is not to perpetuate a dogma or theology; but to produce living witnesses and testimonies to the power of God in human experience.

[ signed ] M. L. King Jr. 5

"The Philosophy of Life Undergirding Christianity and the Christian Ministry"

Basically Christianity is a value philosophy. It insists that there are eternal values of intrinsic, self-evidencing validity and worth, embracing the true and the beautiful and consummated in the Good. This value content is embodied in the life of Christ. So that Christian philosophy is first and foremost Christocentric. It begins and ends with the assumption that Christ is the revelation of God. 6

We might ask what are some of the specific values that Christianity seeks to conserve? First Christianity speaks of the value of the world. In its conception of the world, it is not negative; it stands over against the asceticisms, world denials, and world flights, for example, of the religions of India, and is world-affirming, life affirming, life creating. Gautama bids us flee from the world, but Jesus would have us use it, because God has made it for our sustenance, our discipline, and our happiness. 7  So that the Christian view of the world can be summed up by saying that it is a place in which God is fitting men and women for the Kingdom of God.

Christianity also insists on the value of persons. All human personality is supremely worthful. This is something of what Schweitzer has called “reverence for life.” 8  Hunan being must always be used as ends; never as means. I realize that there have been times that Christianity has short at this point. There have been periods in Christians history that persons have been dealt with as if they were means rather than ends. But Christianity at its highest and best has always insisted that persons are intrinsically valuable. And so it is the job of the Christian to love every man because God love love. We must not love men merely because of their social or economic position or because of their cultural contribution, but we are to love them because  God  they are of value to God.

Christianity is also concerned about the value of life itself. Christianity is concerned about the good life for every  child,  man,  and  woman and child. This concern for the good life and the value of life is no where better expressed than in the words of Jesus in the gospel of John: “I came that you might have life and that you might have it more abundantly.” 9  This emphasis has run throughout the Christian tradition. Christianity has always had a concern for the elimination of disease and pestilence. This is seen in the great interest that it has taken in the hospital movement.

Christianity is concerned about increasing value. The whole concept of the kingdom of God on earth expressing a concern for increasing value. We need not go into a dicussion of the nature and meaning of the Kingdom of God, only to say that Christians throughout the ages have held tenaciouly to this concept. They have looked forward for a time to come when the law of love becomes the law of life.

In the light of all that we have said about Christianity as a value philosophy, where does the ministry come into the picture? 10

1.  King may have also considered the purpose of religion in a Morehouse paper that is no longer extant, as he began a third Morehouse paper, “Last week we attempted to discuss the purpose of religion” (King, “The Purpose of Education,” September 1946–February 1947, in  Papers  1:122).

2.  “Harry Emerson Fosdick” in  American Spiritual Autobiographies: Fifteen Self-Portraits,  ed. Louis Finkelstein (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1948), p. 114: “The theology of any generation cannot be understood, apart from the conditioning social matrix in which it is formulated. All systems of theology are as transient as the cultures they are patterned from.”

3.  King further developed this theme in his dissertation: “[Tillich] finds a basis for God’s transcendence in the conception of God as abyss. There is a basic inconsistency in Tillich’s thought at this point. On the one hand he speaks as a religious naturalist making God wholly immanent in nature. On the other hand he speaks as an extreme supernaturalist making God almost comparable to the Barthian ‘wholly other’” (King, “A Comparison of the Conceptions of God in the Thinking of Paul Tillich and Henry Nelson Wieman,” 15 April 1955, in  Papers  2:535).

4.  Commas were added after the words “religion” and “salvation.”

5.  King folded this assignment lengthwise and signed his name on the verso of the last page.

6.  King also penned a brief outline with this title (King, “The Philosophy of Life Undergirding Christianity and the Christian Ministry,” Outline, September 1948–May 1951). In the outline, King included the reference “see Enc. Of Religion p. 162.” This entry in  An Encyclopedia of Religion , ed. Vergilius Ferm (New York: Philosophical Library, 1946) contains a definition of Christianity as “Christo-centric” and as consisting “of eternal values of intrinsic, self-evidencing validity and worth, embracing the true and the beautiful and consummated in the Good.” King kept this book in his personal library.

7.  Siddhartha Gautama (ca. 563–ca. 483 BCE) was the historical Buddha.

8.  For an example of Schweitzer’s use of the phrase “reverence for life,” see Albert Schweitzer, “The Ethics of Reverence for Life,”  Christendom  1 (1936): 225–239.

9.  John 10:10.

10.  In his outline for this paper, King elaborated: “The Ministry provides leadership in helping men to recognize and accept the eternal values in the Xty religion. a. The necessity of a call b. The necessity for disinterested love c. The [ necessity ] for moral uprightness” (King, “Philosophy of Life,” Outline, September 1948–May 1951).

Source:  CSKC-INP, Coretta Scott King Collection, In Private Hands, Sermon file.

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RELIGION IN EDUCATION: PERCEPTIONS AND PRACTICES

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The Role of Religion in Contemporary Society – Mapping a Research Itinerary

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This week on The Learning Network, we asked teenagers about the role that religion plays in their lives. We also wanted to hear about the traits or quirks they inherited from their parents, and, inspired by athletes like Tom Brady who have “un-retired,” we asked them their thoughts on comeback stories.

Thank you to all those who joined the conversation this week, including teenagers from Ames, Iowa; Baldwinsville, N.Y . and Tennessee .

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What Role Does Religion Play in Your Life?

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Some teenagers told us about an unwavering belief in the benefits of faith. Others had a more a complicated relationship with religion. Some examined the role of religion in providing social capital, while others pointed out that religion has sometimes been “weaponized” as a tool of hatred and oppression. Here are the themes that came up over and over:

Religion is central to my life.

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— Grace, Baldwinsville

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Home — Essay Samples — Religion — Spread of Christianity — Religion Impact On Life

Religion Impact on Life

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