The freedom of religious expression in the public high school. - book reviews

National Review, Jan 27, 1984 by Chilton Williamson, Jr.

'THERE HAS been some confusion," John W. Whitehead remarks in the preface to his book The Freedom of Religious Expression in the Public High Schools (Crossway Books/Good News Publishers, Westchester, Ill. 60153; paper, $3.95), "surrounding the rights of religious persons to express themselves in the public schools." At the heart of this confusion, as Whitehead early demonstrates, is the widespread superstition, among religious people and secular humanists alike, that the courts have mandated by their decisions a nationwide policy barring religious discussion and activity from public institutions of learning. Yet such is not the fact. Rather, the most "liberal" court decisions of recent times regarding academic rights and freedoms have actually augmented earlier judicial interpretations of the First Amendment far more in harmony with the intent of its Framers.

Enough counter-revisionary work has been done over the past years that nobody shouls be any longer in doubt about the high esteem in which the constitutional convention held institutionalized religion, or about the extreme importance it attached to it as a keystone of democratic government and a free society. Plainly put, the United States was founded by religious men and dedicated, one is tempted to say after rereading the Declaration of Independence, almost to a religious purpose. (The religious fervor with which Democracy was often celebrated by nineteenth-century writers merely seals this impression.)

If the Framers intuitively understood the need for public education in a representative democracy, by "education" they understood, among other things, religious instruction. The Northwest Ordinance of 1787, for example--which laid the foundation for the American public-school system and was enacted by the same Congress that drafted the Constitution--states quite plainly that "Religion, morality, and knowledge being necessary to good government and the happiness of mankind, schools and the means of learning shall forever be encouraged." As Whitehead reminds us, the McGulffey Readers, which were published from 1836 until 1920, openly employed the essentials of Christian belief as what modern educators call a "teaching tool." And so, historically, as Whitehead says,

Instead of taking a position of strict neutrality (the absolute separation of church and state), the United States Supreme Court has taken the approach of "accommodating neutrality." This position holds that the First Amendment was intended to maintain a proper relationship between government and religion. Thus, although there may be a "wall of separationc between church and state, it is not an impregnable wall. As a consequence, not all relationships between government and religion are unconstitutional. In other words, the state can accommodate or aid religion in certain circumstances.

If the rights of reigious people have been the subject of "confusion," those of minors are the subject of very little confusion at all, the courts having latterly made it clear that people below the age of consent are entitled to all the protections the Constitution extends to adults, including First Amendment guarantees.

WHETHER WHITEHEAD is actually pleased by this development--whereby children, who are of an age at which it is more blessed to receive intellectually than to give, are treated as morally and intellectually developed agents--is hard to tell. The fact remains that liberal courts have compiled a body of legal precedent whereby students at both school and college level may express what they wish to express and hear what they wish to hear on any subject, including religion, so long as this entails neither a material threat of disruption nor a collission with the rights of others (Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School District, 1969). As for pedagogical freedom, in the case of James v. Board of Education (1973) the Court held that a teacher cannot in all or even most of his actions be properly regarded as an agent of the state, and that he is thereby free to express in the very act of his "profession" his personal beliefs and opinions.

so, in brief, the situation is this: When it comes to religious activity, liberal courts have delivered to the religious "minority" a weapon with which to fight the even more "liberal" establishment. Whitehead's message is that this weapon should not be disdained.