Diversity initiatives in higher education: Secular aspects and international implications of Christian privilege

Multicultural Education, Fall 2003 by Clark, Christine, Brimhall-Vargas, Mark

Introduction

This is the third and final article in a three-part series focusing on the topic of Christian privilege. In the first article, the concept of Christian privilege was introduced and explored in relationship to educational and workplace climate considerations, legal concerns, and factors pertaining to education and training (Clark, Brimhall-Vargas, Sclosser, & Alimo, 2002). The second article, a case study, examined the process in which a staff unit in a public higher education setting engaged in the effort to build religious, spiritual, faith-based, and secular workplace community (Clark, 2003).

This third article in the series examines the secular dimensions and international concerns relating to Christian privilege in public education and workplace settings. This examination will focus in three areas: (1) the separation of religion and state; (2) accommodating versus designating religious, spiritual, and faith-based public space; and (3) the United States as an unacknowledged and uncontested Christian state.

The Separation of Religion and State

The laws governing the separation of religion and state in the United States require that public displays of a religious nature -practices and/or symbols -be limited by the parameters of time, place, and manner (Bayly, 2000; Fineman, 2002; Schlosser, 2003; Schlosser & Sedlacek, in press, 2001). This should mean, for example, that a Christmas carol concert at a public high school would be held at a specific time and place to afford individuals who want to attend it the opportunity to do so, and those who do not wish to attend the ability to avoid it, to not stumble upon it by accident in an open public space (Bayly, 2000; Fineman, 2002; Schlosser, 2003; Schlosser & Sedlacek, in press, 2001).

Increasingly, however, not stumbling upon a "holiday" party -a Christmas party by another name -in a public educational and/or workplace setting, in which traditional Christmas decorations, food, music, and gift exchanges characterize the festivities, is harder and harder to do. While such a celebration might seem to violate the separation of religion and state, the laws regulating this separateness have been eroded in relationship to the rising commercialization of Christmas and, to a lesser extent, Easter (Bayly, 2000; Fineman 2002).

While orthodox Christians express extreme disdain with commercial representations of Christianity-arguing that such are in fact misrepresentations of the faith and, thus, not Christian-like at all -many non-Christians experience Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny to infringe on secular space in equal measure as iterations of the words "one nation under God" in the pledge of allegiance or "in God we trust" on currency -representations considered more religious and, thus, more authentic by even the most fundamentalist of Christians (Bayly, 2000; Fineman, 2002; Schlosser, 2003; Schlosser & Sedlacek, in press, 2001).

Ironically, there is a religiously, spiritually, and faith-based inclusive by-product embedded within the secularization of Christianity; that is, that aspects of non-Christian religions, spiritualities, and faiths are likewise secularized and, therefore, on occasion, also grace secular spaces (Bayly, 2000; Fineman, 2002; Schlosser, 2003; Schlosser & Sedlacek, in press, 2001). The most common example of this is the Buddhist/Taoist Yin Yang symbol, often used as a logo for various Asian Studies programs at public higher education institutions.

The extension of secularization to religious, spiritual, and faith-based belief systems other than Christian does begin to approximate something more multicultural (Adams, Bell, & Griffin, 1997; Banks, 1997; Banks & Banks, 1997; Nieto, 2000; Slattery, 1995; Sleeter, 1996). But, in so approximating, this secularization also further violates the separation of religion and state, most marginalizing individuals who identify as agnostic or atheist (HBO, 2002; Schlosser, 2003; Schlosser & Sedlacek, in press, 2001).

Adding insult to injury, the extension of secularization beyond Christianity still privileges Christianity over other religions, spiritualities, and faiths because its secularization penetrates the mainstream furthest and provokes the least controversy when it does. Said another way, Christianity is most readily accepted as more or less inevitable, status quo, standard, or even "normal" when it becomes visible. And this is only the case if it does, in fact, become visible because part of "normalcy" is transparency; this is exactly why so much of the commercial proliferation of Christianity into the secular realm goes unchecked - because it is undetected (Clark & O'Donnell, 1999; McIntosh, 1988; McLaren, 1999).

Practices and symbols of relatively well-known, though not always well-received, religions -like Judaism and Islam -while they permeate through public boundaries of secularity, when they do, they are not only noticed, but in so being are checked by both individual and institutional prejudice and discrimination (Schlosser, 2003, Schlosser & Sedlacek, in press, 2001). The on-going intermittent vandalism of Jewish synagogues is among the most readily apparent and, thus, most powerful example of this.