Grappling with the Good: Talking about Religion and Morality in Public Schools

THE EMERGING WALL OF SEPARATION

calculated silence on the issue. It was not until the 1950s that science education, expanded dramatically in the wake of Sputnik, again engaged with the issue.32 In the two decades following Scopes, America’s tradition of local discretion enabled compromise regarding religious-ethical instruction in the form of “released time.” This system allowed students to attend religious classes in their own tradition for a few hours a week, and it enjoyed wide popularity, particularly in the 1940s. One parent became disenchanted with this religious instruction and, when her ten-year-old son was harassed for declining to participate, she ultimately filed suit. Her 1948 legal challenge in McCollum v. Board of Education resulted in the Supreme Court ruling it unconstitutional to have religious classes taught by religious instructors during school hours. In the majority decision, Justice Hugo Black repeated the Jeffersonian metaphor he had revived in an opinion he wrote just a year earlier: The First Amendment has erected a wall between Church and State which must be kept high and impregnable. Here not only are the State’s tax-supported public school buildings used for the dissemination of religious doctrines. The State also affords sectarian groups an invaluable aid in that it helps to provide pupils for their religious classes through use of the State’s compulsory public school machinery. This is not separation of Church and State. Nationwide reaction to the decision was one of anger and defiance, with many churches and school districts claiming they would carry on their joint work in spite of the Court. While this was one of the first times when the judicial wall of separation leaned against majority sensibilities, it would certainly not be the last.33 THE EMERGING WALL OF SEPARATION This image of “a wall of separation between church and state” has become a classic metaphor and legal concept in American judicial history, but the reality is far more complicated and compromised. As Ronald Thiemann observes with no small irony, “The day Justice Black penned those fateful words, the U.S. Supreme Court was convened with the invocation, ‘God save this honorable court.’ A few hundred yards across the Mall from the Supreme Court building, the two houses of Congress opened their sessions 25 Evading the Ethical with prayers offered from chaplains supported by public funds and paid with currency inscribed with the motto, ‘In God We Trust.’”34 This tension between legal judgments requiring greater separation and the actual religious traditions and practices of Americans existed powerfully in the post-World War II years. Jonathan Zimmerman points to a strong current of generalized religious faith that began to develop in American culture and politics during the late 1940s, including a wave of popular songs, movies, and even children’s toys with religious themes. Connections between religious commitment and patriotic loyalty were also increasingly claimed and emphasized. In 1954, Congress voted to add the phrase “under God” to the Pledge of Allegiance to draw an overt contrast to the atheistic threat of communism; three years later, it passed a joint resolution declaring “In God We Trust” the official motto of the United States. A 1962 nationwide survey indicated that 42 percent of school systems included Bible reading without comment in their curricula. About one-third of public schools conducted daily devotional services, and at least five states authorized the Lord’s Prayer in the classroom.35 Contrast this atmosphere with the landmark Supreme Court rulings of 1962 and 1963, which effectively prohibited school-directed prayer and Bible reading in the nation’s public schools. Engel v. Vitale was prompted by the New York State Board of Regents’ 1958 adoption of a specific prayer for use in New York classrooms: “Almighty God, we acknowledge our dependence upon Thee, and we beg Thy blessings upon us, our parents, our teachers, and our Country.” The father of two Jewish boys, who were harassed for their refusal to participate, brought suit, and the Court responded with a quick and definitive decision. Justice Black wrote, “We think that the constitutional prohibition against laws respecting an establishment of religion must at least mean that in this country it is no part of the business of government to compose official prayers.” The following year, the Court ruled on two consolidated cases concerning Bible reading and school prayer. In Abington v. Schempp, the Court banned all required prayer and Bible reading in public schools.36 Response to the Engel and Schempp decisions was largely one of massive...