Reinterpreting Schempp Is Teaching Spiritual Identity Development in the Public Schools Permissible?

In the fall of 2004, I was teaching history and comparative religion at the Emma Willard School, an independent, all-girls, boarding high school. In October, the head of school appointed me to a committee examining student spirituality in a school-wide effort to promote personal development and academic excellence, the result of which was an extracurricular program called “Inner Journey.” The program provided “shared time and space for interested students to explore their life experiences as they relate to their individual belief development” (Dwyer, “Invitation” slide 5). Inner Journey consisted of ten weekly, small group meetings led by an adult facilitator. The students used journals, activities, and discussions to reflect on their lives and respond to existential questions such as “How did I get here?” “What is important to me as a human being?” and “What exists which is greater than myself?” (Dwyer, “Program” 1). In the final three weeks they developed and shared individual statements of belief.

The underlying rationale for Inner Journey was to explore the critical role of adolescence in identity development drawing on research on the importance of spiritual development for adolescent girls. We also stressed the nondenominational and nonindoctrinational nature of the Inner Journey program, noting that the program would “allow small groups of interested students, of varying backgrounds and any or no religious affiliation, to contemplate and clarify that which make us human and moves us toward wholeness” (Inner Journey Task Force 2). Conspicuously absent from our considerations was any discussion of potential legal issues. Because I taught at an independent school, the law governing religion and public education in the United States did not apply. The committee definitely did not want to favor one religion over another or religion over non-religion, but we were free to focus on pedagogical rather than legal concerns in achieving this goal.

Looking back at the inception of the Inner Journey program at Emma Willard, I remember thinking we could never implement it in a public school. Even though there were strong secular pedagogical justifications for the program, I assumed that it would run afoul of the United States Supreme Court’s 1963 decision in School District of Abington Township v. Schempp, which held that devotional Bible reading in public schools violated the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment. In reaching its decision, the Court drew a distinction between impermissible devotional religious instruction and the permissible academic study of religion. Although Inner Journey involved spiritual identity development rather than religious indoctrination and thus arguably did not constitute devotional religious instruction, it did not entail the academic study of religion. As a result, I assumed that, for public schools, the program would fall on the impermissible side of the Schempp dichotomy. My conclusion reflected the conventional interpretation of Schempp.

The Schempp dichotomy fails to reflect the emergence of spiritual identity development as a distinct pedagogy. Because spiritual identity development does entail the constitutional problems associated with devotional religious instruction, public school educators may actively engage in what I call “worldview formation” without violating the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause. In this essay, I will first offer an overview of approaches to spiritual identity development in education, and then discuss the Schempp decision and its conventional interpretation. I also will propose an alternative interpretation of Schempp that permits public educators to foster spiritual identity development, and discuss the potential obstacles to such efforts.

Spiritual Identity Development and Education

Although spiritual identity development programs comparable to Inner Journey have emerged over the last two decades in a few public as well as private schools in the United States (Kessler, Soul xv), they are rare. In contrast, fostering spiritual identity development through public education is not uncommon in Britain. Religious education, a traditional course in British schools, has evolved over the last half century to include spiritual identity development as well as more traditional forms of devotional instruction (Jackson). In the United States, various scholars have argued for a more active recognition of students‘ religious and spiritual identities in both the formal (Nord, Religion, “Pluralism,” “Spirituality”) and informal curriculum (Noddings). A closer examination of the evolution of religious education in Britain and the arguments for greater attention to religious and spiritual identities in American public schools provides a more concrete idea of what spiritual identity development might look like.

In Rethinking Religious Education and Plurality, Robert Jackson argues for a focus on individual spiritual identity development that encompasses both secular and religious views. He discusses how religious education in England and Wales has evolved over the second half of the twentieth century, especially in response to increasing religious diversity. As he explains, religious education in Britain was synonymous with Christian education until the 1950s. The primary purpose of the curriculum was to promote the Christian faith (1). This approach to religious education was considered civic as well as moral. Christianity served to create a common identity (20).

This comprehensive, Christian-based approach faded after the 1950s when moral and civic education became separate curricular goals and alternative approaches to religious education emerged. In the 1960s, for example, Ninian Smart became an influential advocate of a phenomenological approach that exposed students to multiple faith traditions rather than promote a particular tradition. According to Jackson, this approach had “the aim of understanding rather than evangelism or nurture, but also retaining an existential dimension, concerned with pupils’ development of their own ideas” (6). Others, in the 1970s and 1980s, advocated nonsectarian religious education that focused on the individual student rather than religious traditions, using experiential pedagogies that enabled students to pose and examine their own questions (6). The phenomenological and experiential approaches were not mutually exclusive, and, as Jackson notes, some scholars advocated approaches that combined both (6).

Jackson focuses on an approach to religious education that emphasizes individual identity development. For Jackson, religious education is part of a broader educational process that enables students to respond to pluralism in a manner that acknowledges both the individual and the community. This approach sees religious education “not as defined by a fixed body of knowledge (although the development of knowledge and understanding is a crucial ingredient), but as a series of existential and social debates in which pupils are encouraged to participate, with a personal stake related to their own developing sense of identity” (17–18, emphasis in original). These identities emerge as students engage the religious education curriculum; the identites need not be religious. As Jackson explains, “[r]eligious education is thus a conversational process in which students, whether from ‘secular’ or ‘religious’ backgrounds, continuously interpret and reinterpret their own views in the light of their studies” (18).

The Inner Journey program reflects the essence of Jackson’s approach to religious education. The goal of the program is neither to promote a particular religion nor to expose students to different faith traditions from an academic perspective. Instead, the purpose of Inner Journey is to provide a space for individual students, whether religious or secular, to examine fundamental existential questions and develop their own answers to these questions. Although the program is very structured, with lesson plans for each of the ten weeks, the adults serve as facilitators rather than instructors. To use Jackson’s language, the lessons are not designed to convey a “fixed body of knowledge” to the students, but rather to encourage students to engage in “a series of existential and social debates.”

Various scholars in the United States have expressed support for education that enables students to explore and construct their own spiritual identities¹. Some, such as Warren Nord, argue for the inclusion of religion and spirituality in the formal curriculum (Religion, “Pluralism,” “Spirituality”). According to Nord, schools need to “take religion and the spiritual dimension of reality seriously” (“Spirituality” 187) and “nurture the spiritual dimension of children’s lives” (“Spirituality” 184). Nord’s asserts that schools have become too secularized. As a result, schools fail to acknowledge, much less nurture, and may undermine students’ religious and spiritual identities. Nord is not arguing for a return to the Christian-based moral education that was common in United States public schools until the mid-twentieth century, but rather for a recognition of religious and spiritual ways of understanding the world. Rather than ignore the spiritual component of student’s lives, Nord argues that schools should include religious and spiritual perspectives in the academic dialogue across the curriculum and view religious and spiritual ways of knowing on par with secular ones. Failure to do so, Nord suggests, treats religious students as less than fully equal members of the educational and civic community.

When I began teaching, I was reluctant to create space for students to discuss their own religious and spiritual beliefs in my courses. I later realized that it was useful to allow students to bring their religious perspectives to the classroom. In an applied ethics course, for example, my students examined contested social issues such as abortion, euthanasia, the death penalty, affirmative action, and same-sex marriage. Before addressing specific issues, we studied various philosophical traditions, including virtue ethics, utilitarianism, duty-based ethics, and care ethics. Many of my students, however, also drew on their religious beliefs in discussing these issues. At times, this led to tension in the classroom, especially as more secular students objected to the use of religious arguments. My initial reaction was to encourage my religious students to use more publically accessible (i.e., secular) arguments. After talking to these students, however, I realized how important their religious identities were and how relying solely on secular philosophical arguments was, for them, inauthentic.

The line between secular and religious arguments, moreover, was not always clear in these class discussions. Our textbook included readings from religious philosophers such as Catholic and Buddhist scholars. Were these arguments religious or philosophical? When we discussed capital punishment, for example, I assigned an excerpt from the book Dead Man Walking by Sister Helen Prejean, a Catholic nun. Although the excerpt includes secular arguments against the death penalty, such as the greater costs compared to life imprisonment, Prejean’s opposition to the death penalty is rooted in her Christian identity. As a follower of Jesus Christ, Prejean believes that the death penalty is not just financially imprudent; it is morally repugnant. She does not believe that the death penalty could be consistent with Jesus’ injunction to display compassion towards all, even enemies. Questions raised in these readings provoked my students to draw on their own religious and spiritual identities.

I ultimately decided to allow religious as well as secular arguments in discussions and assignments, but not uncritically. Students could not simply say, “because the Bible tells me so.” Instead, I encouraged students to analyze and deconstruct religious as well as secular arguments to identify foundational premises and evaluate logical validity. Students offering religious arguments needed to explain how those beliefs supported their positions and to address potential criticisms from both within and outside their traditions. If a Catholic student were opposed to abortion, for example, I would ask her to explain why—i.e., to discuss how the teachings of Jesus Christ as represented in the Bible and interpreted by the Catholic Church support her assertion that abortion is immoral—and to address potential criticisms of her analysis from both other Christians and non-Christians.

Opportunities to engage in spiritual identity development also exist in the informal curriculum—the day-to-day interactions between teachers and students. In her 1993 book Educating for Intelligent Belief or Unbelief, for example, Nel Noddings argues that “[e]xistential questions should form the organizing backbone of the curriculum” (8). Questions about the meaning of life, the origin of the universe, the nature or nonexistence of the divine, and death, immortality, and salvation fascinate adolescents. According to Noddings, existential and religious questions such as these can arise across the curriculum and easily engage students more deeply than the traditional curricular content. As Noddings asks, “How does the factor theorem stack up against the possible existence of God?” (6). Noddings believes that creating space to discuss existential and religious questions in the classroom is pedagogically desirable, morally necessary, and promotes critical thinking, self-knowledge, and a better understanding of others and the world, including the nature and role of religion and religious beliefs. Ignoring existential and religious questions in the classroom, in contrast, teaches students that such questions are unimportant and gives them an incomplete understanding of themselves, others, and the world. The result, according to Noddings, is that students “learn to compartmentalize their curiosity and, worse, their longings” (11), leaving intellectual and emotional needs unmet. Noddings envisions these questions as integral to everyday and often spontaneous interactions between educators and students. Educators should actively look for opportunities to raise existential and religious questions and encourage students to ask them as well. Noddings stresses, however, that educators should maintain “pedagogical neutrality” (133) by acting as facilitators of the discussions rather than instructors of content.

One of my most memorable exchanges with a student was in my ninth-grade ancient and medieval history class. During a discussion of the Catholic Church the student suddenly asked me why I kept referring to Catholics as “Christians.” I asked the student to elaborate. It soon became clear that the student, a fundamentalist Christian, believed the Catholic Church had strayed so far from the teachings of Jesus that Catholics were not properly considered Christians. I interrupted the lesson to discuss the concept of religious identity and why Catholics consider themselves Christians even if others did not. I also encouraged the student to distinguish the historical question of whether Catholics were Christians (a religious tradition that traces its origins to the teachings of Jesus) from the theological one (a religious tradition that interprets the teachings of Jesus “correctly”). I concluded by explaining that in referring to Catholics as Christians in a history class, I was making a historical rather than a theological statement. Thus, even though I did not satisfy Nodding’s concept of “pedagogical neutrality” with respect to the historical question of whether Catholics were Christians, I tried to do so with respect to the theological question. The student maintained her theological view that Catholics were not Christians, but understood the historical argument and stated that she now could see why “Catholics think they are Christians.”

Despite the work of scholars such as Nord and Noddings, spiritual identity development has not become as popular in America as it is in England and Wales. Unlike Britain, which has no history of legal disestablishment, the First Amendment to the United States Constitution has shaped the evolution of religion and education in a distinctly different manner—one that undermines efforts to promote spiritual identity development. This difference is embodied most vividly in the United States Supreme Court’s decisions from the early 1960s, especially School District of Abington Township v. Schempp.

The Schempp Decision

In the 1960s, the United States Supreme Court fundamentally altered the relationship between religion and public schools in the United States. Although often the subject of dispute, religion, especially in the form of moral education, was an essential component of public education in the United States from the inception of the common schools (Fraser 25; Green 11). Early promoters of public education, such as Horace Mann, saw religion as critical to both moral and civic education (Fraser 25–26; Green 21). Disputes often focused on the specific form of religious instruction rather than the general concept that schools should promote religious principles. For Mann and many others, the solution to these disputes was to adopt a nonsectarian approach. In practice, however, nonsectarian meant mainstream Protestant Christianity. Not surprisingly, those outside this mainstream often rejected this solution (Fraser 55; Green 33).

Despite its critics and opponents, nonsectarianism remained a common approach to religion and public schools well into the twentieth century (Frazier 146; Green 241). In the early 1960s, however, the Supreme Court emphatically rejected this approach as inconsistent with the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment. First, in 1962, the Supreme Court held that school-sponsored prayer was unconstitutional in Engel v. Vitale. At issue was the daily recitation of a purportedly nonsectarian prayer: “Almighty God, we acknowledge our dependence upon Thee, and we beg Thy blessing upon us, our parents, our teachers and our Country” (422). Writing for the majority, Justice Black invoked Thomas Jefferson’s famous metaphor of a “wall of separation between Church and State” and concluded “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 for any group of the American people to recite as a part of a religious program carried on by government” (425). Although many commentators condemned the decision and some politicians even attempted to overturn it through constitutional amendment, others, including religious as well as secular commentators, supported the decision, emphasizing that existing practices were far from nonsectarian (Green 254–255).

In 1963, the Supreme Court held devotional Bible reading unconstitutional in School District of Abington Township v. Schempp, which involved two lawsuits. The first concerned a Pennsylvania law that required the reading of at least ten verses from the Bible without comment at the start of each school day. In practice, the Bible readings were followed by recitation of the Lord’s Prayer as well. The original plaintiffs in this case were Edward and Sidney Schempp and their three children, all Unitarians (205–210). The second lawsuit involved a Baltimore ordinance that required the reading of a Bible chapter and/or the Lord’s Prayer at the beginning of school. The plaintiffs in this case were the atheist activist Madalyn Murray and her son William J. Murray III, also an atheist (210–212).

In summarizing the underlying litigation between the Schempps and the School District of Abington Township, the Supreme Court noted that parties disputed whether the Bible was sectarian (209–211). Both sides offered expert testimony in the trial court. The Schempp family’s expert testified that the Christian Bible differed from the Jewish Bible, and that portions of the Christian New Testament were inconsistent with and offensive to Jewish belief. The expert for the school district insisted that the Bible was nonsectarian, but admitted that he meant nonsectarian with respect to different Christian denominations. The trial court rejected the assertion that the Bible was nonsectarian and instead concluded that the statute preferred Christianity by requiring readings from the “Holy Bible,” a Christian text (211).

The Supreme Court ultimately agreed with the trial court that devotional Bible reading was inherently sectarian and thus violated the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment. In reaching this conclusion, Justice Clark, writing for the majority, emphasized the principle of government neutrality. In particular, Justice Clark explained that this principle not only required the government to treat all religions equally, but also to treat religion and non-religion equally. Clark quoted with approval an excerpt from Justice Black’s opinion in the 1961 case of Torasco v. Watkins:

We repeat and again reaffirm that neither a State nor the Federal Government can constitutionally force a person ‘to profess a belief or disbelief in any religion.’ Neither can constitutionally pass laws or impose requirements which aid all religion as against non-believers, and neither can aid those religions based on a belief in the existence of God as against those religions founded on different beliefs.

(220)

Justice Clark cited and quoted the recent decision in Engel as well, reaffirming that a violation of the Establishment Clause occurs whenever the government violates the principle of neutrality, regardless of whether any coercion actually occurs (221).

In prohibiting devotional Bible reading, the Supreme Court struck down a practice that had been common in American public schools for over a century (Green 254). Although the practice had been the subject of many disputes before the 1960s, the disagreements usually centered on specific practices rather than the general concept. In the nineteenth century, for example, strenuous Catholic objection to the transparently Protestant practice of reading without comment from the King James Version of the Bible contributed directly to the formation of the Catholic parochial school system (Fraser 58).

In response to the decisions in Engel and Schempp, many critics alleged that the Supreme Court had removed God from the public schools (Fraser 148). This narrative has become a powerful trope in American culture and contributed to the common belief that public school educators may not address religion in any manner (Grelle 25). The Supreme Court, however, explicitly indicated that it had no such intention. In responding to a claim by the sole dissenter in Schempp, Justice Stewart, that barring devotional Bible reading effectively would establish a “religion of secularism” (School Dist. 313), Justice Clark famously noted:

Nothing we have said here indicates that such study of the Bible or of religion, when presented objectively as part of a secular program of education, may not be effected consistently with the First Amendment. But the exercises here do not fall into those categories. They are religious exercises, required by the States in violation of the command of the First Amendment that the Government maintain strict neutrality, neither aiding nor opposing religion.

(School Dist. 225)

Once again, Justice Clark emphasized that government neutrality was the touchstone of the constitutional analysis.

The Conventional Interpretation of Schempp

Although dictum and thus technically not a binding part of the decision in Schempp, Justice Clark’s comments have been interpreted as drawing a sharp dichotomy between devotional religious instruction, which is not permissible, and the academic study of religion, which is. Both commentators writing in the immediate wake of the Schempp decision (Blanchard 101; Boles 146–147; Griffiths 68; La Noue 29) and more recent ones (Nord, Religion 117; Fraser 149; Grelle 29; Moore, Overcoming 53–54) have emphasized this distinction. In their 1998 book, Taking Religion Seriously Across the Curriculum, Warren Nord and Charles Haynes describe the distinction between devotional instruction and academic study as the basis of a “New Consensus” on religion and education in the United States:

First, as the Supreme Court has made clear, the study of religion in public schools is constitutional. Second, the study of religion is tremendously important if students are to be educated about our history and culture. Third, public schools must teach about religion objectively or neutrally; their purpose must be to educate students about a variety of religious traditions, not to indoctrinate them into any particular tradition.

(9)

Nord and Haynes acknowledge that the New Consensus is neither universal nor well defined, but it does reflect a common view among scholars in the field of religion and education.

With Thomas Oliver, Haynes expanded on the concept of the New Consensus in a 2001 pamphlet entitled Finding Common Ground: A Guide to Religious Liberty published by the First Amendment Center. In a chapter entitled “A Teacher’s Guide to Religion in the Public Schools,” the pamphlet reiterated the three elements of the New Consensus and provided further guidance for educators, including specific guidelines for teaching about religion endorsed by seventeen different educational and religious organizations representing school boards, administrators, teachers, scholars of religion, and multiple religious traditions:²

• • The school’s approach to religion is academic, not devotional.

• • The school strives for student awareness of religions, but does not press for student acceptance of any religion.

• • The school sponsors study about religion, not the practice of religion.

• • The school may expose students to a diversity of religious views, but may not impose any particular view.

• • The school educates about all religions; it does not promote or denigrate religion.

• • The school informs students about various beliefs; it does not seek to conform students to any particular belief. (75–76, emphasis in original)

The italicized words in each guideline follow the dichotomy drawn between devotional instruction and academic study by the Supreme Court in Schempp. These guidelines reappeared in a revised edition in 2007 as well as guidelines issued by the American Academy of Religion in 2010 (7–8).

Although the New Consensus reflects the approach of many scholars concerning the legally permissible way to teach about religion in American public schools, the dichotomy between devotional instruction and academic study upon which it is based does not easily accommodate attention to spiritual identity development. Spiritual identity development may involve the academic study of religion—as in Jackson’s approach—but such academic study is a means for students to explore and develop their spiritual identities. By engaging in dialogue with the subjects of their studies and one another, students construct and articulate their own beliefs.

Bruce Grelle correctly notes that the potential relationship between religion and education involves a trichotomy rather than a dichotomy. He identifies three distinct conceptions, which he labels “religious instruction,” religious education,” and “religious studies” (25–26). The first involves indoctrination with the goal of promoting a particular sectarian viewpoint, which reflects the traditional approach to religion and education in both Britain and the United States. The second embodies “religious nurture and edification,” which Grelle notes “are not the same thing as indoctrination or the inculcation of particular religious beliefs” (29). This conception reflects spiritual identity development in England and Wales. The third represents the non-devotional study of religion, which reflects the New Consensus in America.

The problem is how to map these three different conceptions of religion and education onto the Schempp dichotomy. The first and third conceptions, religious instruction and religious studies, dovetail nicely with the distinction between devotional instruction and academic study, but the second conception, religious education, does not. American scholars have struggled with how to locate this conception within the Schempp dichotomy between devotional religious instruction and the academic study of religion. Scholars such as Nord and Nodding both argue that public schools in the United States legally may attend to the spiritual aspect of student identities, effectively aligning religious education with religious studies—to use Grelle’s taxonomy (Nord, “Pluralism” 16–17; Noddings xv). Most American scholars, however, seem to associate religious education more closely with religious instruction and thus consider it impermissible in public schools.

Grelle, for example, asserts that the Constitution effectively bars religious education as well as religious instruction. Invoking the principle of government neutrality, featured so prominently in the Schempp decision, Grelle argues that “teaching about religion in American public schools cannot be geared toward students’ religious edification and nurture—even a non-traditional and pluralistic form of religious nurture—because the First Amendment requires public schools to be neutral toward religion” (30). In Grelle’s view religious education—and other forms of spiritual identity development such those Nord and Noddings envision—inherently favors religion over non-religion and thus violates the constitutional principle of government neutrality.

Although Grelle sees the Schempp decision as closing the door to religious education, he does not assert that the pedagogical goals of religious studies are limited to mere religious literacy. Instead, Grelle believes that religious studies can form an essential component of civic education:

By focusing on living religious communities—beliefs, customs, ceremonies, holidays, styles of dress and artistic expression, patterns of family life, etc.—it is possible to make the subject matter come alive for students, not so much in the context of developing their own spiritual identities but in the context of developing their identities as citizens of a pluralistic democracy.

(34)

Thus, even though religious studies may have a developmental as well as academic component for Grelle, the ultimate goal of religious education— spiritual identity development—remains beyond the legally permissible pedagogical scope of American public education.

Although it does not encompass spiritual identity development, Grelle’s employment of a civic education lens offers an opportunity to engage students on a moral development plane rather than merely an intellectual one. It opens the door to discussion of what it means to be a citizen of a religiously diverse society. The approach is appealing to educators who are concerned about civic education, understood broadly as preparing students to live in a pluralistic democracy. The approach may not fully address the developmental needs of students.

Although an increasing percentage of Americans, especially younger ones, identify as religious nones (Pew Forum 5; Putnam and Campbell 101), over eighty percent of adolescents still identify as religious (Smith and Denton 31). Even in relatively secular environments, such as the school where I taught, religion can play an important role for many. The day may not have started with a school-sponsored prayer, but that certainly did not mean that none of the students prayed during school—and not just before tests. Only a small percentage of those who identify as nones, moreover, identify as atheists or agnostics (Putnam and Campbell 104). The rise of the nones arguably reflects greater dissatisfaction with organized religious institutions than a lack of religious or spiritual belief.

Additionally, many people find it difficult to draw a distinction between their religious and civic identities. (Wolterstorff 105)). This was certainly true of my history student who questioned whether Catholics were Christian. She later wrote a researched paper analyzing how medieval Catholic Church policies were inconsistent with her interpretation of Christian scripture. To require such people to compartmentalize their religious identities from their civic ones effectively marginalizes them. Ironically, the very conception of religion as a private identity distinct from a public identity is itself the historical product of the Protestant theological emphasis on individual conscience (Spinner-Halev 32–33; Nussbaum 42–43). Even if many modern scholars use secular reasoning too support this distinction (Rawls, Political 217–218, “Idea” 783–784; Audi 25), it does reflect the lived experience of many for whom religious beliefs are an integral aspect of their identity (Thiemann 86–87; Wolterstorff 105; Stout 87). Asking such students to discuss their civic identity in isolation from their religious identity asks them to ignore an essential part of themselves.

Most important, regardless of whether students self-identify as religious, spiritual, or secular, faith is a critical aspect of identity development, especially in adolescence (Nakkula and Toshalis 201–229). Faith in this context must be understood broadly. It is not limited to traditional forms of organized religion or even a belief in the divine or supernatural. In their discussion of adolescent development, Michael Nakkula and Eric Toshalis define “faith” as describing “the dynamic and symbolic frame of orientation or the ultimate concern to which a person is committed and from which she derives purpose in life” (211, emphasis omitted). Defined in this manner, even nonreligious students struggle with questions of faith. I saw this in my applied ethics class as both religious and nonreligious students considered different ethical frameworks and strove to develop their own moral perspectives. We focused on specific issues, but students often addressed these issues in the context of broader questions. In discussing euthanasia, for example, students weighed quality against length of life, which inevitably led to questions about the meaning and purpose of life itself.

Questions of faith, moreover, are crucial to moral development (Nakkula and Toshalis 220). Examining existential and religious questions allows students to respond to the challenges of moral relativism. As adolescents mature, they come to realize that their moral values are not universal and that people are able to construct their own meaning in the world. This realization can lead to a sense of moral relativism—that all views are equally valid. As Nakkula and Toshalis explain, however, adolescents can overcome this state through reflective examination of their beliefs and experiences. Providing a forum for this examination is essential. Once again, I saw this in my applied ethics class. As my students grappled with various social issues, they brought different perspectives, both religious and nonreligious, to the discussion. Rather than simply agree to disagree, they analyzed and evaluated ethical arguments. In discussing abortion, for example, my students considered the moral implications of different understandings of the concept of personhood. Many students remarked that they understood both their own and others’ perspectives better after these discussions.

For these reasons, limiting the moral component of religious studies to issues of civic identity does not provide the space needed to address the full developmental needs of students. For advocates of educating the whole child, addressing the spiritual as well as the social, emotional, moral, and civic development of students is an essential aspect of education (Noddings 1–2; Kessler, “Nourishing” 101–102; Daly 225). As Theodore Sizer and Nancy Faust Sizer argue in The Students Are Watching, educators cannot avoid teaching students about more than the content of their academic disciplines. Everything from the formal “routines and rituals of the school” to the “humblest” of individual actions serve to instruct students (xviii). The question accordingly is not whether educators should teach more than academics—they inherently do—but whether educators should do so intentionally or not. For educators concerned about the needs of the whole child, creating space for spiritual identity development is critical. Creating such space in American public education, however, requires a different reading of Schempp.

An Alternative Interpretation of Schempp

Although the Supreme Court used the dichotomy of devotional instruction and academic study to explain the limits of its decision, the language must be read in the context of the basic question before the Court—is devotional instruction in public schools constitutional? The issue of enabling students in public schools to consider and develop their individual spiritual beliefs, what Grelle calls religious education, was never before the Court. In ruling against devotional instruction, the Court did not address, much less rule against, education for spiritual identity development. Viewed in this context, the Court’s contrast between devotional instruction and the academic study of religion does not have to reflect an exclusive dichotomy. The contrast merely identified one permissible role for religion in education.

The last phrase of the pivotal quote from the Schempp decision, “that the Government maintain strict neutrality, neither aiding nor opposing religion” (School Dist. 225), supports this more nuanced reading. As the Court concluded, the fundamental constitutional principle at issue is government neutrality—the state can neither aid nor oppose religion. This principle has been interpreted as requiring that the state be neutral both among different religions and between religion and non-religion (Nussbaum 234).

Using the principle of neutrality as the touchstone for interpreting the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment, Martha Nussbaum presents a convincing argument that the essential question is one of equal dignity and respect:

But above all, the tradition sees in establishment a threat to equality. By throwing its support behind an orthodoxy, government makes a statement: this is the official doctrine of our nation. Such a statement, as Madison saw, suggests that nonadherents are not fully equal members of the political community, and they don’t enter the public square “on equal conditions.”

(225)

As Nussbaum acknowledges, equality can be an elusive concept. In what sense are citizens equal? To assert that all citizens are equal is not to contend that all are or must be equal in condition. For Nussbaum, political equality reflects the recognition of equal human dignity and entitlement to equal respect. In practice, this means that the government “may not make citizenship hierarchical” (227).

Nussbaum’s emphasis on equal dignity and respect in interpreting the Establishment Clause allows us to read Schempp in a slightly different light. The fundamental violation of the Establishment Clause was not the mere presence of religion in public schools—a breach in the wall of separation between church and state—but rather a state-sponsored practice, devotional Bible reading, that failed to treat all students with equal dignity and respect. As the Supreme Court stressed, the practice was inherently devotional in nature and thus promoted religion over non-religion. Furthermore, the practice promoted one religious tradition over other. The practice of devotional Bible reading thus failed to treat students who were not members of the dominant religious tradition with equal dignity and respect. As a result, the practice relegated them to second-class citizenship.

This reading of Schempp coheres with the Supreme Court’s conclusion that a violation of the Establishment Clause occurs without regard to coercion. Under Nussbaum’s analysis, the focus is on the state’s action, not the individual’s reaction. An offense against the Establishment Clause does not occur when the state violates an individual’s conscience or autonomy by forcing the individual to believe or act in a certain way. Instead, an offense occurs instantly when the state fails to treat an individual with equal dignity and respect regardless of how the individual responds. Excusing students from participating in mandatory devotional activities does not remedy the violation, because students who chose not to participate are still not treated with equal dignity and respect. Instead, they become second-class citizens in violation of the Establishment Clause’s demands of equality.

Unlike religious indoctrination, religious education—broadly understood as creating a space for students to explore and develop their religious or secular spiritual identities—does not inherently fail to treat students with equal dignity and respect. Religious education does not promote a particular religion over non-religion or other religions. Instead, students are free to construct their own views and beliefs. Understood in this manner, religious education does not create a hierarchical citizenship.

The primary problem with religious education is not the underlying concept of creating a space for students to examine and explore their spiritual identities, including secular as well as religious ones. Rather, the issue is the name itself, because both the words “religious” and “education” are problematic. The first implies that the underlying purpose is to promote religious belief over secularism, and the second implies that the pedagogical process is didactic rather than constructive. Although students might be free in theory to develop non-religious identities, “religious education” suggests that in practice educators will teach students to adopt religious ones. Religious education of this nature would violate the constitutional principle of government neutrality by failing to treat all students with equal dignity and respect.

I believe that a better name for religious education would be “world-view formation.” Although the term “worldview” is ambiguous, it is not inherently religious. Instead, “worldview” can encompass both religious and non-religious means of understanding the world. Allison Gray, for example, defines “worldview” broadly as “a collection of attitudes, values, stories and expectations about the world around us, which inform our every thought and action” (58). The definition of “worldview” is not as critical, however, as the term‘s ability to satisfy the need for governmental neutrality. Unlike “education,” the term “formation” indicates that the pedagogical process is constructive rather than didactic. It does, however, imply that students should develop some form of worldview which is in line with their developmental needs. Worldview formation fosters an environment in which educators treat all students, religious or secular, with equal dignity and respect as they explore and develop their own beliefs. Because worldview formation does not create hierarchical citizenship, it satisfies the concerns underlying the Supreme Court’s decision in Schempp. Worldview formation is thus more akin to religious studies than religious instruction within the framework of the Schempp dichotomy.

Obstacles to Worldview Formation

Implementing worldview formation in American public schools faces legal, political, and pragmatic challenges. Even if courts were to interpret Schempp in the manner I have discussed, other legal hurdles would remain. Schempp is not the last word from the Supreme Court on the Establishment Clause, and, as Nussbaum bluntly notes, “[r]ecent Establishment Clause cases look like a mess” (227). Over the last three decades, the Supreme Court has been divided over the proper interpretation of the Establishment Clause, resulting in a patchwork of decisions and opinions advocating different legal standards. This “mess” complicates the prospects for worldview formation. Nevertheless, the Supreme Court did provide some guidance in the 1971 case of Lemon v. Kurtzman, in which it articulated a three-pronged test for determining whether a law is constitutional under the Establishment Clause. Commonly known as the “Lemon test,” a law must satisfy all three prongs to be constitutional: “First, the statute must have a secular legislative purpose; second, its principal or primary effect must be one that neither advances nor inhibits religion; . . . finally, the statute must not foster ‘an excessive government entanglement with religion’” (612–613). Although the Supreme Court has not always applied Lemon consistently and various individual justices have proposed alternatives, the Court has never formally overruled Lemon. Lacking clear guidance on an alternative, lower courts routinely continue to employ the Lemon test.

Although the first two prongs of the Lemon test arguably do not preclude worldview formation because worldview formation has a legitimate secular purpose, to facilitate adolescent identity development, and does not inherently aid or oppose religion. The third prong of the Lemon test, entanglement, is the one that threatens worldview formation. In Lemon, the Supreme Court examined state programs that provided funds to private schools, including sectarian ones, for secular instruction. The Court held that the monitoring needed to prevent the misuse of funds by sectarian schools constituted an excessive entanglement (619–622). Based on Lemon, the monitoring needed to insure that worldview formation does not involve religious indoctrination arguably constitutes an excessive entanglement.

The first response to this challenge is to sidestep Lemon and argue that a different test ought to govern Establishment Clause claims. Nussbaum takes this route, advocating for adoption of Justice O’Connor’s “endorsement test” (247),under which a law violates the Establishment Clause if it endorses “religion or a particular religious practice” (qtd. in Nussbaum 247). Worldview formation as I propose it certainly would pass this test. As a practical matter, however, this option is not available because a majority of the Supreme Court has yet to adopt it. The second response is to argue that worldview formation does not run afoul of the entanglement prong. Although implementation of worldview formation would require some form of monitoring to insure that educators do not cross the line into the realm of religious instruction, comparable monitoring already occurs in public education. As Schempp made clear, the academic study of religion is constitutionally permissible. Religious studies courses also require monitoring to insure that educators do not engage in inappropriate religious instruction. Courts generally do not consider such monitoring an excessive entanglement. Various federal courts, for example, have found particular public school Bible courses unconstitutional under the Lemon test, but generally on the grounds that courses actually entail religious instruction. Some federal courts, moreover, have indicated that appropriate monitoring is essential to avoid a constitutional violation (Russo 169–170). Because the monitoring needed for worldview formation would be the same as the monitoring needed for religious studies, worldview formation arguably does not involve excessive government entanglement with religion.

Assuming worldview formation were to overcome this legal hurdle, it still could face political opposition from both religious and secular critics. Worldview formation is child centered and empowers students to develop their own beliefs. Parents, especially religious fundamentalists, might object to the idea of granting children the autonomy to explore and develop their own worldviews (Greenawalt 85; Kunzman 57; Moore, “Study” 56). Fundamentalist Christian parents, for example, have objected to materials that expose their children to other religious perspectives in schools (Macedo 158). Secular parents might also resist worldview formation. Organizations such as the Freedom From Religion Foundation (ffrf) advocate a strict wall of separation between church and state and ardently oppose anything that resembles devotional activities in schools (“About ffrf”). Annie Laurie Gaylor, a co-president and co-founder of the ffrf, for example, has argued that religious belief is irrational and discussion of it in public schools is dangerous and divisive (paras. 1–3). Iconoclastic critics of religion such as Richard Dawkins, moreover, have argued that religious instruction is a form of child abuse (para. 5).

Resistance to spiritual identity development might vary from community to community. Students want to discuss existential questions and in my experience with the Inner Journey program at my former school, many parents are willing to let them do so in a pedagogically neutral atmosphere. The success of worldview formation would depend on the educators developing effective pedagogy in areas including religious literacy, as well as moral and spiritual development (Grelle 35; Chancey 7; Moore, Overcoming, 92–94). Furthermore, as with religious studies courses, educators might engage in religious instruction and promote their own viewpoints (Safransky 180; Chancey 21). Educators would need to understand the distinctions among religious instruction, worldview formation, and religious studies and be able to avoid religious instruction. These obstacles are surmountable. Educators currently handle a variety of sensitive topics relating to identity development, including race, gender, and sexuality. The results are not always perfect, but we do not let imperfection preclude any effort. Spiritual identity should be no different.

Conclusion

As a practical matter, I do not envision many public schools in the United States adopting programs or classes comparable to Inner Journey, especially without a reinterpretation of Schempp. American public school educators, however, do engage in other forms of spiritual identity development through both the formal and informal curricula. Educators able and willing to venture into an arguably legal gray area have successfully promoted worldview formation.

My purpose here is to explore the Schempp dichotomy between devotional instruction and academic study that many scholars perceive as precluding educators in the United States from attending to spiritual identity development. Although the conventional interpretation of Schempp presents a barrier for worldview formation, this barrier is surmountable. By focusing, as Nussbaum suggests, on equal dignity and respect, scholars can reinterpret Schempp in a manner that does not preclude worldview formation in public schools. Given the importance of spiritual identity to adolescent development, we have a responsibility to our students to revisit Schempp and find a constitutionally appropriate way to serve the needs of the whole child.