Religion in School Controversy

The debate of whether or not religion should be taught in school is one that is seeped in controversy. As Alexis de Tocqueville once quipped, “America’s political problems eventually become its legal ones, so do America’s moral questions.” Unfortunately, the issue of religion in school trickles down to children and the schools that they attend. With that in mind, the questions that beg to be asked are” should schools teach morality, if so, whose morality? Should they be forced to recite the pledge of allegiance? Should creationism be incorporated into scientific textbooks?
Our country’s moral dilemmas are displayed daily on television and print. The tragic deaths of the Columbine high school students and the terrorist attacks of September 11th took on renewed religious urgency. To some, these events provided evidence that there is in fact a need to reinstate public school devotionals that sends a message of approval for prayer. Millions of Americans turned to God for comfort and salvation to obtain deeper meaning of those events. Government-led prayer led to criticism, including those in public schools which were equated with a lack of sympathy towards victims and survivors. Such patriotic fervor needs closer examination especially when preachers such as Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson suggest that the sins of insufficiently religious persons have led an exasperated deity to withdraw his protection, thus exposing America to terrorist attack.
Religion and national identity tend to go hand in hand in America especially in the wake of the 9/11 aftermath. Public schools also became a point of controversy involving the post-9/11 use of the term “God Bless America.” These three ubiquitous words filled churches, libraries and billboards. Many people objected to using those three words because of the many religions found in America and because of the inevitable danger that lurks when government and religion unite. The Columbine tragedy and the terrorist acts of 9/11 were not due to a tear in our country’s moral fiber but because of religious extremism.
Legislative measures have been implemented to reaffirm a secular vision of our society. The U.S. House of Representatives joined the fray by passing a nonbinding resolution: “That it is the sense of the Congress that public schools may display the words ‘God Bless America’ as an expression of support for the nation” (107th Congress, 1st Session, H. Con. Res. 248[2001]). As Delfattore (2004) stated, “Congress defended its resolution by stating that ‘God Bless America’ is not a religious sentiment but an affirmation of patriotism but failed to make a distinction between students’ rights to say ‘God Bless America’ and the schools’ right to post it” (p.307).
The fact that school-prayer cases appear on court calendars throughout the country lead to further questions: Have we as a nation progressed in resolving disagreements over religion in public schools? The answer is a tricky ‘yes and no.’
The difficulty in answering what is meant by the American religious heritage is one that polarizes the debate over school prayer: those who want their children to join in a common prayer and those who favor equal access or no religion in schools. Many favor majority prayer to assimilate or “Americanize” incomers. While others oppose justifying a government/state sponsored notion to promote any specific religious tradition. Teaching our students about the founding fathers’ religion and the role they played in this nation, is part of the disagreement over a common American religious tradition. Conservatives feel that our founding fathers’ traditions should not be altered the outcome, meanwhile, is that the beliefs of immigrants become marginalized. The equal-access approach has united parties from both camps including those who favor government sponsored prayer and those who oppose all prayer in schools.
It is difficult to escape the debate over beliefs that so many people hold while trying to come to a definitive resolution. As Berason (2006) states, “religious guarantees operate at two levels: at the institutional or structural level in the case of non-establishment; and at the individual and libertarian level in the case of free exercise. They are not like ships passing in the night, but rather like ships following the same general course but that occasionally meet requiring one to give right-of-way to the other” (p.277). Educators must be dynamic in their approach towards religion and “inform themselves of the religious groups in their community and in their school” (Gollnick and Chinn, p.281). Religious belief is in constant flux, it ebbs and flows from conservative to liberal depending on socio-political climate of the day. Religion and schools are not always mutually exclusive but respect and acceptance must be promoted by educators. Promoting acceptance can create a balance between the realm of politics and theology.

Works Cited

Bezanson, R. (2006). How Free Can Religion Be? University OF Illinois Press.

Delfattore, J. (2004). The Fourth R: Conflicts Over Religion in America’s Public Schools. Yale University Press.

Dierenfield, B. (2007). The Battle Over School Prayer. University of Kansas.

Gollnick, D., and Chinn, P., (2008). Multicultural Education in a Pluralistic Society. Eighth Edition, Upper Saddle River: Pearson Education.