Christian Education Awareness Network (CEANet)

Presents a Book:

Tyranny Through Public Education

The Case Against Government 
Control of Education

by Willam F. Cox, Jr.

ISBN 1-594675-43-0

Chapter 10

Education Is A Religious Activity (Part 1 of 2)

As is the custom in this book, this chapter opens with several quotations to set the stage for what follows.  In this group of four quotations, the tone of the chapter is set by way of a contradiction.  The contradiction inherent in these quotes is the multiple and even opposing viewpoints regarding the nature of religion.

On first glance, the first (Perry, 1978, p. 312) and second quotes are in agreement that religion is defined in regard to a duty before God the Creator.  In fact, both of these quotes put the emphasis on religion as a duty-bound activity unto God rather than as primarily the codification of a set of beliefs.  It seems unreasonable, however, to expect that duties are only arbitrarily derived and that they do not emanate from some underlying set of beliefs (cf., I Timothy 5:4).  From this it follows that religion cannot be defined merely by way of proper behaviors or duties; it has to have an underlying prepositional nature also.

The matter is made even more contradictory by the remaining two quotes.  Namely, James Madison, in his "Memorial and Remonstrance" (Dreisbach, 1987, pp. 173-177), expands the definition of religion beyond his own belief in Christianity to include all parallel beliefs that people hold to be true.  Madison says this even while affirming in the same document his own support of the duty-to-God definition in the first quote above.

The contradiction attains its highest level in our fourth introductory quote, again from Madison’s "Memorial and Remonstrance."  Here the hard truth of the matter is revealed in the statement to the effect that no one, and especially civil rulers, can be the determiner of what constitutes a religious truth for anyone else.  Justice Jackson said the same thing in the 1943 Board of Education v. Barnette case: "If there is any fixed star in our constitutional constellation, it is that no official, high or petty, can prescribe what shall be orthodox in ... religion..." (Neuhaus, 1974).  As stated by Justice Douglas in United States v. Ballard (1944),

No matter how much one person’s perception and reason may dictate that the object of someone else’s belief is untrue or is an illusion, for the one who believes, it is supremely real and unchallengeably true.  For this believer, the antagonists may instead be the illusionists.  Justice Black wrote of religion (Engle v. Vitale, 1962) as a sacred, holy, and personal experience, far too holy and personal to come under control of a civil magistrate (McMillan, 1984).  A perfect example of the difficulty inherent in defining what is religious for others comes by way of conflicting statements of the U.S. Supreme Court.  In 1838, the Court declared that the First Amendment did not cover atheists (Commonwealth v. Abner Kneeland) since they "do not believe in God or religion."  Yet in 1977 (Malnak v. Yogi) it declared "Atheism may be a religion under the establishment clause" (Barton, 1989, p. 182).

Putting the four introductory quotes together, the derived conclusion is that religion is whatever serves as sacred or divine for each person (cf. James, 1982, p.31).  As Madison indicates in the fourth introductory quote, whatever beliefs others may have that parallel his belief in the Christian religion serve as a religion for its adherents.  No one has the right, he would say, to determine what is religious for another.  Our review in the just prior chapter reached the same conclusion.  Further, whereas most definitions of religion in colonial America referenced classic characteristics, the tenor of contemporary America is to acknowledge the religious functions of a diversity of beliefs.  For instance, religion scholar Martin Marty notes the wide acceptance of Clifford Geetz’s 1968 definition of religion: "A system of symbols that act to establish powerful, pervasive, and long-lasting moods and motivations by men, by formulation conceptions of a general order of existence, and clothing these conceptions with such an aura of factuality, that the moods and motivations seem uniquely realistic." (Marty, 1987, p. 21). 

Similarly, as Justice Brennan noted in 1963 (Abington v. Schempp), "Today the Nation is far more heterogeneous religiously, including as it does substantial minorities not only of Catholics and Jews but as well of those who worship according to no version of the Bible and those who worship no God at all" (Rice, 1978, p. 856).  Feuerbach wrote (cf., Vitz, 1977, p. 68) that "the historical progress of religion consists in this: that which during an earlier stage of religion was regarded as something objective is now recognized as something subjective, so that which was formerly viewed and worshipped as God is now recognized as something human."  In actuality, religion "is to be understood better by observing its function than by analyzing any of its particular doctrines, and that it is to be judged by the way it works rather than to be tested by logical cannons as an intellectual system" (Pratt, 1926, p. 6).  According to Kallen (1951), it is the _way_ we select and adore things and not what we select and adore that makes something religious to us.

Madison’s "Memorial and Remonstrance" indicates that even is colonial times, religions were not just conceived of in a strict, biblically orthodox sense.  Competing belief systems were even acknowledged back then as being religious in nature.  For instance, in 1786 Jefferson remarked that his Act for Establishing Religious [emphasis added] Freedom was intended "to comprehend within the mantle of its protection, the Jew, the Gentile, the Christian and Mahometan, the Hindoo, and Indifel of every denomination" (Jefferson, 1984).  Similarly in the 1800s, Supreme Court Justice Story, in writing about the First Amendment, clusters Christianity, Mahometanism, Judaism, and infidelity [emphasis added] together as religious (Pfeffer, 1967, p. 159).  The difference between then and now is not so much some new liberalized view of the definition; rather, it is the availability of pluralistic writings now versus the enforced predominance of singularly Christian writings of colonial times.  The evidence of that time suggests the singularity of definition was due to exactly what Madison was opposing -- the defining by only one group of what was and was not properly a religion for others.

Given the premise that religion is whatever serves as sacred for each individual person, the logical outcome is that there are many things in life that suddenly acquire religious identity.  For instance, whatever is thought to be a duty to a supreme being must be considered a religious activity for that person, regardless of how others may judge it.  For some, this may incorporate all of life including education (cf., Spilka, Hood, and Gorsuch, 1985, p.29).

Working from the above orientation about the nature of religion, the message of this chapter is that education is a religious activity.  This will be demonstrated through several different approaches.  First, we will see that experts directly claim that education is a religious function.  Second, for many, education provides answers to what are considered to be primary religious questions.  Third, even where educational content makes no contact with what are perceived as typical religious pronouncements, its substitution function makes it a religion for its adherents.  We will call this the doctrine of non-neutrality.  Fourth, since the content of educational teachings ultimately rests on faith statements, education serves as a religion from this perspective also.

Historical Introduction

In the beginning, so to speak, the earliest cultures were not compartmentalized as religion plus law, plus science, plus education, and so on.  There was no differentiation of one from another; all were intricately linked together in the common desire to live the "indissoluble life" (Coe, 1916, p.109), the whole of which is best called religious in nature.  Augustine’s law of concentration that every person is serving gods in his life echoes this notion that life as a whole is religious (McCarthy, Oppewal, Peterson, & Spykman, 19981, p. 9): "Religion deals with ‘the meaning of the whole’ so that attempting to find meaning to life is anything less than the divine amounts to the idolatry of promoting a partial interest or perspective as ultimate... Making even democracy the center of education [is] idolatrous, because if democracy were an end in itself, that would amount to a political religion" ( Marsden, 1994, p. 397).  As theologian Niebuhr said, "The religious problem is the ultimate issue in education."

In its contribution to this religious whole, education was an extended initiation ceremony into society.  As Jellema (1951) has noted, "education is always education by some kingdom and for citizenship in some kingdom" (p. 112).  It is never neutral bit always reflects some civitas or kingdom purpose and thus has to both have and promote the value system of that kingdom.  Justice Douglas captures this concept in Lemon v. Kurtzman (1971) with the recognition that the public school cannot be divided into dichotomous categories of secular and religious: "the school is an organism living on one budget.  What the taxpayers give for salaries of those who teach only the humanities of science without any trace of proselytizing enables the school to use all of its own funds for religious training."

While on the surface education may not appear to be religiously oriented, it is ultimately governed by a set of convictions religious in nature.  The question of origin and destiny, aims and purposes, what is and what is not important or valued, and proper human relationships all address matters of ultimacy.  It is these statements of values from which educational objectives are written, according to noted educator Ralph Tyler (1949, p. 34).  And, as we have seen in earlier chapters, matters of ultimate concerns are what constitute religious orientations.

But not only does religion provide the basic framework within which education occurs, education, in turn, is the primary field for implementing religious orientations in very practical ways (cf., Phenix, 1959, p. 19).  Education is a primary vehicle of religious inculcation.

Except for very recently, it was an indisputable given that education served a religious function.  The colonists transplanted to this country the belief of the Greeks, Romans, and Europeans that public education was to be denominationally controlled (Beard & Beard, 1927).  As stated in Justice Frankfurter’s concurring opinion in McCollum v. Board of Education (1948), "organized education in the Western World was Church education  ...to the extent that the State intervened, it used its authority to further the aims of the Church" (Pfeffer, 1967, p. 321).  There is perhaps no more obvious evidence of this religious base for education than in the 1647 "Ye Olde Deluder Satan Law" of Massachusetts.  The preamble to this law that gave legal force to public schools read, "It being one chief project of that old Deluder, Satan, to keep men from the knowledge of the Scriptures ...that learning may not be buried in the graves of our fathers in the church and commonwealth, the Lord assisting our endeavors...  It is therefore ordered ...to teach all children..." (Pfeffer, 1967, p. 323).

Education by and large was considered a religious function throughout early America until the church and state separation of the mid to late 1700s secularized the state and, by extension, the schools.

Even so, the general perception of the teacher’s transcendent role was portrayed in the Massachusetts Teacher magazine of 1857: "Magnify your office teacher!  Higher than the kings of earth; -- Are you not the prophet, preacher, to the future giving birth?" (Katz, 1968, p. 157).  As late as 1861, statements like the following from the Wisconson Journal of Education were still commonplace: "O, Teacher, reflect!, pause, ere you go further ...have you considered that you are preparing souls for eternal happiness or everlasting misery?" (Jorgenson, 1987, p. 59).  Further, Katz (1968) notes that educators of the 1800s saw themselves devoted to an ideology that was crucial for the salvation of mankind (p. 115).  But eventually schools, while serving primarily religious and even denominational purposes, went the way of secularization along with the state because they were perceived as properly being under civil jurisdiction.  But as we shall see, the secularization of public schools made them no less religious institutions.  The truthfulness of this paradoxical concept is seen in various ways including the opinions of those recognized as educational and/or religious experts.

Education is Religious, Say Experts

No matter that disestablishment occurred -- the "public education system is and always has been teaching religion," says church historian Sidney Mead (1963, p. 68).  Since "religion in its most nascent form is seldom ever recognized as religion at all" (Potter, 1930, p.127), it is often overlooked as such.  In fact, with disestablishment, the public schools took over what was earlier the basic responsibility of the established church.  For example, Jefferson’s faith in a moral system of public education substitutes the dogma of natural religion for traditional religious ideology that was being squeezed out of public education: "The public school system in America becomes, in the Jeffersonian framework, the established church of the republic" (McCarthy, Skillen & Harbper, 1982, p. 41).  As a case in point, when this rationally-grounded natural religion took hold, Catholics switched from complaining about offensive Protestantism in public schools (Woltersstorff, 1992) to, in more recent times, complaining about its substitute -- secularism.  But whatever the specific content, it ultimately is still religious in nature. 

Baer notes, "It is impossible for schools to be completely or even substantially neutral towards religion" (Baer, undated, p. 5).  It is sheer mythology to think otherwise, he says (1983).  The "untutored devotion to the concept of neutrality" led Justice Goldberg to say in the Abington School District v. Schempp case (1963) that the Constitution "prohibited ...a brooding and pervasive devotion to the secular."  As New York Secretary of State John C. Spencer said in 1841, "No books can be found, no reading lessons can be selected which do not contain more or less of some principles of religious faith, either directly avowed, or indirectly assumed" (McCarthy, et. al., 1981, p. 91).  In fact, the removal of religious instruction from public education would, according to education reformer D. Bethune Duffield, create "just what the constitution forbids; viz. a sectarian establishment consisting of schools, in which the tenets and dogma of sect are taught; for Infidels and Deists are as much a sect as Presbyterians, Catholics, or Quakers" (1857, p. 97).

This idea is captured in Mead’s (1963) thesis that "the public school system of the United States is its established church" and the religion is the "democratic faith" (p. 68).  He cites from Williams’ What Americans Believe And How They Worship (1952) to say that a culture is a faith, a set of shared convictions.  It is a spiritual entity.  Education is concerned with the sacred and is to "facilitate the quest for what is holy" (Purpel, 1989, p. 78).  And because the maintenance of this faith calls for systematic and universal indoctrination, the government must teach it as an object of religious dedication.

This view that democracy is the faith or religion of American education is not primarily the "sour grapes" complaints of religious zealots.  It was, in fact, the official view espoused by President Truman’s 1946 Commission on Education.  The Commission maintained that "It is imperative that American education develop a ‘democratic dynamic’ that will inspire faith in the democratic way of life."  As the report read, "what America needs, what the world needs is a moral, intellectual, and spiritual revolution.  Higher education fails unless it does what it can to initiate and carry through this revolution" (Kennedy, 1952, p. 89).  In line with this mission, critics were not off the mark in claiming that the "underlying philosophy was that youth should be trained for the democratic state ...and that the democratic state is a sort of religion, with public education as its church" (cited in Marsden, 1994, p. 393).  From all appearances, the intended educational goal of having democracy become America’s religion has succeeded.  According to Herberg (1974),

The education heavy-weight and popular American philosopher John Dewey endorsed the notion that education is a religion: "I see no ground for criticizing those who regard education religiously."  He in effect agreed that we do "make a religion out of education."  In his article, "Education as a Religion" (1922), he called the education community to task, not because it was promoting the salvivic qualities of education prior to actually being in possession of commensurate methods.  True education does lead the student to a "genuine religious conversion" say Adams & Stein (1989, p. 64).  Consistent with the language of religion, Dewey proposed that educational representatives allow the conviction of sin to lead them all to _repentance_ (truly a religious concept) and to turn to the science of human behavior to keep education from becoming nothing more than "a mass of dogmas ...and ...ritualistic exercises" as one would expect in a religion that lacked vitality.

Educational philosopher Alfred North Whitehead similarly saw that education was essentially religious in nature.  Similar to Dewey’s ideas, education is religious for Whitehead because it inculcates both duty (in the potential of humanity to control the course of events) and reverence  (in the idea that all eternity is held within the present) (Whitehead, 1957, p.14) for our self-determination.

Others hold essentially the same viewpoint.  Ivan Illich has described the church of North America to be education (Neuhaus, 1974, p. 78).  Henry Steele Commanger calls education the American religion (Adams, 1991, p. 9).  John Dunphy (1983, p. 26) writes that public school teachers are "the proselytizers of a new faith; a religion of humanity" i.e., secular humanism.  These teachers "will be ministers of another sort utilizing a classroom instead of a pulpit to convey humanistic values in whatever subject they teach, regardless of the educational level -- preschool day care or large state universities."  Philosopher/psychologist W. R. Coulson says this promotion of humanism in the schools amounts to "Unitarianism in the classroom" (Profile, 1990, p. 10).  With the prohibition in schools of the Christian perspective, Justice Stewart (Abington v. Schempp, 1963) says it has led not to true neutrality but the possible "establishment of a religion of secularism" in education (McMillan, 1984, p. 176). 

Former Harvard president Nathan M. Pusey claims that this secularism has "become a faith" by which man can "solve all the remaining problems which stand between him and a secular paradise on earth" (Blum, 1987, p. 23).  Similarly, the banning of teaching religion on public school property by the 1948 McCollum v. Board of Education Supreme Court decision is really only, according to Neuhaus (1974, p. 74), the teaching of "religion under another name."  Finally, testifying in the federal district court case (Smith v. Board of Education, 1986) sociologist David Hunter stated that the humanism present in public school textbooks is also functionally incorporated into a wide range of religious institutions and that it "is certainly no less religious than transcendental meditation or ESP" (Educational Week, 1986, p. 1).

Beyond these statements by lone individuals, education is also declared to be a religious activity by groups of individuals.  Those of various religious persuasions and the holy books of these societies equally declare education to be of a religious nature and even a religious mandate.  As a case in point, consider the Christian religion.

It has been noted that education is a creation concept.  Christian theologians suggest Adam and Eve, even in their pre-fallen condition, would progressively take on more of the characteristics of God as they continued to live in obedience to Him (cf., Robertson, 1984, p. 55).  After the fall, education for obedience was no less a significant factor.  The early books of the Old Testament depict education as divinely commanded.  In the book of Deuteronomy, Chapter 4 through 6, after God gave His commandments and statutes for all of life, He commanded His people to teach them to their children.  Interestingly, this educational process was not restricted to some formal education setting but was to occur continually -- "when you sit in your house, when you walk by the way, when you lie down, and when you rise up" (6:7).

In the New Testament, the command for parents to educate their children continues.  All that children learn must be interpreted through the Word of God (cf. Ephesians 6:4; Romans 12:2).  Educators of the Christian faith write extensively on this topic to parents and teachers alike with admonishments and prescriptions for insuring that all their efforts are consistent with God’s Word (cf., Fugate, 1980; Rushdoony, 1981; Stormer, 1984).  All hold to the persuasion of "education as religious activity" as sincerely as they hold to any other central concepts of their faith (cf., Titus, 1982).

This matter of education constituting a religious activity does not end with its confirmation by educators, historians, theologians, and Supreme Court Justices.  In fact, education is a religious activity not primarily because experts say so but because of its very nature.  The next section documents the fact that by its nature education cannot help but address religious world view questions.

Education Answers Religious Questions

At first glance most people would say that matters of education and of religion are different entities.  The proposition that education is a religious activity has no intuitive appeal to many people.  In fact, the statement typically arouses reactions of disbelief if not suspicion that some radical and unnatural agenda is being promoted.  As we shall see in this section, education does provide answers to world view questions that are religious in nature.  This perspective is not as far-fetched as it may sound if we remember that education had its origin as part of a religious whole and only became differentiated yet no less religious as the discipline became more self-conscious and self-serving.

The bottom line of the entire matter is that education is a religious activity because it properly and unabashedly makes statements about the sacred and thus about how we ought to live all of life.  The fulfillment of this sacred trust is by way of a world view -- the confession of that which unifies all of life and thought in a personally meaningful way (Holmes, 1983, p. 34).  "...religion cannot be considered simply ‘private.’  It is an aspect of human thought and action," wrote Justice Frankfurter, "which profoundly relates the life of man to the world in which he lives -- all of it, politics, economics, and social reform" (Smith, 1972, p. 320).  It is important to note that the absence of belief in a deity does not disqualify world views from being religious.  The key element is in the ultimacy of such beliefs (Hand, 1987, p. 45).

Basically, a person’s world view does answer questions of ultimate concerns (e.g., the purpose and nature of the universe, the nature of mankind, the reason for man’s existence) (cf., Hand, 1987, p. 45) as well as what is wrong with the world and how to fix it (cf. Walsh & Middleton, 184, p. 35).  Wherever a world view or "belief system deals with fundamental questions of the nature of reality and man’s relationship to reality, it deals with essentially religious questions" (Hand, 1987, p. 45).  James in his classic book on religious experience (1982, p. 35) said answers to these questions "belong to the general sphere of religious life, and so should generically be classed as religious."  Further, world views perform a religious function in the way they give even the mundane routines in life a meaningful relationship to the divine (Lukmann, 1967, p. 56).

Additionally, while discussed in more detail later, it is important now to see that the answers to these questions are largely based on assumptions rooted in faith more than on reason and empirical evidence.  This is so because in matters metaphysical we cannot ultimately prove what is right and wrong or true or false, but we do act on assumptions about these matters.  Human action is even impossible without making these kinds of assumptions (Creel, 1977, p. 39).  Reason and evidence relate primarily to the finite, but the meaning of life comes only by relating the finite to the infinite -- our finiteness literally forces this on us.  Outward behaviors make explicit our implicitly held beliefs and assumptions.  In this sense, we are all people of faith.

World views actually determine interpretations more so than do mere facts.  Theologian Paul Tillich suggests (1951, p. 34) that even those in his profession do not generally develop their philosophical systems from facts so much as their basic world view perspectives determine their interpretations of these facts.  After all, people generally see the same data but interpret it differently -- for instance, from the same observed phenomenon, one person will believe in God and another will not.  Consider also the work of Derek Freeman (1983) that refuted the findings of Margaret Mead in her landmark book, Coming of age in Somoa (1961).  According to Freeman’s research, Mead apparently did not see the evidence that was readily available to her because her world view orientations would not let her.  Kuhn (1970), whose work on the effect of paradigms is often cited, likewise notes that paradigms, as with world views, function to determine how we perceive or do not perceive what we see.

But faith and learning are not opposites according to Phoenix (1966, p. 14).  The are, in fact, "necessarily inclusive of one another."  Every program of instruction has some faith basis about what is ultimately true and important.  Similarly, every religious orientation, whatever it may be, requires some knowledge learned about the world we live in and people we live with.  In this sense there cannot be the possibility of having no religion; people differ in this regard only in the content of their beliefs.

This notion of a world view as a universally applicable scheme unifies religion and education.  The root word for religion is the Latin ligare which means "to bind together" (Adams & Stein, 1989, p. 59).  The actual word "religion" is a transliteration of the Latin word "religio" which again means "to bind together" (Oates, 1973, p. 21).  Religion ties everything together, serves as a guide for thought, and provides a unifying perspective on life.  This conceptual scheme is called a world view (Holmes, 1983, p. 33): "Religion is an interpretive scheme which provides man with a map that enables him to chart his course in the areas of bafflement he encounters in the course of his life" (Greeley, 1985, p. 84).  Midgley claims that systems like Marxism, evolutionism, art, and science serve as religions, as opposed to something like devotion to golf, because by their very nature they are dominant creeds and explicit faiths "by which people live and to which they try to convert others.  They tend to alter the world" (1985, p. 16).

Education likewise addresses the same concerns as do religions: "All education pursued with concern for ultimate meaning is religious education, and all teaching and learning dedicated to the highest excellence and the deepest truth are in a fundamental sense acts of worship" (Phenix, 1966, p. 26).  And all education practically does concern itself with ultimate meanings and with developing a world view.  As our world view determines our values, education has a major role in both developing and establishing these values.  Aristotle captures the notion well in his statement "that the aim of education is to make the pupil like and dislike what he ought" (Lewis, 1947, p. 26).  From a different professional perspective but with equal cogency, George Washington noted in his Farewell Address, "And let us with caution indulge the supposition that morality can be maintained without religion.  Whatever may be conceded to the influence of refined education on minds of peculiar structure, reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle" (Johnston, 1987, p. 147).

The point is that education inculcates a world view value system that is inherently religious in nature.  For instance, education is held responsible by society at large for providing a vision of the good, true, and beautiful life and for equipping children for getting there.  Interestingly, Creel (1977, p. 38) defines religion in precisely the same terms: "life lived in wholehearted pursuit of the true and the good, and in disciplined commitment to the fruits of that commitment."

While Dewey, Jefferson, and others may have differing perspectives on that issue, all are addressing the same fundamental issues about the good life.  To illustrate, Jefferson envisioned education as _the_ vehicle for setting people free: "If the condition of man is to be progressively ameliorated, as we fondly hope and believe, education is to be the chief instrument in effecting it" (Pfeffer, 1967, p. 327).  It all starts with a will-to-live, says Albert Schweitzer, which becomes reflected in what he calls one’s theology (cf., Oates, 1973, p. 48).  Similarly, Gordon Allport says religion is "the right of each individual to work out his own philosophy of life, to find his personal niche in creation as best he can" (Abraham, 1982, p. 225).  But just as religion starts with this valuing life as life, so too is this a characterization of education as Jefferson has demonstrated.  Rushdoony (1963, p. 315) says it this way:

Since education is about the business of teaching morality and since "morality is not separate from religion" (Jellema, 1951, p. 121) then we see again that education has to be considered as a religious endeavor.  The National Education Association claims without reservation that education is concerned with imparting moral and spiritual values (Pfeffer, 1967, p. 361).  The concern over ultimacy is just as relevant for education (cf., Baer, undated) as for religion (Greely, 1985, p. 64).  From Aristotle forward, educators agree that education is concerned with "the transmission and nurturing of truths by which a community would live" (Neuhaus, 1987, p. vi).  This means that teachers invariably work at the metaethical level (Baer, undated, p. 15).  The weighty responsibility of it all typically astonishes student teachers even while remaining a challenge for veteran teachers.  Teachers cannot help but be moral figures in the lives of their students.  Regularly, teachers are called upon to answer students’ questions such as "What am I supposed to in life?" and "Why they were fated to live where and as they did...?" (Coles, 1994, p. A 64).

A vast amount of evidence regarding the fact that education addresses world view issues is contained in the record of U.S. Department of Education hearings (1984) in the form of violations of the Pupil Rights Amendment (Schlafly, 1984).  Only a few of those testimonies are included here.  In Bellevue, Washington, thirteen-year-olds were asked at what age is it okay to engage in acts such as (list only sampled here) French kissing, masturbation, having intercourse, having a variety of sexual partners, etc.  After answering the questions, the children were then supposed to physically move to the "yes before 14" or "yes after 14" section of the room in answer to each question.  Apparently, yes before or after age fourteen were the only two answers allowed (p. 39). 

In a Portland, Oregon school, students aged fourteen and up were taught in a problem-solving workshop by Oregon Department of Education employees that "There are no objective standards of morality, and that truth is relative and can mean anything they want it to mean" (p. 50).  The program, TA for Teens, as taught in North Clackamas, Oregon, promotes autonomy of children from any and all authority.  Ways to develop this attitude include teaching teens to destroy things value, flashing the middle finger in the air, and spilling things over and over again (p. 60). 

In a fifth grade Health class in Lincoln City, Oregon, sexual activity among the fifth graders was not at all discouraged, and intercourse was described, abstinence was not mentioned, and boys were told to handle a plastic model of female genitalia with a tampon inserted.  In Ohio, students were told by their teacher, "If your parents told you there was a God and He made this world, they are lying to you" (p. 126). 

The Health class curriculum used in Detroit, Michigan includes a "do it yourself" manual with instructions on foreplay, erections, positions for intercourse, etc.  In a writing workshop for grades three through six in Mexico, Missouri, students practice yoga exercises, write their own horoscopes, role-play book characters such as a warlock, a spiritess, an exorcist, and a poltergeist as well as use powers of concentration to try to move a metal object. (p. 204). 

In the Shawnee Mission public schools, students are taught how to assume various body positions for meditation and to vocally recite unknown words and language.  Parents of children in this program saw it as a form of occult practice and not just meditation.  In Denver, Colorado, the test used in certain classes was "so dirty that I cannot repeat it out loud" (p. 258)  In a story that seventh graders in one school had to read, an economically poor mother was cast in a positive light for drowning her three children ("They floated for a while and finally disappeared.") so they could be much happier in heaven: "She smiled for the first time in many months, satisfied that she had fulfilled her maternal duty" (p. 272). 

In Montgomery County, Maryland, a drama group, trained with federal funds, performed a sociodrama for grades two through six.  In one skit, the announcement was made by one actor that God was dead, followed by all actors using obscene gestures, doing obscene things, and saying obscene words.  It was reported that "When the play was over the students went to recess and mimicked the actor’s actions and words" (p. 430).  Apparently with the notions that God was dead, it was then considered acceptable to behave any way one wanted.

While many more accounts could be taken from the 440 pages of edited excerpts of the official proceedings, the point hopefully has been made. Namely, that education does directly provide answers to world view issues of an ultimately religious nature even against the objections of parents and even in violation of various federal, state, and local statutes. Now if this is not convincing enough, selections from another investigation (Gabler, Gabler, & Hefley, 1985) into classroom and curriculum teachings should convince the reader that education does address religious matters. Selections from their review follow. An introductory text to the behavioral sciences states, "For a very few, religion can still provide a special sense of embracing belonging and selfhood; but for most, religion is but a Sunday meeting house and nursery school, and a recreation center, which cannot adequately define the entire person" (p. 36). From evidence of many current day polls, this is not even the way most people think about religion!

But, as the reviewers found, texts do more than misrepresent facts; they actively promote various religious perspectives. A high school sociology text says this about Christianity: "[it] didn’t help the blacks gain dignity and equality in America, for Christian love was the white’s love of themselves and of their own race" (p. 103). Some public school textbooks even rewrite the  Bible. Consider this textbook version of Exodus 14:21-22: "Moses may have led them across some shallow swamps and into the Sinai (sigh-nigh) desert. The Hebrews called these swamps the "Sea of Reeds" because of the tall grass that grew in them. It may be that the Sea of Reeds was later called the Red Sea by mistake" (p. 38). Some texts go so far as to classify various holy book accounts as myths: "[M]yths may give a picture of the world as having fallen from a perfect state. The evil of the world, according to these traditions, resulted from man’s failure to obey the will of God, and it is only by following the will of God that the world can be restored to its  proper state. This is essentially the mythological standpoint of Christianity, Judaism, Islam, and many other religions" (p. 38). Finally, students in creativity training were asked to question biblical teachings: "... we should teach children to question the Ten Commandments ... monogamy, and the laws against incest" (p. 36).

The curriculum "Children of the Rainbow" has generated lots of controversy in the way it has redefined correct answers to religiously oriented themes. This curriculum takes a very positive stand toward homosexuality (clearly a religious issue for many people) by featuring reading such as "Heather Has Two Mommies" and "Daddy’s [male] Roommate" (Newsweek, 1992).

This teaching of children to be free from so-called religious superstitions and prejudices with the intent of supposedly making them rational, objective human beings is obvious in the above examples. Daniel Webster is on record as being opposed to a very similar effort attempted at Girard College in Pennsylvania in 1844:

It has been said ... that there was no teaching against religion or Christianity in the system. I deny it ... the children are ... to learn to be suspicious of Christianity and religion: to keep clear of it. They are to be told and taught that religion is not a matter of the heart or conscience, but for the decision of cool judgment of mature years; that at a period when the whole Christian world deems it most desirable to instill the chastening influences of Christianity into the tender and comparatively pure mind and heart of the child. (Glenn, 1988, p. 192)

Ultimately the entire matter of individual existence, while often encountered in an educational setting, is a religious issue, say sociologists like Durkheim and Weber (cf., Luckman, 1967, p. 12). The social interaction process leads to the two complementary aspects of the individuation of consciousness and the giving of moral meaning to life (Luckman, 1967, p. 48). In this sense, the cultural system becomes the means by which life is interpreted -- the means by which people are elevated from mere biological existence. In fact, any kind of radical separation from the social world results in the loss of moral bearings and psychological well-being to such an extent that the individual may choose death instead (Berger, 1967, p. 22). The teacher’s role in developing the social aspect of humanity was so important for Dewey that he said in his pedagogic creed, "... in this way the teacher always is the prophet of the true God and the usherer in of the true kingdom of God." Here again, this is most appropriately a religious function (cf., Greeley, 1985, p. 53). Yet it is, in final analysis, within the educational setting where this activity is most purposely conducted for a vast majority of students. After all, religion is man’s attempt to bring human significance to the entire universe (Berger, 1967, p. 28).

Summarizing this section, the interpretative scheme that guides one through the bafflement of life is called a world view. World views answer religious questions. In this sense all people have a religious orientation; there is no neutral zone. Even for those radical contemporary theologians who say that the Christian religion does not have to presuppose either the existence or non-existence of God nor include any religious beliefs at all, it is still a gospel for them. It is exclusively a secular gospel, a good news world view about "how man should live and think and act and feel and see things..." (Wolterstorff, 1967, p. 13). Convictions over what is good, what is true, what is the ultimate meaning of life, and so on are not simply inborn; instead, they come through experience and more precisely through directed experiences. In a word, they come in no accidental way through education. Since education is the systematic attempt to provide students with answers and orientations to life, it cannot help but be religious in nature.

Yet, critics of this perspective protest saying that there is a distinction to be made between the sacred and the secular. The argument is that orientations to life that are outside of the sacred realm are not generally considered to be religious. They are seen as either secular or as neutral in content -- not religious.

Myth of Neutrality

The very fact that education addresses world view questions of a religious nature means that there cannot be religious neutrality in education. This is especially evident in the effect of court decisions that deny religious practices in the school (i.e., teaching of creationism, posting of the Ten Commandments). When such decisions are made, it is not the case that the issue or question addressed by such prohibited practices is also prohibited, nor that students and teachers no longer think about such things, nor that the questions become irrelevant. No, the matter becomes addressed by some alternative answer. For instance, the question of how the human race came into being is not summarily voided with the court rulings that creation science cannot be taught.

Instead, some other explanation such as evolution is taught as the answer to the still-relevant question. Such court decisions only deal with answers to questions; they do not and cannot prohibit the question from being asked. The history of mankind, and particularly during times of religious persecution, shows that officially sanctioned answers and/or the restrictions on question-asking do not keep people from seeking personally satisfying answers anyway. Even an imposed silence on a matter ultimately communicates that the matter is of a trivial nature which thus is an answer to the initiating question. In the final analysis, attempts to avoid sectarianism or religious instruction by abolishing it altogether "would be in itself sectarian; because it would be consonant to the views of a particular class, and opposed to the opinions of other classes" (McCarthy, et al., 1981, p. 91). That is why this section appropriately makes synonymous the phrases "non-neutrality" and "the substitutionary function of educational content."

The impossibility for education to be neutral in matters of religion is seen in the education related decisions of the U.S. Supreme Court even while it claims to be "firmly committed to a position of neutrality ... in the relationship between man and religion" (Justice Clark in Abington School District v. Schemmp, 1963). The totally arbitrary decisions the court has made in this regard are illustrated in Wolman v. Walter (1977) as summarized in Justice Blackman’s main opinion: "In summary, we hold constitutional those portions of the Ohio statute authorizing the state to provide nonpublic school pupils with books, standardized testing and scoring, diagnostic services, and therapeutic and remedial services. We hold unconstitutional those portions relating to instructional materials and equipment and field trip services."

Who can say where the logic is! Moynihan’s (1978, p. 36) tongue-in-cheek observation cannot be improved upon: "Backward reels the mind. Books are constitutional. Maps are unconstitutional. Atlases, which are books of maps, are unconstitutional. Or are they? We must await the next case." He continues, "In this regard, Justice Rehnquist took the court to task for its neutrality inconsistencies. The Court apparently believes that the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment not only mandates religious neutrality on the part of government but also require that this court go further and throw its weight on the side of those who believe that our society as a whole should be a purely secular one" (quoted in McCarthy, et al., 1982, p. 88). This according to Justice Stewart amounts to "the establishment of a religion of secularism" (Abington School District v. Schempp, 1963). The Chief Justice also chastises his own court in Meek v. Pittinger (1975):

At a deeper level, McCarthy, et al. (1982, p. 80) note that the court’s attention has been on laws that assume the present political educational structure of public and private schools. They have not yet questioned the legitimacy of that structure itself. If it turns out, however, that the very existence of the present system of public education alongside independently financed private schools is religiously discriminatory both by inhibiting free exercise and by sustaining an illegitimate establishment, then all of the efforts to find subtle ways to remain ‘neutral’ within the present system are in vain. Arons (1976, p. 78) claims that "the notion of value-neutral education implicit in the legal distinction between religious and secular education is untenable" because values inculcation cannot be eliminated from schooling. Justice Stewart noted in Schempp that "a compulsory state educational system so structures a child’s life that if religious exercises are held to be impermissible activity in schools, religion is placed at an artificial and state-created disadvantage." Similarly, Justice Burger, in Lemon v. Kurtzmann (1971) revealed his non-neutral world view that governmental concerns are of greater priority than religious concerns:

To have states or communities divided on the issues presented by state aid to parochial schools would tend to confuse and obscure other issues of great urgency. We have an expanding array of vexing issues, local and national, domestic and international, to debate and devise on. It conflicts with our whole history and traditions to permit questions of the Religious Clauses to assume such importance in our legislatures and in our elections that they could deviate our attention from the myriad issues and problems that confront every level of government.

Obviously as noted elsewhere in this chapter, democracy allows religion to find its place just as long as it doesn’t overstep the bounds as determined by democracy. This is hardly non-neutrality! The result of court decisions, according to Justice Stevens, that have tried to comply with the impossible task of maintaining religious non-neutrality in the public schools "has been, as Clarence Darrow predicted, harm to ‘both the public and the religion that [this aid] would pretend to serve" (Wolman v. Walter, 1977).

There is no neutrality regarding the religious content of curriculum and instruction. Education always comes from one religious perspective or another. Lawrence Kohlberg, author of texts, curriculum, and test instruments on morality, says, "My first reaction to the notion that moral education and religious education are identical in their implications for civil liberties was, like that of most lay people, one of incredulity and shock ... [however,] Once the school becomes engaged in teaching a particular moral doctrine belonging to a particular group of citizens organized as a religious, political, or ideological body, it may well be accused of establishing religion" (1981, pp. 294-95).

It is important to see that in claiming "that schools cannot be ‘value-neutral’ but must be engaged in moral education" (p. 296), while at the same time saying that "moral education must be defined in terms of justice rather than in terms of majority consensus" (p. 297), Kohlberg is engaging in semantic double-talk. Kohlberg (as well as others) has conveniently defined the morality that he proposes and instruction in religion (that he opposes) such that they supposedly do not overlap. However, make no mistake about it, Kohlberg intends for his philosophy to function as the operative scheme for addressing matters of ultimate concern: "Public education is committed not only to maintenance of the rights of individuals but also to the transmission of the values of respect for individual rights" (p. 37).

His own words betray his true position: "Not only can advice about means not be separated from choice of ends, but there is no way for educational consultants to avoid harboring their own criteria for choosing ends. The ‘value-neutral’ consulting model equates value neutrality with acceptance of value relativity ... but the educator or educational psychologist cannot be neutral in this sense either" (p. 65). Ironically, he insists that there is no problem with the legitimacy of moral education in public schools "if the proper [emphasis added] content of moral education is recognized to be the values of justice that themselves prohibit the impositions of beliefs of one group on another" (p. 37). While insisting on justice, Kohlberg does not allow for groups to coexist if they disagree that his way is the correct way in public education.

Because public schools cannot be value neutral but, as Kohlberg says, must teach values, the National Catholic Welfare Conference (1961) claimed that such schools are not religiously neutral: "... an ‘orthodoxy’ is expressed -- inescapably so -- even in a curriculum from which religious ‘orthodoxies’ are absent..." (LaNone, 1967, p. 24). From the very same facts, this conference reached the exact opposite conclusion:

Obviously, one’s world view does predispose the response given! 

The crucial dilemma, as noted at the outset, is in attempting to define for others what is religious for them. In the final analysis, we cannot deny that something is religious in nature if it functions as a religion or if it answers religiously oriented questions for others. The irony of it all is that while public education is declared to be neutral toward religion, it is anything but neutral. For instance, wherever the courts rule that a particular religious perspective cannot be promoted (e.g., biblical creationism), some other belief system substitutes for it. And as the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Welsh v. United States (1970), a valid test for something to be considered religious is whether it is "A sincere and meaningful belief which occupies in the life of its possessor a place parallel to that filled by God." In other words, whatever substitutes (e.g., evolution) for what is commonly accepted as a religious belief (e.g., creationism) is a religious belief for its proponents. Matthew’s (1971) Introduction to Darwin’s The Origin of Species (1972) says it this way: "Belief in the theory of evolution is thus exactly parallel to belief in special creation—both are concepts which schools know to be true but neither, up to the present, has been capable of proof" (p. xi).

Furthermore, this refusal of the court to officially define religion, leaving it up to the believer instead, equally makes institutions that officially either allow or prohibit religious instruction the determiners of religious orthodoxy. That is, when civil authority prohibits a teaching that is part of a personal religious belief for anyone, it is in fact allowing some substitutionary teaching to prevail. This state judgment over the inappropriateness of certain religious teaching (e.g., Ten Commandments) and the commensurate allowance of some other substitute teaching (e.g., civic morality) effectively establishes a state religion (cf., Montgomery, 1889/1972, p. 80). The state is operating in the realm of deciding what content is appropriate to address and even give answers to, for at least some constituents, what constitutes a religious matter for them. As Neuhaus (1974, p. 74) has observed, the effect of "the 1947 McCollum case banning the teaching of religion in school properly -- is to teach religion under another name." Said in a different way,

In a similar way, Judge Hand noted that "some religious beliefs are so fundamental that the act of denying them will completely undermine that religion. In addition, denial of that belief will result in the affirmation of a contrary belief and result in the establishment of an opposing religion" (Hand, 1987, p. 54). So, while the courts in some ways claim not to define religion, they do anyway. Again, there is no such thing as neutrality in the matter of religion as it bears on education. To demonstrate, if the courts truly were neutral in this regard then all religious views should be treated equally. But they are not! For example, the following three offenses of  religious conscience have received differential rather than similar treatments by the courts (cf., Freund, 1969). That is, since school prayer was religiously offensive to those of a certain religious persuasion, all ceremonial prayers have been eliminated from public schools.

Yet the religious offensiveness to a different religious group in forcing their children to salute the flag (considered to be the bowing to an idol) did not at all result in eliminating the practice from any public schools. These children were tolerantly granted permission to not salute, yet they still had to witness its occurrence. In another instance, parents in Tennessee (Mozart v. Hawkins County School District, 1988) wanted their children excused from reading materials that violated their religious beliefs. In this case, the children were not allowed even to be excused from using the materials nor to be able to use substitute materials instead. Thus the court did decide what is and what is not religious in nature, and it did so differently for each of the appellants. Furthermore, such decisions, like removing prayer, affects all children regardless of their religious persuasion.

The bottom line to all of this is that even if the decisions were all equitable, they would still be religiously oriented. Neutrality, as should now be obvious, is just not possible. Chief Justice Burger was beginning to see the light when he said (Lemon v. Kurtzman, 1971), "what would appear to some to be essential to good citizenship might well for others border on or constitute instruction in religion" (Warshaw, 1979, p. 58).

True neutrality means that, for instance, "the public schools cannot teach that all men ought to worship God ... that we ought to tell the truth because God wills it ... equally, they cannot teach anything which implies disagreement with any of these beliefs. They cannot teach that we ought to eat, drink, and be merry because tomorrow we die and are gone forever" (Wolterstorff, 1967, p. 11). Obviously, true neutrality is impossible to achieve!

Departing from the philosophical kind of reasoning above, the same thing has been said more directly in several ways. As admitted by humanist advocate Charles Francis Potter (1930), the United States has established the school in the place of the disestablished church: "This nation thus committed its life to the humanistic position long before such a faith was thought of as a religion" (p. 127). Accordingly, that which goes on in public schools as an alternative to the church has been declared as religious in a number of different court cases. In the Supreme Court 1963 Abington v. Schempp decision, Justice Clark said "the state may not establish a religion of secularism" (Whitehead, 1982, p. 110). And according to Neuhaus (1987), secular humanism apparently qualifies as a religion whether substantively or functionally defined.

In a 1982 Alabama court case, the judge noted that "the religions of atheism, materialism, agnosticism, communism, and socialism have escaped the scrutiny of the courts throughout the years, and make no mistake, these are to the believers religions; they are ardently adhered to and quantitatively advanced in the teachings and literature that is presented to the fertile minds of the students in various school systems" (McCarthy, 1983, p. 92). The judge further noted that "it is time to recognize that the constitutional definition of religion encompasses more than Christianity and prohibits as well the establishment of a secular religion" (p. 92).

In the 1961 Torcaso v. Watkins case, the U.S. Supreme Court footnoted, "Among religions in this country which do not teach what would commonly be considered a belief in the existence of God are Buddhism, Taoism, Ethical Culture, Secular Humanism and others" (Rice, 1978, p. 856). In this case, the court formally included in the sphere of religion those "based on a belief in the existence of God" as well as "those religions founded on different beliefs." Apparently, the humanist churches of secular humanism even qualify for religious tax exemption by the Internal Revenue Service (cf., The Journal, 1995, p. 1): "Indeed, the preamble of the American Humanist Association states that the AHA is itself a ‘religious organization.’ Leaders in the popular movement -- from Dewey to Lamont, from Kurtz to Beattie -- have repeatedly, or at key stages, identified humanism as a religion... Indeed, this document [Humanist Manifesto I] implies that humanism is the highest realization of man’s religious aspirations" (p. 6).

Another belief system, that of Transcendental Meditation as practiced in the public schools, was declared an advancement of religion which thus violated the First Amendment (Malnak v. Yogi, 1979 -- McCarthy, 1983, p. 78). All of this is to acknowledge that belief systems that are promoted in public schools, even though they are not thought of as stereotypical religions, are religions.

Though this appears to be a phenomenon of only the last several decades in terms of expanding the nature of religion, this is not at all the case. This phenomenon has been documented for at least the last several hundred years. Interestingly, it is incisively spoken to via several different situations of the mid-1800s in the United States. The first to be discussed occurred in Massachusetts, the state that was for so long the national trend setter in education. Here, Horace Mann promoted what was supposedly a non-offensive permission of Bible use in the classroom. In his last annual address as school superintendent (Mann, 1849), he said that the charges claiming that he "attempted to exclude religious instruction from the school, or to  exclude the Bible from the school, or to impair the force of that volume, arising out of itself, are now, and always have been, without substance or semblance of truth ..." (p.116). He went on to say that the educational "system earnestly inculcates all Christian morals; it founds its morals on the basis of religion; it welcomes the religion of the Bible; and in receiving the Bible, it allows it to do what it is allowed to do in no other system -- to speak for itself" (p. 117). The rationale behind Mann’s actions was that the Bible was to be used but not explained, allowing it "to speak for itself" so that sectarian instruction would not occur and so that any of various sects would not be offended. Yet his being charged with exactly the opposite of what he claimed to promote points to equivocation on someone’s part.

Mann’s true position on the Bible seems to be quite the opposite of what he publicly claimed. As Pfeffer (1967) wonders, " ... it is difficult to believe that Mann could accept the practicability of nonsectarian comment -- even limited to the exposition of the text" (p. 334). Others who have studied Mann’s actions in depth claim that he was actually promoting the religion of Unitarianism in the schools. In denying the opportunity for the Bible to be verbally taught while at the same time promoting the natural and innate capacities of mankind, Mann was surreptitiously implanting natural religion in the schools. Mann believed in the ideas of natural law and human reason: "[B]ut, for myself, natural religion stands as pre-eminent over revealed religion as the deepest experience ... It gives us a feeling of truth; and however much the lights of revealed religion may have guided the generations of men amid this darkness of mortality, yet I believe that the time is coming when the light of natural religion will be to that of revealed as the rising sun to the daystar that preceded it" (Blumenfeld, 1985, pp. 199-200). In writing to phrenologist Combe, Mann favorably acknowledged "the religious truths contained in your ‘Constitution of Man’ " (Blumenfeld, 1985, p. 209) and commented that Combe’s "system contained all there is of truth in orthodoxy" (p. 210). The insidious nature of substitutionary religion in public schools is revealed in the way Mann promoted it by supposedly endorsing use of the Bible.

It appears that Mann was able to carry out his subterfuge by couching his natural religion in references to God and the Bible -- just as long as these terms were defined his way and not the way of mainstream theologians. For instance, in writing to congratulate Combe on the large sales of his book, Mann said, "this fact is most cheering to those who wait for the coming of the intellectual Messiah..." (p. 231). Make no mistake about it, the vision Mann had for public schools was nothing less than sacred. It was "superiminant over all other institutions" and through it "nine-tenths of the crimes in the penal code would become obsolete; the long catalogue of human ills would be abridged; men would walk more safely by day; every pillow would be more inviolable by night; property, life, and character held by a stronger tenure; all rational hopes respecting the future brightened" (Blumenfeld, 1985, p. 211). In describing school buildings, Mann called each "a beautiful temple ... dedicated to the noble purpose of improving the rising generation ... fulfilling the sacred object of its erection" (p. 192).

Another situation of approximately this same time period involved a dispute between Protestants and Catholics in New York. While the details of the matter are not of concern, several observations made during the debate are worthy of note. First, in protesting the Protestant claims as to the neutrality of public school instruction, Catholic Bishop Hughes noted that regardless of the supposed neutrality of moral instruction in the public schools, it violated Catholic consciences and therefore did address matters of religion. In what amounted to religious arrogance, the lawyer for the public schools, Hiram Ketchum, claimed that the schools had the "right to declare moral truths" (McCarthy, 1987, p. 65). Second, seeing the wisdom of Bishop Hughes’ observation, John C. Spencer, New York Secretary of State, noted that "no books can be found, no reading lessons can be selected, which do not contain more or less some principles of religious faith, either directly avoided, or indirectly assumed." Accordingly, instruction must always "favor one set of opinions in opposition to another, or others; and it is believed that this always will be the result, in any course of education that the wit of man can devise" (McCarthy, et al., 1981, p. 91). From this position, Spencer argued that to do justice, public funds should be equally distributed to all schools, regardless of their "religious" orientation.

The basic foundation of the above two accounts is found earlier in U.S. history. It was due to the fact that, as Mead said,

W. S. Hudson in his book The Great Tradition of the American Churches (1953, p. 161) noted that "the New Theology was essentially a culture religion" (see Mead, 1963, p. 154). In this same view, Williams (1969) argues that "a culture is above everything else a faith, a set of shared convictions, a spiritual entity," and thus "systematic and universal indoctrination is essential in the values on which a society is based." According to Mead (1963, p. 69), this is the "first assumption underlying an established church." The second assumption is that "the institution responsible for inculcating the basic beliefs must have behind it the coercive power of the state" (p. 70). According to Williams, this has to be and in fact is the public school system since no other agency "is in as strategic a position to teach democracy and to bring the majority of our people to a religious devotion to the democratic way of life" even though this invariably means "giving the power of wholesale religious indoctrination into the hands of politicians..." (p. 70). Furthermore, Williams believes that Jefferson was too optimistic in believing that the many sects of the land could instill the necessary virtues for national survival. Thus, for purposes of governmental well-being, civil authority must take over and limit even religious freedom by teaching "the democratic ideal as religion" (p. 71). Mead and Williams both lead us to the proverbial question, "Can the ends ever justify the means?"

As often as Jefferson has been discussed in this text, the above suggests that even more is needed. As McCarthy, et al., note (1982, p. 41), Jefferson thought clergy were tyrants of people’s minds and aristocrats were tyrants over the people’s bodies and property. His quest was to free people and to do it by way of free public education. He, in fact, was the first American to formalize this doctrine, and it has pervaded American educational philosophy ever since: "If the condition of man is to be progressively ameliorated, as we fondly hope and believe, education is to be the chief instrument in effecting it." As the people become so enlightened, "tyranny and oppression of body and mind will vanish like evil spirits at the dawn of day" (Pfeffer, 1967, p. 327).

For Jefferson, the public school was to promote morality, personal goodness, and a patriotic duty to society. While this may be all well and good, it was Jefferson’s religion, and public schools were the vehicle to promote this religion onto all the people. In total, Jefferson held to the Enlightenment view of life wherein reason is higher than faith. That is, reason would not only be the ultimate determiner of truth, but it would also provide even the moral idea of what ought to be, and by it religious truth would be judged. Just as with Mann, Jefferson’s meanings of religious terms, like the nature of God, were out of sync with those of mainstream theologians. For instance, he said, "I can never join Calvin in addressing his God. He was indeed an atheist, which I can never be; or rather his religion was daemonism. If ever man worshipped a false God, he did. The Being described in his five points, is not the God whom you and I acknowledge and adore..." (McCarthy, et al., 1982, p. 26).

Lest we miss the point, it was not Jefferson’s religious differences per se with others more orthodox that is the concern here. No, it is the dangerous and ever so subtle perspective that religion was to be private to each individual without allowance into the public and institutional realm. Jefferson promoted and the majority accepted the notion that life in general operated by rational and naturalistic principles while it was only the private and clearly ecclesiastical institutions (i.e., church) where truly religious (e.g., biblical) teachings were to be practiced. Thus life in general and education in particular followed the natural theology of republicanism. Children were to be taught in public schools according to the dogma of civic morality and virtuous citizenship. The raising of the moral fiber of the citizenry was to be accomplished through education with its emphasis on virtue, tolerance, and the cultivation of rational powers.

Just as Jefferson said of the various religions at his University of Virginia, he wanted to "liberalize and neutralize their prejudices, and make the general religion a religion of peace, reason, and morality" (Lee, 1961, p. 79). Religious instruction in the public schools "was to be approached only from the point of view of strict dogmatic rationalism" (Healy, 1961, p. 177). Drawing from McCarthy, et al. (1982), we see that several scholars considered Jefferson to be the promoter of a religion, albeit rationalistic, in the public schools. Conant (1970), for instance, is cited as believing that Jefferson was transferring to America the Scottish idea of developing a Christian nation via the public school system. Namely, Jefferson is viewed as using the monopolistic public education system "to secure religious freedom and personal liberty in the new republic..." (p. 40).

The vision of Thomas Jefferson was that "sectarian churches were to be disestablished and replaced by a public school establishment. One of the goals of the new establishment would be the spread of a public (as in republican) faith through society ... and Jefferson saw nothing wrong with indoctrinating students into a philosophy of government as long as it corresponded to his understanding of orthodoxy" (McCarthy, et al., 1981, pp. 82, 85). And the reason it was a matter of orthodoxy was because civil and moral order were considered by Jefferson as the way to affirm God’s plan and destiny for mankind (cf., Little, 1974, p. 195). Jefferson believed that God endowed mankind with a sense of moral right and wrong, and in this sense, education would be the vehicle to make inborn virtue manifest not to mention vindicate his naturalistic position versus the spiritual salvation message of mainstream Christianity against which he was so opposed.

Related Links

Tyranny Through Public Education - Central

Definition of Tyranny, and The Setting

Opening Quotes, Example Injustices, and Acknowledgements

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Chapter 10 Part 2

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