The Christian Right and American Public Education: 1980-2005

INTRODUCTION In the early 1990s, two local school districts in Michigan were unveiling their educational restructuring plans when a group of local residents objected to the changes. On a hot July evening, the opponents detailed their objections at the local YMCA. The meeting was unusual because the spokesperson announced at the beginning of the meeting that the presenters would be heard without interruption and that when they had finished the meeting would end without any questions or comments from those gathered to hear them. The charges ranged from the promotion of secular humanism to the destruction of the authority of the family over their school-aged children. The consultants hired by the districts to develop the educational reforms and train teachers had never encountered such opposition before even though they had been involved in the educational leadership issues for years. After the meeting, at which I was present, I gathered as much material as I could from the tables at the back of the room and I began to inquire about the presenters' backgrounds. Over the next few days I discovered that the criticisms leveled by the local presenters were taken from materials that had been circulated nation-wide by groups with various names. This investigation proved to be my entry into the Christian Right's agenda for public education. In the course of my research I discovered that, outside the field of political science, scholars little had paid little attention to the movement. My interest differed from that of the political scientists. I was interested in the Christian Right as a coherent social movement and in its theological foundations. My research led me to the conclusion that the Christian Right has a coherent structure and that it is grounded in a particular set of theological assumptions. In this paper I argue that those assumptions become evident in an analysis of Christian Right criticisms of contemporary public education. RELIGION AND PUBLIC EDUCATION IN CONTEMPORARY AMERICA The religion clauses of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution provide both the foundation and the source of potential conflict for the inclusion of religion in the public schools. School administrators, staff, and faculty are governed by the establishment clause. This prohibits them from using their positions to promote their own religious beliefs or to promote religious belief and practice in general. Students, on the other hand, are governed by the free exercise clause, which holds that no government institution, public schools included, may prohibit students from expressing their own religious beliefs in an appropriate manner. Problems arise when these two principles come into conflict, overlap, or are misinterpreted or misapplied by school personnel, students, or parents. The most common problems center on such issues as school prayer, religious holidays, student religious practices, released time programs, teaching about religion in a classroom setting, Pledge of Allegiance and religious expression, religious clubs, the religious rights of teachers, distribution of religious literature, and graduation ceremonies. More recently, school vouchers and the posting of the Ten Commandments have become contested issues. The number of issues listed here suggests the complexity of the problem. The First Amendment Center in Arlington, Virginia, provides a detailed discussion of these issues and resources for religion and public school conflicts. (1) The amount of litigation over religious issues in the public schools has increased dramatically since 1990. This is a result, in part, of a growing awareness among parents of children matriculating in the public schools of the religious freedoms of their children. It is also partially attributable to school officials who err in their application of existing legal precedents when confronted by a parental, student, or employee challenge. …