In this episode, Dr. M. Elizabeth Thorpe is joined by Producer Carl Thorpe for a brief discussion of prayer and the Bible in public schools and their experiences as educators.
Transcript
DDM [00:03] Hello and welcome to The Priest and the Prof. I am your host, the Rev. Deborah Duguid-May.
MET [00:09] And I’m Dr. M. Elizabeth Thorpe.
DDM [00:11] This podcast is a product of Trinity Episcopal Church in Greece, New York. I’m an Episcopal priest of 26 years, and Elizabeth has been a rhetoric professor since 2010. And so join us as we explore the intersections of faith, community, politics, philosophy, and action.
MET [00:38] Hello, it is good to be with you. Producer Carl is with me today, and we are here to talk to you about our experiences both as people of faith and as educators. One time, years ago, I had my students in political rhetoric do some group projects on major political and cultural issues of the day. One group got prayer in school. The group got up there and they were setting up their slides and getting ready in general, and then they turned to the class and they said, “Okay, we’re ready.” And one woman who I knew to be pretty conservative and religious said, “Okay, before we start, I’d like for us all to bow our heads and start with a word of prayer.” And everyone in the group clasped their hands and bowed their heads. You could feel the chill run through the room. The rest of the class started shifting very uncomfortably and some of them gasped. I was ready to jump out of my seat and say, “Whoa, whoa, whoa, let’s calm down here.” When the woman raised her head, opened her eyes wide and said, “Just kidding, but your reaction gets us ready to talk about today’s topic.” There was a collective sigh of relief and many people laughed out loud.
MET [02:00] It was easily one of the most memorable intros to a presentation I have ever had in one of my classes, and I don’t think I will ever forget it. No lie. I loved it. I thought it was perfect. I gave them a ton of points for that. But this woman was exactly right. For most people, the notion of prayer in class makes us really uncomfortable. But at the same time, there are some people who think it is absolutely essential.
MET [02:31] I grew up doing things like see you at the poll, which if you did not grow up in an environment where people were constantly trying to shove religion anywhere and everywhere, it was a yearly event where students gathered before school and gathered around the flagpole to pray. I guess we were supposed to pray for our schools or the nation, but that was never really made clear. We were just kids who were supposed to pray. And we did, and we sang our God is an awesome God and we’re our best evangelical selves. And there were signs up all over my church that said quippy things like, “As long as there are tests, there will be prayers in school.” I was surrounded by folks who generally believed that things would be better if we could shove as much Christianity into school as possible. I did not know this was a relatively new attitude, but I’ll get to that in a minute.
MET [03:27] For just a second, I’m going to ask Carl to give us a tiny bit of insight as someone who was a K through 12 teacher. Carl, can you tell us about your experience as a junior high teacher dealing with religion and school?
CRT [03:40] Sure. Back in Texas, I worked for two years as a paraprofessional at a wealthy elementary school and then three years as a classroom teacher at a low income middle school. Every morning, we had a moment of silence after the Pledge of Allegiance to both the American flag and the Texas flag, which is very weird, but that’s something for another day. This was intended to be a time where students and staff could pray silently if they wanted. We were supposed to ensure that our students were motionless and silent during this brief time. Many teachers required students to stand. Now let’s ignore for a moment the students who were not religious in any way. And let’s be honest, Texas most certainly didn’t take any of them into account either.
CRT [04:20] This was supposed to be non-sectarian. However, I often wondered about those students whose former prayer wasn’t respected by this. What about those students whose former prayer were supposed to be audible or who prayed in a prostate position or prayed facing a specific direction? A moment of silence privileges those whose faith allows for silent, private individual prayer. And honestly, even the groups who definitely could and did engage in silent private prayer, such as those who organized and attended to see you at a poll event Elizabeth described, would have preferred audible, specifically Christian prayer if they could have gotten away with it. The moment of silence was the best they could get away with at that time.
CRT [04:59] And speaking of CU at the poll, at the middle school I taught at, this was not a once a year thing. It was at least weekly and at times more than that. And many faculty and staff members participated, including the principal and some of the vice principals of the school. The students who participated were given more leeway in terms of behavior and discipline because they were good Christians who made mistakes. Rumor had it that the administrators who participated often prayed for forgiveness with students who were sent to their office as one part of their punishment for behavior issues and let off the hook, so to speak. Teachers who wanted to participate were excused from before school duties such as monitoring students coming off buses, et cetera, so they could go pray. Administrators and other teachers would say things like, “I haven’t seen you at the flagpole. You know it lets our students know how much we love them and respect them when we participate.”
MET [05:47] I wanna be very clear so much of that is so illegal.
MET [05:51] Also, historically, it hasn’t always been this way. Believe it or not, Baptists were some of the chief opponents of prayer in school for a long time, right up until the time the moral majority, which we have talked about before, took over American politics. And for some people, this seems so counterintuitive. Surely the largest evangelical group in the nation would want prayer in school, right? That’s what so many of us have learned for most of our lives. But no. For most of the Baptist tradition, there was a persistent effort to keep religion out of schools and other manifestations of state.
MET [06:37] So let’s talk about why. Let’s say you decide to make a public prayer at something like a town hall meeting or a school event. That’s a state sanctioned happening, right? Which means the state gives tacit approval for everything that happens. So, the state has a vested interest in what is said, which means the state has a controlling interest in what is said. In short, the state may have a say in what you say in your prayer. If you pray at a state event, the state gets to have a say in that prayer. For example, a lot of places have said you can have a prayer as long as it is inclusive and represents a number of belief systems. A Baptist of yester year might say, “No. When I pray, I pray to Jesus Christ, son of God, creator of the universe, and it is an infringement on my religion for you to tell me I have to pray to anything or anyone different.” In other words, historically, the more conservative religious groups wanted to keep religion out of the state because they wanted to keep state out of religion.
MET [07:54] The problem with combining the two is that it is not a one-way street. Once you inject religion into the state, it is impossible for the state not to become part of religion. And that may be great if you pray to the state, which quite frankly, a lot of so- called Christians right now do. But if you pray to Jesus who rejected worldly power, this is pretty much as blasphemous as it gets.
MET [08:22] Of course, I come with receipts. I’m going to give you a brief rundown of some of the most significant court cases dealing with religion in schools to give you some idea of how this is trending. The first case I want to talk about is Engel v. Vitale. What happened was the New York State Board of Regents authorized a short, voluntary prayer for recitation at the start of each school day. A group of organizations joined forces in challenging the prayer, claiming that it violated the establishment clause of the First Amendment. The question at hand was, does the reading of a non-denominational prayer at the start of the school day violate the establishment of religion clause at the First Amendment? The court held that the state cannot hold prayers in public schools, even if participation is not required and the prayer is not tied to a particular religion.
MET [09:21] In an opinion authored by Hugo L. Black, the court held that respondent’s decision to use its school system to facilitate recitation of an official prayer violated the establishment clause. Specifically, the policy breached the constitutional wall of separation between church and state. The court ruled that the constitutional prohibition of laws establishing religion meant that the government had no business drafting formal prayers for any segment of its population to repeat in a government-sponsored religious program. The court held that the respondent’s provision of the contested daily prayer was inconsistent with the establishment clause. Okay, that’s a lot of complicated words to say that you can’t voice prayers over the PA system or whatever, even if they are voluntary.
MET [10:14] For the record, this would come up again in Santa Fe v. Doe when there was a case over prayers at football games. That’s a complicated question because for decades, it was illegal for schools to have prayers before football games, but schools did it all the time anyway. Then in 2022, there was another prayer at Football Games case about a coach leading his team, and they decided that was acceptable, even though it was quite public. For the record, I have a huge problem with that case and wrote a whole book chapter on it. So if you want my thoughts, send me an email and I’ll shoot you the whole document.
MET [10:54] A second case from 1963 is Abington School District v. Shchempp. The facts of the case are that under Pennsylvania law, public schools were required to read from the Bible at the opening of each school day. The school district sought to enjoin enforcement of the statute. The district court ruled that the statute violated the First Amendment even after the statute had been amended to permit a student to excuse himself. The question was, did the Pennsylvania law requiring public school students to participate in classroom religious exercises violate the religious freedom of students as protected by the First and 14th Amendments? And the court decided public schools cannot sponsor Bible readings and recitations of the Lord’s prayer under the First Amendment’s establishment clause. It’s wild to think of a time when this was a question. At the same time, there are a lot of people out there right now who are trying to shoehorn the Bible into classrooms. So what are we thinking?
MET [12:06] Lemon v. Kurtzman is a particularly important case, both for the test it led to and for how it is largely being ignored by modern courts. Both Pennsylvania and Rhode Island adopted statutes that provided for the state to pay for aspects of non-secular, non-public education. The Pennsylvania statute was passed in 1968 and provided funding for non-public elementary and secondary school teachers salaries, textbooks, and instructional materials for secular subjects. Rhode Island’s statute was passed in 1969 and provided state financial support for non-public elementary schools in the form of supplementing 15% of teachers’ annual salaries. The appellants in the Pennsylvania case represented citizens and taxpayers in Pennsylvania who believed that the statute violated the separation of church and state described in the First Amendment.
MET [13:14] Appellant Lemon also had a child in Pennsylvania public school. The district court granted the state official’s motion to dismiss the case. In the Rhode Island case, the epelees were citizens and taxpayers of Rhode Island who sued to have the statute in question declared unconstitutional by arguing that it violated the establishment clause of the First Amendment. The District Court found in favor of the Appalees and held that the state violated the First Amendment. Okay. So the question in all of this is, do the statutes that provide state funding for non-public, non-secular schools violate the establishment clause of the First Amendment? The court held that a statute must pass a three-pronged test in order to avoid violating the establishment clause. The statute must have a secular legislative purpose. Its principle or primary effect must be one that neither promotes nor inhibits religion, and it must not foster excessive government entanglement with religion. The court held that both the state statutes in question had secular legislative purposes because they reflected the desire of the state to ensure minimum secular education requirements were being met in the non-public schools.
MET [14:45] Now I’m gonna shift gears for just a second. Kitzmiller v. Dover is a case that doesn’t always come up in these conversations, but I think it’s important. The Dover case is actually about intelligent design. I include it here because after evangelicals seem to have lost the prayer in school’s battle, until recently, they turned their eyes to science classes. It is not an exaggeration to say that intelligent design is one big bit of hogum. If you’re not familiar, it is an alternative theory to evolution that some states have tried to shove into science classes and argue that it wasn’t evolution, but an intelligent designer that created the world. And I love that. It isn’t God, just some unnamed, far off, intelligent designer that created the world and absolutely did not follow the laws of established science, but set the world down whole cloth. It is creationism without Genesis. It is garbage, but Christians love to propose it as an alternative scientific theory that fills in the gaps. Friends, it is not scientific, and there are no gaps. I remember a student years ago in a class announced that evolution couldn’t be accurate because there was a missing link. I told them, “The missing link you are looking for is Australopithecus africanus, and we’ve known about it for decades, and just because most people are wildly ignorant of science doesn’t mean we should teach people to be more ignorant.” My students were shocked, offended, and educated. In 2004, the Dover School Board mandated that biology teachers mention intelligent design as an alternative to evolution using the textbook of pandas and people.
MET [16:54] This one didn’t even make it to SCOTUS. It stopped at lower levels. The judge concluded that intelligent design is not science and cannot decouple itself from its creationist and thus religious antecedents. The decision deemed the policy unconstitutional and halted efforts to introduce ID into public school curricula nationwide. One of the most recent ways we have seen all this rear its ugly head is in places like Texas and Alabama, where states have tried to make laws requiring states to place the 10 commandments in classes.
MET [17:32] A case that has come up is Stone v. Graham. Sydell Stone and a number of other parents challenged a Kentucky state law that required the posting of a copy of the 10 Commandments in each public school classroom. They filed a claim against James Graham, the superintendent of public schools in Kentucky. The court ruled that the Kentucky law violated the first part of the test established in Lemon v. Kurtzman, and thus violated the establishment clause of the Constitution. The court found that the requirement that the 10 Commandments be posted had no secular legislative purpose and was plainly religious in nature. The court noted that the commandments did not confine themselves to arguably secular matters, such as murder, stealing, et cetera, but rather concerned matters such as the worship of God and the observance of the Sabbath Day.
MET [18:26] Look, if it isn’t clear by now, this is a mess. The rules change depending on the court and half the time red states don’t follow the law anyway.
CRT [18:36] I don’t know if you know this, but there isn’t just one list of 10 commandments among Christians. The Catholic and some Lutheran versions combine having no other gods and making no graven images into the first commandment, whereas Protestant traditions separate those into the first two. For Catholics and against some Lutherans covering your neighbor’s wife and your neighbor’s possessions are divided into the ninth and 10th commandments, while other Protestant traditions combine them into the 10th, which carries an off-putting emphasis on your neighbor’s wife being one of his possessions. In Texas, for example, they mandate the Protestant version of the 10 commandments as found in the King James version of the Bible, excluding the Catholic version, which again is probably intentional. So even something that claims to be non-denominational most certainly isn’t.
CRT [19:22] Similarly, mandates for teaching Bibles in schools usually privilege one specific translation over others. Again, Catholics and some Orthodox churches include a set of books often referred to as the apocrypha in their Bibles, and they are usually excluded from versions specified in these mandates. So even if you are 100% on board with biblical principles and texts being taught in public schools, students of other denominations of the religion that these laws and mandates seek to privilege are still being excluded.
MET [19:51] Okay. So what does all of this say about our faith? Honestly, I don’t think it’s anything good. If we are so unsure about our faith and insecure about it that we feel the state has to mandate it, then we are not doing our jobs. If we are willing to turn our religion over to the state to take care of its keep because we need the power of the state to keep it going, then we are failures. I don’t think the drive to put religion in schools indicates any great belief in the great commission. I think it represents a profound lack of confidence in your own beliefs. If your beliefs are so small and so fragile that you depend on the state to make them valid, then that’s not faith. That’s bureaucracy. And I do not believe Jesus came to be a bureaucrat. I do not believe salvation comes in the classroom. I do not believe we can depend on the power of the state to justify our faith, and if you do, then your faith is ridiculously weak. We talked just recently about God and the public, and I think there is a place for that, but I would never depend on the state to be the source of my religion, and I am thoroughly convinced that it is an unchrist-like way to approach Christianity.
MET [26:30] Thank you for listening to The Priest and The Prof. find us at our website, https://priestandprof.org. If you have any questions or concerns, feel free to contact us at podcast@priestandprof.org. Make sure to subscribe, and if you feel led, please leave a donation at https://priestandprof.org/donate/. That will help cover the cost of this podcast and support the ministries of Trinity Episcopal Church. Thank you, and we hope you have enjoyed our time together today.
DDM [27:00] Music by Audionautix.
Leave a Reply