Persecution: How Liberals Are Waging War Against Christians

Introduction

THIS BOOK CHRONICLES discrimination against Christians in American society. While tolerance is touted as the highest virtue in our popular culture, Christians are often subjected to scorn and ridicule and denied their religious freedoms. In no way does this book mean to imply that other groups are not subjected to discrimination or to deny the seriousness of that discrimination. The difference, however, is that it seems that when other groups (or individuals from those groups) experience discrimination or mistreatment the popular culture properly decries it. But when it comes to anti-Christian discrimination, the culture’s attitude seems to be, Yes, please do shut up those Bible-thumping idiots!

Anti-Christian discrimination occurs in a variety of contexts throughout our culture, from the public sector to the private sector, in the mainstream media and in Hollywood, in the public education system and in our universities. Often the discrimination comes from activist judges misinterpreting the law (the hostility to Christian religious freedom infects our judiciary as much as anywhere else); other times it comes from entities misapplying the law. It also comes from what we call political correctness. The discrimination mostly stems from a hostility to Christianity and from rampant disinformation in our society about what the Constitution actually requires in terms of the so-called separation of church and state.

Though there is a significant body of law safeguarding religious liberties, the law is not always followed—even when the courts interpret it correctly (in accordance with the framers’ original intent). Now, it is also true that though the courts, including the Supreme Court, have often ruled directly against the obvious original intent of the Constitution, I can’t always say their rulings are unconstitutional. Why? Because the law is what the highest court says it is. Even if it’s wrong, the court is the final arbiter. What I can say is that these rulings ought to be seen by the Court as unconstitutional. This highlights why the appointment of Supreme Court justices and other appellate judges who hold to the original intent of the Constitution is so vital to the preservation of our liberties. When we cast our ballots for politicians, we should think about that.

Anti-Christian discrimination in our society is getting more blatant and more widespread every day. The cultural assumptions of our society influence changes in the law, and the culture is moving against the public expression of Christian belief. The famous prayer case we discuss later, Engel v. Vitale (1962), could not have occurred at any other time in our history. And since 1962, the wedge of secularism against the public expression of Christianity has been driven much, much farther.

The fundamental issue, as mentioned earlier, is that people freely throw around phrases, such as the separation of church and state, without understanding their true meaning, especially under the Constitution as originally written. So let’s establish a few basic facts.

First, we must recognize that the framers believed that religious freedom was of paramount importance; it was a primary reason for emigration to America. Religious freedom was so important to them that they sought to guaranty it by the placement of two separate clauses in the very first amendment to the Constitution. The First Amendment begins with the two clauses back to back: Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof . . . The first clause is known as The Establishment Clause and the second, the Free Exercise Clause.

You’ll note there is no language in either—or anywhere else in the Constitution—mandating a wall of separation between church and state. That phrase, as we’ll see in Chapter One, comes from a letter of Thomas Jefferson, several years after the Constitution and Bill of Rights were well in place. Moreover, the phrase has been taken out of context, distorting what Jefferson meant. Nevertheless, those advocating a strict separation (often referred to in this book as separationists), point to the Establishment Clause as evidence the framers intended a strict separation.

But it’s important to understand that both clauses, the Establishment Clause and the Free Exercise Clause, were adopted by the framers for the explicit purpose of promoting, not suppressing religious freedom. That may be obvious with the Free Exercise Clause—its literal language says as much—but people tend to overlook it with the Establishment Clause. The purpose of the Establishment Clause was to prevent the federal government from establishing a particular denominational religion that would serve to inhibit our religious freedoms; it was not intended to keep Christianity out of the public square. Yet today the Establishment Clause is routinely used to suppress people’s free exercise rights of religion in our schools and in public life.

Of course, one of the problems of applying original intent analysis to these issues is that the relationship between government and education today is radically different from how it was at the time of the nation’s founding.

In the first place, the Establishment Clause only restricted the federal government, not the states. Its language makes that quite clear, Congress shall make no law. . . At the time of the ratification of the First Amendment, many states in fact had state-established religions. There is no better evidence—besides its plain language—that the Establishment Clause was never intended to prevent state governments from establishing their own religions. Again, the language of the clause is instructive. "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion." That clearly meant that the federal government was precluded from establishing a national religion, but also that the federal government was precluded from interfering with the right of individual states to do as they pleased respecting the establishment of their own religions. Later, of course, the Fourteenth Amendment was ratified and the Supreme Court, in a series of abhorrent decisions we will discuss later, ruled that the First Amendment Establishment Clause was applicable to the states through incorporation in the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.

While there is no question that these decisions were gross examples of judicial activism and that the Fourteenth Amendment was never intended to constitute a federal restriction on the state’s right to establish a religion, these precedents are now the law of the land. Worse, though, is that as government has grown, so too have its restrictions on the free exercise of religion.

The courts say that public schools, because they are partially funded by federal money (First Amendment) and because they are predominantly funded by state money (Fourteenth Amendment) cannot engage in activities that are deemed an endorsement of a religion. Just the slightest nod to a religion will be enough to trigger an Establishment Clause violation. As we’ll see, many schools and courts take this to absurd extremes, and to get to these absurd extremes they have had to torture the original intent of the Constitution.

Indeed, we should remember that when the Constitution was written, Christian religious instruction was the primary purpose of education. To the extent that we can imagine public schools being endorsed by the founders, we can be certain that they would not have objected to religious instruction, but would have insisted on it. If the founders could have anticipated that our schools would become a government near-monopoly and that the Establishment Clause would be stretched beyond recognition to prohibit Christian instruction, I think it’s safe to say they would have opposed public education altogether.

We all know the framers were among the wisest men in history. Ignoring their original intent for the First Amendment of the Constitution, as we shall see, has already had alarming consequences for our precious freedoms. And unless we do something about it, it’s going to get worse, seriously worse.

part I

The War in Our Public Schools

Discrimination against Christians and the suppression of Christian religious expression pervade our society, and its perpetrators are legion. This survey begins by examining our country’s education system, for two reasons. First, modern misinterpretations of the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause—Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion—are often rooted in Everson v. Board of Education,¹ a 1947 Supreme Court case dealing with public funds and education. Second, because education plays such an important role in shaping children’s values and worldviews, it greatly influences the character and future of our society. Today’s social engineers recognize this, which is why they have tried to convert our public school classrooms into laboratories for social transformation.

The anti-Christian tenor of these social engineers after World War II and especially since the 1960s represents a dramatic change in American history. Most Americans would probably be shocked to discover the dominant influence of Christianity in America’s colonial culture and schools, where the Bible was routinely used as a textbook.

Before some of you panic, be assured that this book does not advocate a return to a Christian-oriented education in our public schools, though it does encourage educational freedom. The federal education bureaucracy should relax its chokehold on our education system, including its opposition to the school choice and homeschooling movements. But we must understand that when virtually every vestige of Christianity, including its associated values, is meticulously removed from public schools, something has to replace that void. And it has. While the education establishment vigorously opposes the dissemination in schools of any value or belief that can be remotely traced to the Bible, it affirmatively endorses other values that many Christians find repugnant. Public schools are replete with values-laden curricula, from sex education and sexual orientation instruction to notions of self-esteem and death education.

Ideally, the schools should strive for neutrality on matters of religion—at least in expressing a preference for one over the other. But, in reality, our children are often being inculcated with values and attitudes that conflict with or are hostile to Christianity.

There has been a systematic sweeping away of all things Christian from our public schools, combined with a sweeping in of secularism. Chapters One and Two chronicle the elimination of Christian ideas, symbols, activities, and expressions from our public schools. Chapters Three and Four document how educators are not remaining neutral, but are embracing secularism. Chapter Five discusses the anti-Christian and pro-secular biases in American universities.

chapter One

Christianity Out, Part 1

CHRISTIAN EXPRESSION IS TREATED as profanity and worse in many public schools and certain federal courts across the nation. In May 1995, Samuel B. Kent, U.S. District judge for the Southern District of Texas, decreed that any student uttering the word Jesus would be arrested and incarcerated for six months. Lest you think this was some month-late April Fools’ joke, the judge expressly avowed his earnestness in his official order. His ruling stated, in part:

And make no mistake, the court is going to have a United States marshal in attendance at the graduation. If any student offends this court, that student will be summarily arrested and will face up to six months incarceration in the Galveston County Jail for contempt of court. Anyone who thinks I’m kidding about this order better think again . . . . Anyone who violates these orders, no kidding, is going to wish that he or she had died as a child when this court gets through with it.²

In fairness, Judge Kent also prohibited references to other deities. The prayer, he said, must not refer to a specific deity by name, whether it be Jesus, Buddha, Mohammad, the Great God Sheba or anyone else. But let’s not fool ourselves. These kinds of cases almost always involve Christian expression, as this one did. In this case, the school district had allowed students to read overtly Christian prayers.³ So while the court’s language was nominally directed toward prayers of all religions, in reality it was targeted solely at Christian prayer, because it was the only kind at issue.

Don’t think the judge’s threat of criminal liability was an isolated aberration. A few years ago, Connecticut law enforcement officials threatened to arrest a man for corrupting the morals of a minor if they could prove he passed out religious tracts to a student.⁴ Even without threats of prosecution, school officials often bear down forcefully on young Christians. For example, a Vermont kindergartner was forbidden to tell his classmates that God is not dead, because such talk was not allowed at school.⁵ School administration officials at a Kentucky public school told a student he was not permitted to pray or even mention God at school.⁶ A teacher in an elementary school in Florida overheard two of her students talking about their faith in Jesus and rebuked them, not for talking in class, but for talking about Christ in class. In no uncertain terms, she ordered them not to discuss Jesus at school.⁷

Teachers are also sometimes targets of their school’s religious discrimination. A school in Edison, New Jersey, reportedly rebuked a substitute teacher for leaving religious literature in the faculty lounge because of its potentially offensive content. Yet the school had allowed other teachers to leave literature trashing the religious right.⁸ A teacher in Los Angeles posted his objection to the school’s celebration of Gay and Lesbian Pride Month on the school bulletin board. Other teachers were routinely permitted to post items on the bulletin board without incident, but this teacher’s post was removed.⁹

Another teacher was singled out in a Denver elementary school, where the principal removed his Bible from the library and also made him remove his personal Bible from his desk, where he kept it to read during silent time. School officials didn’t want that book in the students’ sight, so they prohibited the teacher from reading it and made him hide it during the school day, even though he never read from it to his students.¹⁰ In Ohio, thanks to the National Education Association (NEA), teachers who requested that their mandatory union dues be paid to a charity rather than the union’s politically liberal causes were annually subjected to an invasive questionnaire. For years the NEA has issued this particular scheme to intimidate and harass teachers of faith who dare to challenge their radical agenda, said Stefan Gleason, vice president of the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation. But this case had a happy ending when the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, in response to a religious discrimination suit, ordered the NEA to curtail this practice.¹¹ The NEA and state teachers’ unions use this scheme in other states. But when challenged, they usually meet the same fate. That’s what happened recently in California. To avoid a religious discrimination action, California Teachers Association officials reluctantly consented to redirect an Arcadia elementary school teacher’s monthly union dues to charity because the union’s political and social causes were incompatible with her religious beliefs.¹²

Unfortunately, these are not exceptional cases. They are part of a growing pattern involving anti-Christian discrimination in public schools that originated with relatively modern rulings of the United States Supreme Court. Before we examine the modern era, it will be helpful to familiarize ourselves with the history of education in America and how the nation’s education framework developed from a private into a public system.¹³

Development of Public Education

During the first colonial settlements, American education was decentralized and mostly private—though there was a movement for compulsory education motivated, ironically, by the colonists’ belief in the importance of Christian study. But as we’ll see, around the middle of the nineteenth century, starting in New England, the nation began to establish publicly run and funded schools.¹⁴

Today our government-controlled education system bears no resemblance to the decentralized scheme preceding it. While many people regard public schools as marking a great progressive leap forward for America, the record is much more dismal. Albert Shanker, a former president of the American Federation of Teachers, reflected on this change for the worse: It’s time to admit that public education operates a planned economy, a bureaucratic system in which everybody’s role is spelled out in advance and there are few incentives for innovation and productivity. It’s no surprise that our school system doesn’t improve: It more resembles the communist economy than our own market economy.¹⁵

In early colonial America, parents largely controlled their children’s education, as there were no regulatory boards and no system for teacher certification. Colonial America had common schools that were partially financed through local taxes, but the majority of funding was private. During that time, religious organizations and philanthropists helped to establish free schools for the destitute.¹⁶ The first common schools in America were Christian. This was a completely natural development, because many early settlers came to America as religious congregations seeking to escape religious persecution and to establish their own churches, local governments, and schools. In fact, these early schools were established for the very purpose of Christian religious instruction. There is a simple reason for this. The settlers viewed illiteracy as a great evil because it denied people access to the Bible.¹⁷ Parents wanted to teach their children to read so they could read the Bible, which provided information essential to their daily lives and eternal salvation.¹⁸

Character and Textbooks of the Early Schools

In all the early American schools, including colleges, teaching was restricted mostly to religious instruction. The schools assumed little responsibility for teaching subjects like science, secular literature, or art.¹⁹ The Bible, used for teaching both reading and religion, was the chief textbook in the lower grades, and homes or churches were the classrooms.²⁰ Other textbooks were hornbooks, the New England Primer, and the Bay Psalm Book.²¹

A hornbook consisted of a sheet of parchment pasted to a flat piece of wood with a handle, laminated with animal horn. Hornbooks featured the alphabet and also referenced the Trinity and the text of the Lord’s Prayer.²² In 1690, the New England Primer, an explicitly Christian book, became a central textbook for the Puritans, replacing the hornbook as the chief beginner’s textbook. The Primer contained the names of all the books of the Bible, the Lord’s Prayer, An Alphabet of Lessons for Youth, the Apostles’ Creed, the Ten Commandments, the Westminster Catechism, and Spiritual Milk for American Babes, Drawn out of the Breasts of Both Testaments for their Soul’s Nourishment, by the Reverend John Cotton.²³

The Primer’s Christian emphasis can also be seen in its illustrated rhyming verses for each letter of the alphabet, beginning with In Adam’s fall We sinned all, and ending with Zaccheus he Did Climb a tree His Lord to see. The Primer was a staple of school instruction for more than one hundred years,²⁴ and was second only to the Bible in popularity, with five million copies reportedly in existence for a population of around four million people.²⁵ It was commonly said that the primer taught millions to read, and not one to sin. The Bay Psalm Book rendered the Psalms in verse and was the New England colonists’ hymnal.²⁶ Webster’s Blue-Backed Speller, which was based on God’s Word and originally published in 1783, was used for about one hundred years. Reportedly, through the years more than one hundred million copies of the Speller were sold.²⁷

Not only were textbooks explicitly Christian, but ministers commonly doubled as schoolteachers.²⁸ George Washington firmly believed in the indispensability of Christian training for good government. True religion, he said, affords government its surest support. The future of this nation depends on the Christian training of our youth. It is impossible to govern without the Bible.²⁹ Noah Webster, renowned American educator and founder of the famous dictionary bearing his name, was equally convinced that Christianity and education were mutually dependent. In my view, said Webster, the Christian religion is the most important and one of the first things in which all children under a free government ought to be instructed. . . . No truth is more evident to my mind than that the Christian religion must be the basis of any government intended to secure the rights and privileges of a free people.

Fifty years after the Constitution was ratified, the Christian influence remained dominant in schools, as evidenced by the presence of the Christian-oriented McGuffey’s Readers, compiled by minister and professor William Holmes McGuffey, in schoolhouses throughout the land.³⁰ It is estimated that between eighty and ninety million of these books were sold over the course of their history and at one point more than half of all American schoolchildren used them.³¹

Types of Education

Though education in early colonial America was emphatically religious, it varied in type in different areas of the country. The New England colonies, under the control of the Puritans, developed a compulsory educational system in the early 1600s. People of many different sects, none being dominant, inhabited the Middle Atlantic colonies of New York, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Delaware. Such pluralism made common schools undesirable, and parochial schools sprang up to accommodate the various denominations. The Southern colonies, being geographically and culturally distinct, used the English charity schools—grammar schools aimed at providing a very basic education for the poor in Britain—as their educational model.

New England Colonies

As Calvinists, the New England Puritans believed that education was a principal avenue through which children would become conversant with Scripture. They also considered it essential for society to achieve social and religious stability and to develop a particularly well-read clergy.³² In 1636, John Harvard, a godly Gentleman and a lover of Learning,³³ established Harvard College to raise up a class of learned men for the Christian ministry³⁴ so that the tongues and arts might be taught and learning and piety maintained.³⁵ It has been said that 123 of this nation’s first 126 colleges were of Christian origin.³⁶ In order to prepare children for college, town governments established Latin grammar schools. The clergy sometimes participated in the educational process by teaching certain children the classics, either by tutoring them or by taking them into their families as boarding pupils.³⁷

At first, education was entirely voluntary, but people soon became concerned that too many were neglecting the religious instruction necessary to undergird society and civil government. Such parental negligence as there was in educating children was more a result of difficult living conditions than religious apathy. To keep matters from getting worse, Puritan leaders approached the state governing bodies, which in their world were subordinate to the Church, to pass a law requiring parents and masters to tend to their educational and religious duties.

In response, the colonial legislature of Massachusetts passed the Massachusetts Law of 1642, directing town officials to determine whether children were being trained in learning and labor and other employments profitable to the Commonwealth, and if they were being instructed to read and understand the principles of religion and the capital laws of the country. Violators were subject to fines. This was the first time in the English-speaking world that a representative body of a state government had ordered mandatory reading instruction for all children.³⁸

Notably, the 1642 measure had nothing to do with schools or teachers, just instruction, the responsibility for which remained with parents. But this law didn’t produce the desired results, so the colonial legislature passed another law in 1647, known as the Old Deluder Satan Act, which gets its name from its preamble. The preamble recited the colonists’ belief that one chief point of that old deluder, Satan, [was] to keep men from a knowledge of the Scriptures. Learning, it said, was in jeopardy of being buried in the grave of our fathers in church and commonwealth. As the Puritans believed that ignorant people were more susceptible to Satan’s corruptive power, the law required every town of fifty householders to appoint and compensate a reading and writing teacher. Towns of one hundred householders were to establish Latin grammar schools to train children for college. If they did not, they would be assessed a fine.

It has been said that these two laws of 1642 and 1647, along with the earlier laws of 1634 and 1638—establishing the principle of common taxation of all property for town and colony benefits—were the bedrock upon which the public school system was later founded in America. But in no way did these laws establish an educational system remotely approximating today’s level of government support and control of education.³⁹ It is ironic, given today’s hostile climate toward any presence of Christianity in public schools, that the impetus for compulsory education was the colonists’ determination to instruct their children in the Christian religion. This legislative scheme provided the model for education laws throughout New England, with the exception of Rhode Island, as its founding was grounded in a broader interpretation of religious freedom.⁴⁰ Gradually, compulsory school laws were less stringently enforced and private schools began to flourish, so that by 1720, Boston, for example, had more private schools than taxpayer-supported ones. By the end of the Revolutionary War, many towns in Massachusetts had no publicly supported schools.⁴¹

Middle Atlantic Colonies

Society in the Middle Atlantic colonies was extremely pluralistic. Among the various sects were contingents of Dutch Reformed, Anglican, Lutheran, Quaker, Presbyterian, Roman Catholic, and Jewish. And the people came from different nationalities, including English, Dutch, Swedish, French, Danish, Irish, Scottish, and German.⁴² Education was under control of the churches here too, but since no single denomination controlled the state, the churches operated their schools independently. The clergy often served as teachers in these parochial schools.⁴³ This pattern of mostly private schools persisted through the Revolution and into the first third of the nineteenth century.

Southern Colonies

Various factors, such as its agricultural dependence and plantation culture, deterred a strong sense of community in the South. These factors, along with a sparse population spread over a wide geographical area, worked against the development of formal education and led to the frequent use of tutors, mostly for the children of the elite.⁴⁴ This was in marked contrast to New England, where education was largely driven by community cohesiveness and the Calvinist belief that Christian training was essential for the good of the community. Eventually, however, formal education emerged in certain areas of the South, mainly through the enactment of laws in Virginia and North Carolina requiring orphans and poor children to receive apprentice training in the trades as well as in reading and writing. Beyond these measures, the state exerted little influence over education. Private denominational (charity) schools also sprang up, largely supported by private endowments or gifts.

Though Southern efforts at formal education paled in comparison to the New England system, Southern education was nonetheless steeped in religious instruction. Indeed, early sources confirm that the most prominent characteristic of all the early colonial schooling was the predominance of the religious purpose in instruction . . . . This insistence on the religious element was more prominent in Calvinistic New England than in the colonies to the south, but everywhere, during the early colonial period, the religious purpose was dominant. There was scarcely any other purpose in the maintenance of elementary schools.⁴⁵ Virtually every school owed its existence to a religious purpose. In the absence of such purpose, many believe, the cause of education would have greatly diminished.⁴⁶ And this religious motive for maintaining schools, though waning somewhat, continued to be dominant through the Revolutionary War, after which it began to decline.

Education and the Constitution

The subject of education is notably absent from the body of the Constitution and was mentioned only once in the debates of the Constitutional Convention and then only with the issue of whether a national university should be established at the seat of government. The likely reason is that education was still largely a private issue, with exceptions, and under the control of the church. Thus, under the Tenth Amendment to the Constitution, the matter of education was left to the states. Significantly for later church/state debates, there were few, if any, free schools funded by the government at the time the First Amendment was being drafted.⁴⁷

The federal government had expressed some interest in education just prior to the ratification of the Constitution, though, with the passage of the Northwest Ordinances of 1785 and 1787. These laws established a rectangular form of land survey for the Northwest Territories, from which new states would be carved out, laying out land in six-mile-square townships, which were further subdivided into one-square-mile sections. Congress set aside a section of each township for education and also expressly affirmed a federal commitment to education. Article III of the Ordinance states: Religion, morality, and knowledge being necessary to good government and the happiness of mankind, schools and the means of education shall forever be encouraged. This was probably an outgrowth of the gradual shift in the initial religious purpose in education to a more politically based belief that maintaining an educated citizenry was essential to the republic.⁴⁸ (This shift came to full flower in the decades preceding the Civil War.)⁴⁹ As states were added to the union, beginning with Ohio, Congress donated a section in each township to the state for the maintenance of schools within the township, in exchange for foregoing state taxation of the public lands.⁵⁰

Despite the land grants of the federal government, except in New England and New York, there was little national consciousness with respect to education through the first quarter of the nineteenth century,⁵¹ and there were few public schools. The public schools that did exist were funded by parents whose children attended the schools, or sometimes by local taxes. That private schools existed in most communities was a testament to the view that education was primarily the parents’ responsibility. Private schools, still motivated by the religious interests of the sects establishing them, remained dominant. In some states, the private school lobby was so powerful that it was able to secure public aid.⁵²

The success of private schooling was phenomenal, with literacy in the North increasing into the middle to high ninety percent range and reaching as high as eighty-one percent among whites in the South between 1800 and 1840.⁵³ The initial pressure for government-controlled education began in Boston in 1817, as a result of lobbying by those who contended that impoverished parents were unable to afford private schooling for their children. The Boston School Committee, however, urged against public schooling after its own survey revealed that ninety-six percent of Boston children were in school even though the schools were private and there were no truancy laws. But public school advocates persisted, and by 1818 succeeded in making Boston the first city in America to establish an entirely publicly funded school system.⁵⁴

Around 1825 a serious battle began for the development of tax-supported, publicly controlled and directed, nonsectarian common schools. Before then, such schools were merely a distant hope among reformers.⁵⁵ It wasn’t until the 1850s that public education—in the sense of being government-sponsored, -operated, and -controlled—started to gain national prominence, first in New England and then in the rest of the nation. Prior to that time, America’s education system had remained decentralized.⁵⁶ While one of the main purposes of government-controlled schooling was to provide a safety net so that even the poorest of children could go to school, in practice, government schools didn’t effect an increase in school enrollment. Rather, they wiped out many private schools whose sponsors could not support them while simultaneously supporting public schools through taxation.⁵⁷

One of the prime movers in this transformation was Massachusetts legislator Horace Mann. Mann was raised Calvinist, but at the age of twelve rejected his Calvinist background and eventually became a Unitarian. Mann fought to diminish the Calvinist influence in the schools,⁵⁸ and was instrumental in a reform movement that eventually led to centralized control of education. When he was president of the state senate, he played a major role in establishing the Massachusetts Board of Education in 1837, and served on it until 1848.⁵⁹

Mann was such an idealist in his views of the social engineering possibilities for government-run schools that he envisioned a society where ninety percent of the crimes would be eliminated.⁶⁰ His influence extended well beyond Massachusetts; his energetic activism greatly contributed to the ignition of a crusade for public education in almost every state.⁶¹ During this time, the character of education became increasingly nonsectarian and secular, with a steadily decreasing focus on religious instruction.⁶² Many Protestant leaders attributed this trend to the workings of Mann, and people began to attack him for introducing secularism into the schools. Some claimed that the Massachusetts Board of Education intended to take the Bible out of schools and to leave students’ religious instruction to the home and the Sabbath schools.⁶³ While Mann denied any desire to remove the Bible, many today believe he was very influential in planting the seeds of secularism in our public schools. Secularism was part of a philosophical movement known as humanism, whose influence on public education is explored in Chapter Three.

The Genesis of the Wall of Separation—Everson v. Board of Education

In the mid-1940s, New Jersey resident Arch Everson filed a lawsuit against Ewing Township to prevent state tax revenues from being allocated to transport parochial students to their Catholic high school in Trenton. This lawsuit culminated in the landmark Supreme Court case of Everson v. Board of Education (1947).⁶⁴ The court, ironically, given the legacy of the case, denied Everson’s claim, but it did so in language that proved to be the best weapon ever handed to those looking to strip Christianity from the public schools or public life.

In his majority opinion in Everson, Justice Hugo Black is the one who firmly incorporated—out of context, many would argue⁶⁵—Thomas Jefferson’s wall of separation language into American jurisprudence.⁶⁶ The First Amendment, said Black, has erected a wall between church and state. That wall must be kept high and impregnable. We could not approve the slightest breach.⁶⁷ Justice Black gave the separation language its first real teeth, delineating its initial parameters. Black wrote:

The establishment of religion clause of the First Amendment means at least this: Neither a state nor the federal government can set up a church. Neither can pass laws which aid one religion, aid all religions, or prefer one religion over another. Neither can force nor influence a person to go to or to remain away from church against his will or force him to profess a belief or disbelief in any religion. No person can be punished for entertaining or professing religious beliefs or disbeliefs, for church attendance or non-attendance. No tax in any amount, large or small, can be levied to support any religious activities or institutions, whatever they may be called, or whatever form they may adopt to teach or practice religion. Neither a state nor the federal government can, openly or secretly, participate in the affairs of any religious organizations or groups and vice versa.⁶⁸

Author Gerard V. Bradley noted that Everson effectively opened the modern era of church/state jurisprudence.⁶⁹ Constitutional scholar Paul G. Kauper underscores the point. Everson, according to Kauper, stands as a key decision in laying the foundation for judicial review of all governmental practices supportive of religion. The beginning of an impressive and influential body of case law, it nationalized the restrictions embodied in the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment and opened up a new and comprehensive surveillance of state and local laws and practices dealing with religious matters.⁷⁰ Professor Daniel L. Dreisbach goes so far as to say, "Any informed discussion of the constitutional prohibition on ‘an establishment of religion’ must contend with the reasoning and holding of Everson v. Board of Education."⁷¹ The Everson court’s version of history and separatist construction of the First Amendment, according to Dreisbach, laid the foundation for later First Amendment cases involving released-time, school prayer, the continuing controversies over religious expression and instruction in public schools, and other lines of cases.⁷² Indeed, American courts have, on the whole, expanded the separationist concept over time. But the courts’ unwillingness to go even further in certain areas has not prevented the education establishment from pushing the envelope of separation to new heights. That establishment, when unchallenged, has become a law unto itself, as this chapter will amply show.

The Prayer Police

For most people, the rising wall of separation wasn’t apparent until the Supreme Court outlawed state-sponsored prayer in public schools in Engel v. Vitale (1962).⁷³ The problem arose when the New York Board of Regents tried to compose an innocuous, nondenominational prayer that could be recited in New York public schools. The text of the prayer was simply, Almighty God, we acknowledge our dependence upon Thee, and we beg Thy blessings upon us, our parents, our teachers and our Country. Ironically, some Christians who might otherwise support school-sanctioned prayer are against prayers like this one, precisely because they are so neutral and devoid of any particularly Christian characteristics.

It is important to understand that the board was adamant that no child should be compelled to join in the prayer, or even encouraged to do so.⁷⁴ Yet when the New York suburban school board of New Hyde Park adopted the prayer, the Supreme Court ruled it unconstitutional. It is inarguable that the principle established in Engel—that state-sponsored school prayer is constitutionally forbidden—is now firmly rooted in modern constitutional law. Lower courts are bound by the principle of Stare Decisis to follow that precedent. (The Supreme Court is also guided by Stare Decisis, but it has the power to reverse its earlier holdings.) That Engel is now the law of the land doesn’t alter the fact that many still believe that the Supreme Court wrongly decided it in the first place, based on its misreading of the Constitution and American history. Nothing better highlights this than reference to the learned rulings of the lower New York courts in that case, all of which found the prayer constitutional. Their honest pronouncements, though rendered a legal nullity by the Supreme Court, are instructive for all who long for constitutional interpretation according to the framers’ original intent.

First Amendment scholar George Goldberg aptly observed, Of the first thirteen judges who considered the constitutionality of the Regent’s Prayer, among whom were some of the most learned appellate judges in the nation, eleven found it valid, a batting average of .846; and some of them felt strongly that any other decision would be historically wrong and itself constitutionally objectionable.⁷⁵ The chief judge of the New York Court of Appeals minced no words:

Not only is this prayer not a violation of the First Amendment . . . but holding that it is such a violation would be in defiance of all American history, and such a holding would destroy a part of the essential foundation of the American governmental structure.⁷⁶

And as Goldberg noted, the language of one of the concurring judges was even stronger:

It is not mere neutrality to prevent voluntary prayer to a Creator; it is an interference by the courts, contrary to the plain language of the Constitution, on the side of those who oppose religion.⁷⁷

Some like to point out that Engel has been widely misunderstood. It did not, they say, take God out of the schools. It merely prohibited state-sponsored prayer. Even the current Supreme Court has said as much.⁷⁸ But such analyses are oversimplified. It’s one thing to say that only state-sponsored prayer is outlawed and another to define the parameters of state sponsorship. Suffice it to say, it doesn’t take much state activity at all to trigger state sponsorship under modern precedent. The 1985 case Wallace v. Jaffree held that public schools may not set aside a period of silence at the commencement of the school day if there is the mere suggestion that students might use the time for prayer.⁷⁹ It strains the imagination to conceive how moments of silence constitute state endorsement of religion, especially a particular religion. But the law is nonetheless what the Supreme Court says it is.⁸⁰

While the court can protest that it has not unduly restricted religious freedom, its modern decisions, beginning with Everson and continuing through Engel and Wallace, have greatly emboldened those hostile to Christianity