Between Church and State: Religion and Public Education in a Multicultural America

by James W. Fraser

Today, the ongoing controversy about the place--or lack of place--of religion in public schools is a burning issue in the United States. Prayer at football games, creationism in the classroom, the teaching of religion and morals, and public funding for private religious schools are just a few of the subjects over which people are skirmishing. In Between Church and State, historian and pastor James W. Fraser shows that these battles have been going on for as long as there have been public schools and argues there has never been any consensus about what the "separation of church and state" means for American society or about the proper relationship between religion and public education.

Looking at the difficult question of how private issues of faith can be reconciled with the very public nature of schooling, Fraser's classic book paints a complex picture of how a multicultural society struggles to take the deep commitments of people of faith into account--including people of many different faiths and no faith. In this fully updated second edition, Fraser tackles the culture wars, adding fresh material on current battles over public funding for private religious schools. He also addresses the development of the long-simmering evolution-creationism debate and explores the tensions surrounding a discussion of religion and the accommodation of an increasingly religiously diverse American student body.

Between Church and State includes new scholarship on the role of Roger Williams and William Penn in developing early American conceptions of religious liberty. It traces the modern expansion of Catholic parochial schools and closely examines the passage of the First Amendment, changes in American Indian tribal education, the place of religion in Booker T. Washington and W. E. B. Du Bois's debates about African American schooling, and the rapid growth of Jewish day schools among a community previously known for its deep commitment to secular public education.

Genres: Religion, Education, Nonfiction, American History

296 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1999

Reviews

[Steven Cunningham · Rating 5 out of 5]

I sometimes think that I live in a relatively pluralistic, modern, tolerant, scientific, secular country. Yet, I know that religion is embedded everywhere, is indeed the road we walk on, all of us, even the atheists and agnostics among us.

Some think that this country was founded on the Jeffersonian ideal of a high and strong wall between church and state, and others see this country as one that was founded to be - and should continue to be - a distinctly Christian nation governed by Bible-based laws such as creationism, a nation that has tragically departed from these roots and laws, and so must reclaim our Christian heritage.

But, as the author says in the introduction, “to say that the nation is more secular or more religious misses the point … the people of the United States are [now] more secular, especially in their public culture, more religious in many different private forms, and more diverse than ever before in the nation's history” (p.4)

And the overwhelmingly common tendency to oversimplify things is unhelpful: “only a careful and thoughtful historical analysis of the many different ways that different generations and different citizens have approached [questions of religion and education] in the past can inform the current debate that must be rich, nuanced, and filled with intellectual curiosity and compassion” (p.4).

Fraser certainly offers just such a careful and thoughtful historical analysis in this fascinating and very readable book, in which he makes it clear that there has never really been any consensus about what separation of church and state means.

Here are a few fun facts from Fraser’s history:

1) Just <~200 years ago in this country:

* Maryland still prohibited Jews and atheists from office (p. 20).
* Catholic students in public schools suffered corporal punishments for refusing to read a particular translation (KJV) of the Bible (p. 49).
* Anti-Catholic rallies took place in Catholic neighborhoods in Philadelphia (p. 50).
* We still had state religion. Massachusetts had its state church until 1833. It was only with the 14th Amendment in 1868 that the protections of the Bill of Rights were applied to the states, and not until 1947 (!) did the US Supreme Court specifically apply the religion-clause to the states (and in 2014 [!!!] two Supreme Court justices, Thomas and Scalia, challenged even that interpretation!) (p. 18).

2) It was not until 1978 (within my own lifetime!) that Congress finally declared that First Amendment rights did, in fact, apply to Native American Indians (p. 103)!!!

3) Even today, strikingly, there are attempts to teach creationism in public-school biology classes (in 2005, officials in Kansas changed state science standards to enable ID [ie, creationism] to be taught with evolution in biology classes [p. 1]). It is alarming to me that this is still debated, when it is clearly (to me at least!) prohibited by the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment, not to mention the Supreme Court.

4) There have been at least 4 recent failed efforts to amend US Constitution or other legislation in support of public-school prayer:

i. November 1995 by representative Ernest Istook, Republican of Oklahoma
ii. February 1994 by Senator Helms of North Carolina and Senator Lott of Mississippi
iii. June 1998 when a majority of the House of Representatives voted in favor of the proposed
Religious Freedom Amendment
iv. 1964 by congressman Frank Becker of New York.

It is striking that those supporting these attempts feel so very threatened – by, for example, the worry that God is being “thrown out” of the schools – that they feel such a pressing need for this legislation, despite the fact that the Constitution already allows – indeed protects – school prayer insofar as it protects expression of religion (eg, students praying in school, bringing their scripture to school, etc). What seems clear to me, but not to those supporting these legislative attempts, is that the First Amendment prohibition against government establishment of religion does not mean that God has been expelled.

[Joel Martin · Rating 4 out of 5]

So full of interesting context I didn't know. Gave me a new understanding of how complex these debates really are, and interestingly enough, gave me a net gain in sympathy for the religious side of things. And I'm still very against state sponsored religion or theocracy, but there is a case to be that we have at times been too dogmatic in the other direction, forgetting that the separation of church and state is just as prohibitive of the state restricting personal religion as it of promoting it.

[Rhea · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fraser gives a historically relevant and generally compassionate depiction of the state of religion in the public school system. Highly recommended for all educators + leftists (like myself) who are perpetually annoyed with the religious right!

[David Brangoccio · Rating 5 out of 5]

Everything makes sense now.

[Amanda · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting nonfiction. The first chapters on the origins of American schooling and the close connection to Protestantism were especially strong.
Some conclusions were repetitious