My latest reading of Sheila Suess Kennedy's What's a Nice Republican Girl Like Me Doing in the ACLU?
justified the mission of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) as
well as discussed the Establishment Clause. I'll focus on the mission
of the ACLU in tomorrow's post. In my post today, however, I'll talk
some about what Kennedy says about church and state issues.
Why is
Kennedy opposed to government-sponsored prayer in public schools? In
my latest reading of Kennedy's book, I saw a variety of reasons: the
First Amendment prescribes government neutrality on religion; public
school children should not be a captive audience while public school
authorities promote a religion; the role of instructing children in
religion belongs to their families, not the state; etc.
In one
case, I thought that Kennedy was not entirely clear about what is
permitted in public schools and what is not. On page 52, for example,
she quotes from an article that she wrote in which she states that "The
[Supreme] Court did not say [in the 1992 decision Lee vs.
Weisman] that graduation speakers cannot refer to God, or that seniors
cannot sing a song that mentions God." But later in the article she says
that "When a school has the right to select its graduation speakers and
approve their speeches, that is considered an endorsement of what they
say", and so "If the speaker offers a prayer, the school has legally
endorsed that prayer", which the public school cannot legally do. So
can graduation speakers refer to God or not? If the public school is
approving of a speech that mentions God, is that the public school
sanctioning a religion, making the speech unconstitutional at the
graduation ceremony? Or would that simply be the public school
championing free speech and the right of a graduation speaker to voice
her own opinion, not an endorsement of a particular religion?
Overall,
Kennedy made good arguments in her chapters that discussed the
Establishment Clause. She defended her separationist view of the
Establishment Clause through an appeal to U.S. history, and she ably
attacked the notion that problems increased in public schools after the
1962 Supreme Court decision banning government-sponsored prayer in
public schools through a variety of arguments: for example, she
noted that most public schools prior to 1962 did not even have
government-sponsored school prayer, since a number of state Supreme
Courts prohibited it in interpreting their own states' constitutions.
Kennedy also sought to debunk the idea that the ACLU is against students
expressing their religious beliefs in public schools, for she said that
the ACLU would actually defend a student who was punished for reading
the Bible on the bus or for praying before lunch in the school
cafeteria. (Kennedy said on page 56 that prayer before eating
the cafeteria meatloaf is "a prudent precaution in most school
cafeterias"!) She also denied that she opposes public schools teaching about religion as part of an academic subject. What she and the ACLU oppose is the government encouraging people to adopt a religious belief.
I have a question, though. In an interview here,
Kennedy states: "Can Johnny get out of Biology because they’re teaching
evolution? No, because they’re supposed to be teaching science, not
religion. But, can Johnny get out of going to the Halloween party, yeah,
because the Halloween party isn’t central to the school’s mission." I
realize that Kennedy would most likely disagree with the people on the
religious right who hold that evolution is part of the sinister religion
of secular humanism (as if secular humanism is a religion), for she'd
regard evolution as science, pure and simple (as do I). But, in
my opinion, teaching evolution in public schools and compelling
students to be in the classroom while it is taught pose some of the same
problems as government-sanctioned prayer in public schools.
Students with conservative Christian backgrounds are being told that the
origins narrative that they learned at home and at church is wrong;
even if that is not said explicitly, teaching evolution as fact
challenges the literal interpretation of Genesis 1-3 that many
conservative Christians hold. How is that government
neutrality regarding religion? And, if Kennedy agrees with parents who
don't want prayer in public schools because they (the parents) want the
authority to teach their kids religion, why would that same
consideration not apply to parents who don't want their children hearing
in public school classrooms that evolution is fact, or is a viable
theory, because they themselves want to teach their children which
origins narrative is best? I should note: Personally, I'm all
for teaching about evolution in public schools. But I believe that it
should be done with a degree of sensitivity towards people's religious
beliefs. Teachers can go ahead and be insensitive all they
want, regarding conservative Christians who don't believe in evolution
as ignorant rubes, but that won't accomplish anything
constructive----mostly it will invite backlash and resistance.
I'd
like to close this post by talking about Barry Goldwater, the
conservative Republican who ran for President in 1964. After talking
about Republican Congressman (at the time) David MacIntosh's support for
community-sanctioned prayer in public schools, Kennedy asks on page 68,
"What has happened to the Republican party between Goldwater and
MacIntosh?" On the preceding page, Kennedy referred to a 1981 speech in
which Goldwater defended the separation of church and state. Barry
Goldwater looms large in Kennedy's book, for Kennedy often quotes
Goldwater's classic, The Conscience of a Conservative. The
implication that I get is that she regards herself as a Republican who
is true to Goldwater conservatism, while she believes that Republicans
adhering to or influenced by the religious right have strayed
significantly from that. I do not entirely agree with her on this,
however, for there was a sense in which cultural conservatism was a part
of Goldwater's candidacy, which was during a time of cultural
upheaval. Goldwater even expressed opposition to the Supreme Court
decision banning government-led prayer from public schools. See here for more information, or google "Goldwater AND school prayer". Granted,
Goldwater later in his career was an outspoken critic of the religious
right, but he still championed a form of cultural conservatism in his
1964 campaign.
But, at the same time, I think
that Goldwater's principles of less government and respect for rights
that transcend the will of the majority can be adopted to support the
position on the separation of church and state that Kennedy espouses,
even if Goldwater did not take those principles in that direction in
1964.