When it comes to the intersection of religion and public education, I’ve been fascinated by Finding Common Ground (http://www.firstamendmentcenter.org//about.aspx?id=6276), written by Charles C. Haynes and Oliver Thomas, and endorsed by groups ranging from the Christian Coalition of America to Americans United for the Separation of Church and State. From what I’ve read so far (it’s a long document), it represents a reasonable compromise between freedom of speech, including religious speech, and the necessity to avoid government-imposed religion in schools.
But a recent article (http://www.alternet.org/rights/64211/) at Alternet, written by Rob Boston for Church & State (a publication of Americans United for the Separation of Church and State),
discusses trends around the country involving the Religious Right’s attempts to hijack schools for evangelical purposes. A key example is a proposed Texas law called the Religious Viewpoints Antidiscrimination Act, which Boston describes as mandating that “schools create ‘limited public forums’ for religious and other types of speech.” This, Boston and the law’s critics argue, would create an end-run around Supreme Court rulings on the separation of church and state.
In looking up the act (http://www.christianattorney.com/texasact.htm), I wondered if perhaps Boston et al weren’t overreacting a bit. After all, it starts off reasonably with: “A school district shall treat a student's voluntary expression of a religious viewpoint, if any, on an otherwise permissible subject in the same manner the district treats a student's voluntary expression of a secular or other viewpoint on an otherwise permissible subject…” In many ways, the law draws on language from Finding Common Ground. But the gotcha comes shortly thereafter:
“To ensure that the school district does not discriminate against a student's publicly stated voluntary expression of a religious viewpoint…a school district shall adopt a policy, which must include the establishment of a limited public forum for student speakers at all school events at which a student is to publicly speak.”
These “limited public forums” are to be provided at football games, graduation, opening announcements and greetings for the school day, and other such events.
It’s a sneaky tactic: Force districts to create public forums and remind them that they can’t discriminate against religious speech. The result is a captive audience for religious speech, which defies the First Amendment and denies religious freedom.
Truthiness in Numbers
When we consider the Religious Right’s repeated efforts to inject the non-scientific concept of “Intelligent Design” into classrooms as well as abstinence-only sex education (mis-education, really) in schools, Boston et al are quite right to worry about the integrity of public education.
What intrigues me isn’t so much the legality of all of this – public education, like government, is supposed to serve common interests and end where those common interests end – but the motivations behind it all. Why does the Religious Right feel so compelled to shove their views onto everyone else? Two easy reasons:
A sincere belief they are saving poor souls from the horrible fate of damnation.
Greed for money and power (two things the Religious Right already has aplenty).
Reason No. 2 is such a universal motivator, there’s no real need to discuss it. But as far as reason No. 1, well, here’s the rub: You don’t need faith when you have knowledge. And since no religion has proven its tenets to be true – that is, to have knowledge – the reliance on faith, which by definition admits the rational possibility of error, doesn’t justify using the government and public education to force a belief (or non-belief) onto others, however well intentioned.
In a past column (http://www.thefrontpageonline.com/articles1-2730/TwoIncidentsInvolvingReligion), however, I speculated about another reason, namely, the “Truthiness in Numbers” principle, based on Stephen Colbert’s definition of truthiness as putting forth something as true because it feels true – logic and evidence be damned. Truthiness in Numbers is (to quote myself), the “notion that people’s conviction that a particular belief is true depends on the number of other people they can persuade or force to agree with them.” While proselytizing and evangelism may satisfy the reasons mentioned above, it also reinforces that feeling of truth while confusing faith and knowledge in the process.
Of course, just because you can convince someone of something doesn’t make it true. Ask any con artist or sophist. Yet there we have it, the need to convert, to spread the word, to use public education as an evangelical tool. In that same column, I briefly touched on my take on the psychology behind the truthiness-in-numbers principle, but I did tread lightly. This time around, let’s call it for what it is: spiritual weakness.
I’m not trying to be insulting for the sake of being insulting, or even lumping all religious people together. But for the Religious Right, for the crypto-theocrats, for those people who believe the U.S. was founded as a Judeo-Christian nation, for those people who insist on public prayers and sexual ignorance, for those who try to use government to condemn gays – for all these people, I can only think that their spiritual foundations are so weak they can’t stay true to their faith within a diverse environment. Thus, they try to force their beliefs on others.
This is particularly worrisome in the presidential primaries, whether it’s the candidates parading their religiosity or McCain claiming that the U.S. Constitution “established the United States of America as a Christian nation,” which is utterly false. Much like religion and public education, religion and politics represents the replacement of real, non-domineering spiritual strength with projections of force. It is a critical issue and can only mean trouble for a country already seriously divided.