When was religion taken out of schools

The school website now says, "FCA was originally started by Christian athletes as a safe place where students could come meet with fellow Christians," but is now "very welcoming to all. The website also now lists a Jewish Student Union that meets every other week before school with Mr.

Neiditch, a guest as regular here as Flannagan is in Alabama schools. At a recent meeting, student leaders announced an ice-cream seder at Sara's house — "again! The some students laugh; the faculty adviser smiles from her desk.

Sometimes conversation turns to world events, and they ask Neiditch for the Israeli perspective. This day, though, they dig into 30 pounds of challah dough. While the kids — most, not all, Jewish — roll and braid, the rabbi relates, locomotive-fast, the story of the Exodus, with the Red Sea parting and manna from heaven: "This reminds us that as we go through challenges God loves us and there is a reason for those challenges. He's referring to the fact that in Georgia, as Neiditch puts it, "everything is Gospel," whether spinning the dial on the radio, holiday shopping, or spotting church after church out the car window.

In Flushing, N. When a new principal took over, the group — the Seekers — tried again, asking assistant principal and fellow Christian Ellen Fee to be faculty sponsor. Some teachers worried that a religious club "would create a lot of 'us versus them,' " recalls Ms. Fee, who also teaches health and physical education. Others felt that "if kids are asking, then we have an obligation to them. Today, Fee, who hosts a nondenominational church service in her home on weekends, is adviser to both the Seekers and the Muslim Student Association MSA.

About half a dozen in each group gathered at a large table in Fee's office. Both clubs number 50 to 60 members, out of a student body of about 1, Some members are more religious than their parents; others don't have a youth group at their mosque or church. All, they say, feel it is key to have peers who share their school life and values. Besides providing a source of friendship, the clubs allow them to wrestle with how to live their faith where they spend most of their day.

The Muslim students, for example, talk about what it means for girls to wear head scarves — about half the MSA girls here do; the Christians struggle with how to evangelize without being obnoxious or coming across as superior.

Both groups report discussing "sensitive issues" like dating pressures or views about homosexuality. He wanted to make sure he could perform his prayers, but he also wanted the support of fellow Muslims to help him stay true to his faith in the face of pressures from peers and the culture at large.

High School. But Ms. Thompson wants the school to rein in members of the Christian club Catalyst. She says they've harassed her daughter with repeated, insistent invitations, even though she "had made it crystal clear for over a year that she had no interest in their group.

They have an elaborate manual that tells them what their job is Indeed, the group's manuals — available on-line at campusmovement. Other organizations' materials and websites get downright militaristic. References to public schools as "a target" or "battlefield" are not uncommon.

One website tells of the need "to be warriors in an eternal battle for the souls of these children and their parents," while a National Network of Youth Ministries NNYM manual states that Christian students "have been sent to establish a strategic beachhead so that they can penetrate and saturate the entire school with the good news of Jesus Christ.

Some NNYM leaders now counsel a far less aggressive approach, but the manual lives on and Thompson sees many parallels between its call to arms and Catalyst's actions at Blaine. Thompson says she believes that a local youth pastor, who contributed to the manual, directs Catalyst members from afar, thereby violating the Equal Access Act.

The controversy surrounding Catalyst illustrates a broader point: Students' outside lives and worldviews follow them on campus. Haynes, the First Amendment scholar who has written guidelines on religion and public education, points out that there is nothing unconstitutional about students following the advice of a mentor outside school.

In fact, Mr. Waggoner and other observers of religion in education say they believe that student-led groups often begin at the instigation of a parent, youth pastor, imam, rabbi, or member of a number of evangelical Christian organizations that regard public schools as their mission field. Many such evangelical groups have increasingly targeted students, spurred by a belief that most born-again Christians made their commitment to Christ before they turned Some adopt an aggressive approach; others opt for a ministry of presence.

Yet others are choosing "a third alternative," says Professor Grelle, "which is to hold onto a robust Christian identity while at the same time meaningfully engaging with religious diversity in a way that is not primarily for the purposes of religious conversion. Shin Kasahara seems to embody this approach in his public high school in Rome, Ga. A senior with hair brushed so far forward it almost obscures his eyes, Shin has a steady girlfriend, works evenings and weekends at McDonald's, and loves jujitsu.

He is also part of Friend2Friend F2F , a Youth for Christ ministry he credits with helping him find "a better way to talk with friends about Christ in school. F2F encapsulates its approach in a catchy slogan — Share-Pray-Discover — and in materials with passages that sound like instructions on "how to infiltrate schools.

It is a combination that allows him to be entirely himself in the schoolyard, he says. Classes had ended at Brighton High School in Cottonwood Heights, Utah, and students were streaming out the door when one stooped to pick up some papers off the floor.

Immediately, she recognized that the text was torn from a book that she and 80 percent of the town's residents deem holy. More pages were scattered down the hall, strewn beside the outside walkway, skittering across the parking lot, plastered on the grilles of parked cars.

Her tears welling up, she dashed back into the building to stand, arms clamped around torn and crumpled pages, in the doorway of Jodi Ide's classroom.

She cried to her teacher: "Someone ripped up the Book of Mormon. I tried to get The next day, Ms. Ide, herself a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, arranged the desks in a circle.

She knew by then that the student responsible was in her class. She also knew that disciplinary action would not get at the root of the problem. After a moment, one said, "It's not always easy growing up here if you're not Mormon. Even back in kindergarten, some kids say, "You're not Mormon? You're going to hell.

Then Ide watched as Mormons spoke about not knowing how to reach out to someone who thought Mormon beliefs were absurd; and non-Mormons related how they felt all Mormons wanted was to convert them. Confusion, fear, embarrassment, frustration, and hurt poured into the circle. Nobody condoned "the hateful act," but they understood its context; more important, they understood each other. It was no accident that this unfolded in Ide's classroom; it's where Brighton students come to learn about world religions and, for the past two years, discuss worldviews and religious practice with peers as far away as the Philippines and Indonesia.

Programs like this bolster Mark Chancey's conviction that "religious literacy is essential. Chancey says, "we all need to know about each other as our country becomes more diverse because we all have to get along. The experience of Modesto, Calif. It's a heavily Hispanic community with large evangelical Christian, Sikh, Buddhist, and Muslim communities. Since , the central California school district has been the only district in the United States to make a world religions class a graduation requirement, says Haynes.

It was a religiously and ethnically diverse city, comprised of Irish Catholics, German Lutherans, and Freethinkers, as well as large Jewish congregations whose rabbis were national Jewish leaders. The school board put forth resolutions to merge the systems.

Under the agreement, religion would not be taught in the schools during the week, but Catholics could use the buildings on the weekends for religious instruction. Catholic leaders proposed a complementary plan, stipulating that there would be no Bible reading in the schools during the week since it was the Protestant Bible i.

Though the board passed the resolution in , a lawsuit quickly followed, petitioning the court to reinstate Bible reading. The result was the landmark case Minor v. Some proposed rewriting the Preamble to the Constitution to recognize the sovereignty of God in the formation and law of the United States.

Others wanted a new amendment explicitly guaranteeing religious freedom. Neither of these proposed amendments got very far. Somewhat more successful was the subsequent Blaine Amendment.

James A. Blaine, a Republican congressman with presidential aspirations, took note of the national receptivity to a convention speech President Ulysses S. Grant gave in in Des Moines. Grant called for the establishment of free, nonsectarian schools, which left religious instruction to the family and church. Blaine proposed a constitutional amendment to that effect:. No state shall make any law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; and no money raised by taxation in any State, for the support of the public schools or derived from any public fund, shall ever be under the control of any religious sect, nor shall any money so raised ever be divided between religious sects or denominations.

Serious debate took place over this and alternative language, debates that, in the congressional record, take up some 23 pages.

Though the Blaine Amendment failed falling 4 votes short in the Senate , the debate surrounding it engaged the nation on the intersections of church, state, and education in an unprecedented manner. Rather, the court emphasized what it saw as the wrongs of having the government create and sponsor a religious activity.

The following year, the high court extended the principle outlined in Engel to a program of daily Bible reading. In Abington School District v. Schempp , the court ruled broadly that school sponsorship of religious exercises violates the Constitution. Schempp became the source of the enduring constitutional doctrine that all government action must have a predominantly secular purpose — a requirement that, according to the court, the Bible-reading exercise clearly could not satisfy.

With Engel and Schempp, the court outlined the constitutional standard for prohibiting school-sponsored religious expression, a doctrine the court has firmly maintained. In Stone v. Graham , for instance, it found unconstitutional a Kentucky law requiring all public schools to post a copy of the Ten Commandments.

And in Wallace v. Jaffree , it overturned an Alabama law requiring public schools to set aside a moment each day for silent prayer or meditation. Perry , the U. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit upheld a Texas law mandating a moment of silence because it determined that, in passing the law, the state legislature had sufficiently articulated a secular purpose.

But while courts have given states some latitude in crafting moment of silence statutes, they have shown much less deference to laws or policies that involve actual prayer. Doe that schools may not sponsor student-recited prayer at high school football games. More sweeping in its consequences is Lee v. Weisman , which invalidated a school-sponsored prayer led by an invited clergyman at a public school commencement in Providence, Rhode Island.

The case effectively outlawed a practice that was customary in many communities across the country, thus fueling the conservative critique that the Supreme Court was inhospitable to public expressions of faith.

So far, lower appellate courts have not extended the principles of the school prayer decisions to university commencements Chaudhuri v. Tennessee, 6th U. Circuit Court of Appeals, ; Tanford v. Brand, 7th Circuit, The 4th Circuit, however, found unconstitutional the practice of daily prayer at supper at the Virginia Military Institute. In that case, Mellen v. The decision was similar to an earlier ruling by the U. Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, which found unconstitutional a policy of the U.

Laird, Most recently, in , the Supreme Court declined to review a 9th Circuit Court of Appeals decision upholding the firing of a football coach at a public high school for praying on the field with his players after games. However, in a statement accompanying the denial of review, Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. In , Michael Newdow filed suit challenging the phrase on behalf of his daughter, a public school student in California. Newdow , reached the Supreme Court in , but the justices did not ultimately decide whether the phrase was acceptable.

Instead, the court ruled that Newdow lacked standing to bring the suit because he did not have legal custody of his daughter. While the issue never reached the Supreme Court again, it continued to be litigated in the lower courts. In Myers v. Loudoun County Public Schools , the 4th U.

Circuit Court of Appeals upheld recitation of the pledge in Virginia, but a U. However, the 9th U. Circuit Court of Appeals in reversed the district court decision, ruling that the recitation of the pledge did not constitute an establishment of religion. The courts have drawn a sharp distinction between officially sponsored religious speech, such as a benediction by an invited clergyman at a commencement ceremony, and private religious speech by students.

The Supreme Court made clear in Lee v. Judges usually reach that same conclusion when school officials cooperate with students to produce student-delivered religious messages. But federal courts are more divided in cases involving students acting on their own to include a religious sentiment or prayer at a school commencement or a similar activity.

Some courts, particularly in the South, have upheld the constitutionality of student-initiated religious speech, emphasizing the private origins of this kind of religious expression. As long as school officials did not encourage or explicitly approve the contents, those courts have upheld religious content in student commencement speeches.

In Adler v. Duval County School Board , for example, the 11th U. Circuit Court of Appeals approved a system at a Florida high school in which the senior class, acting independently of school officials, selected a class member to deliver a commencement address.

School officials neither influenced the choice of speaker nor screened the speech. Under those circumstances, the appeals court ruled that the school was not responsible for the religious content of the address. Other courts, however, have invalidated school policies that permit student speakers to include religious sentiments in graduation addresses. One leading case is ACLU v. The 3rd U. Circuit Court of Appeals nevertheless ruled that the high school could not permit religious content in the commencement speech.

The court reasoned that students attending the graduation ceremony were as coerced to acquiesce in a student-led prayer as they would be if the prayer were offered by a member of the clergy, the practice forbidden by Weisman in Supreme Court Justice Samuel A.

Similarly, in Bannon v. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that Florida school officials were right to order the removal of student-created religious messages and symbols from a school beautification project. Courts have long grappled with attempts by school boards and other official bodies to change the curriculum in ways that directly promote or denigrate a particular religious tradition.

Opponents favor teaching some form of creationism, the idea that life came about as described in the biblical book of Genesis or evolved under the guidance of a supreme being. A recent alternative to Darwinism, intelligent design, asserts that life is too complex to have arisen without divine intervention.

The Supreme Court entered the evolution debate in , when it ruled, in Epperson v. Almost 20 years later, in Edwards v. Lower courts consistently have followed the lead of Epperson and Edwards. As a result, school boards have lost virtually every fight over curriculum changes designed to challenge evolution, including disclaimers in biology textbooks.

One of the most recent and notable of these cases, Kitzmiller v. After lengthy testimony from both proponents and opponents of intelligent design, a federal district court in Pennsylvania concluded that the policy violates the Establishment Clause because intelligent design is a religious, rather than scientific, theory.

Kitzmiller may have been the last major evolution case to make national headlines, but the debate over how to teach about the origins and development of life in public schools has continued in state legislatures, boards of education and other public bodies. Courts have also expended substantial time and energy considering public school programs that involve Bible study. Although the Supreme Court has occasionally referred to the permissibility of teaching the Bible as literature, some school districts have instituted Bible study programs that courts have found unconstitutional.

Frequently, judges have concluded that these courses are thinly disguised efforts to teach a particular understanding of the New Testament. In a number of these cases, school districts have brought in outside groups to run the Bible study program. The groups, in turn, hired their own teachers, in some cases Bible college students or members of the clergy who did not meet state accreditation standards. Such Bible study programs have generally been held unconstitutional because, the courts conclude, they teach the Bible as religious truth or are designed to inculcate particular religious sentiments.

For a public school class to study the Bible without violating constitutional limits, the class would have to include critical rather than devotional readings and allow open inquiry into the history and content of biblical passages. Christmas-themed music programs also have raised constitutional concerns.

The schools also must be sensitive to the possibility that some students will feel coerced to participate in the program Bauchman v. West High School, 10th U. Circuit Court of Appeals, ; Doe v. Duncanville Independent School District, 5th Circuit, Moreover, the courts have said, no student should be forced to sing or play music that offends their religious sensibilities. Therefore, schools must allow students the option not to participate.

Not all the cases involving religion in the curriculum concern the promotion of the beliefs of the majority. Indeed, challenges have come from Christian groups arguing that school policies discriminate against Christianity by promoting cultural pluralism. In one example, the 2nd U. Circuit Court of Appeals considered a New York City Department of Education policy regulating the types of symbols displayed during the holiday seasons of various religions.

The department allows the display of a menorah as a symbol for Hanukkah and a star and crescent to evoke Ramadan but permits the display of only secular symbols of Christmas, such as a Christmas tree; it explicitly forbids the display of a Christmas nativity scene in public schools. Klein that city officials intended to promote cultural pluralism in the highly diverse setting of the New York City public schools.

The judicial panel ruled that the policy, therefore, did not promote Judaism or Islam and did not denigrate Christianity.

In another high-profile case, Citizens for a Responsible Curriculum v. Ordinarily, opponents of homosexuality could not confidently cite the Establishment Clause as the basis for a complaint, because the curriculum typically would not advance a particular religious perspective.

However, the Montgomery County curriculum included materials in teacher guides that disparaged some religious teachings on homosexuality as theologically flawed and contrasted those teachings with what the guide portrayed as the more acceptable and tolerant views of some other faiths.

The district court concluded that the curriculum had both the purpose and effect of advancing certain faiths while denigrating the beliefs of others. The county rewrote these materials to exclude any reference to the views of particular faiths, making them more difficult to challenge successfully in court because the lessons did not condemn or praise any faith tradition. At the time of its school prayer decisions in the early s, the Supreme Court had never ruled on whether students have the right of free speech inside public schools.

By the end of that decade, however, the court began to consider the question.