Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, April 18, 1993 TAG: 9304160036
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Cody Lowe
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
WHAT ARE WE TEACHING OUR CHILDREN?
So much of our identity has to do with imaginary lines.We envision lines around our property, our races, our countries, our religions.
For more than 150 years, the lines around country and religion in the United States were almost identical. For plain old dominance, it would have been hard to beat Christianity.
Oh, the country also was home to a smattering of Jews, agnostics and atheists, but a Christian ethic and system of belief dominated.
Because of this dominance, Christians got used to being deferred to in public life. Many businesses - until recent years - were forced to close on Sundays. Christian holy days often meant a day off from work or school.
In most of the country, public-school classes were so nearly thoroughly Christian that no one thought twice about the teacher giving the class a lesson in Jesus' Sermon on the Mount at the beginning of the day.
During the last half century, though, our society and our courts have changed the way they look at the relationship between our religion and our citizenship.
We have come to value pluralism more highly than conformity, and our courts more and more consistently have listened to religious minorities who vocalized their frustrations with the unwelcomed imposition of Christianity - particularly when it was forced on their children in public schools.
While our courts - and in particular the U.S. Supreme Court - have done an atrocious job of helping us define the boundaries between church and state, they have sometimes been right.
The courts outlawed teacher-led prayers in public-school classrooms. Many of us agreed that we'd just as soon teach our children to pray ourselves and not have to monitor the orthodoxy of their school teachers.
The prohibition against teacher-led prayer was consistent with what should have been a simple premise:
Teachers are authority figures whose word students are expected to accept as truth. Since teachers have a peculiar and strong influence over students, instruction in religious doctrine or belief is tantamount to establishing an official classroom religion. When the teacher is paid with tax dollars, that amounts to government establishment of religion - which is prohibited by the Constitution.
The upshot is that Christianity is now in the same position every minority religion once found itself - unwelcomed in the public school classroom. And a lot of Christians - who continue to be a decided majority - don't like it.
In some places, as in Montgomery County recently, that majority has raised its voice in indignation over slights it perceives in the public schools.
They and others rightly complain that public schools are too often hostile to any religious expression by students - speech that is protected by the Constitution - and that schools too frequently ignore the influence of religion on the subjects they teach.
Problems arise when some Christians wish to let the majority rule - where they are the majority. If that majority had its way, perhaps the 10 Commandments would be posted in every school, artists' impressions of the face of Jesus Christ would adorn every school office, teachers would lead prayer in every classroom.
While the majority might be served, such practices would be morally and ethically wrong, even if they were not illegal. Such force-feeding of Christianity to others would even be contrary to the example of Jesus himself, who is never recorded as having compelled others to accept his lordship or divinity.
In any case, our law protects the minority from the whims of the majority in matters of religion.
What many of the Christians who are so upset with the system now fail to see is how the system still excludes and separates - and subtly disparages - adherents of minority religions.
A reader who called recently made the point clearly.
Roanoke public school officials scheduled a big recognition bash to honor outgoing superintendent Frank Tota on the first night of Passover. The caller pointed out that the officials who arranged the event didn't even realize it fell on the same night as one of the most significant Jewish religious holidays, effectively excluding Jewish participation.
Then there was the school division's decision to make up days missed because of snow with classes on Saturdays.
Would public officials even consider asking children to go to school on Sunday?
The message - intended or not - is that officials don't care about the beliefs of religious minorities.
The same caller likely would have objected to religious designations for school holidays - such as Christmas break or Easter break. Why not Hanukkah break and Passover break?
What we have to hope for - what we should insist upon - is public school officials with the training to understand existing laws and the good sense to apply them correctly.
Those officials ought to be teaching our children about tolerance of others' religious beliefs.
They ought to be able to teach our children the truth about their rights to express their own religious beliefs - at school or anywhere else.
They ought to teach our children that the protection of the minority's religious beliefs is the same protection afforded the majority.
Cody Lowe reports on issues of religion and ethics for this newspaper.