These courtroom fights and dozens of others pending across the country belong to the portfolio of the ambitious Alliance Defense Fund, a socially conservative legal consortium. It spends $20 million a year seeking to protect what it regards as the place of religion -- and especially Christianity -- in public life.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/07/09/AR2006070900903.html
I founded a student club for secularists and religious skeptics at my alma mater and interned at Americans United for Separation of Church and State. I have written LTEs and essays not only defending my positions on church-state relations but I believe I can refute nearly any argument the religious right throws into the fire. I wrote this essay (which I was hoping to publish as part of a book but to no avail) on the roots of the modern church-state separation movement.
"Roots of Modern American Church-State Separation"
Public education and freedom of conscience were both a cornerstone of the new American Republic. As American society diversified and expanded, a new emphasis on individual liberty took root, which often conflicted with tradition and majoritarian democracy. The current constitutional doctrine of spiritual freedom spawned the modern American church-state dialogue but was an accumulation of generations of progress with the roll of religion and education with public schools.
Civil liberties were nonexistent in public schools for many generations because of +óGé¼+ôthe intentions of public schools+óGé¼-¥ to assimilate immigrants with +óGé¼+ôno more effective medium+óGé¼-¥ to transform aliens into Americans. Robert L. Maddox, a Baptist minister and former executive director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, observed in his 1987 book Separation of Church and State that +óGé¼+ôit is no wonder+óGé¼-¥ most battles over church-state separation have occurred over religion in public schools because of America+óGé¼Gäós devotion and emphasis on public education and values. Humanities professor Robert S. Alley wrote in 1994 that democracy can also pose a +óGé¼+ôtheological problem+óGé¼-¥ for Christian Americans: "Even for many Christian citizens who have come to terms with the diversity of a democratic state, there is a lingering dogma of exclusivism that lies dormant. Protestants and Catholics alike tend to view the historical process as in some way controlled by the deity. Thus the nation becomes in some respect the handmaid of God."
The +óGé¼+ôAmerican dilemma+óGé¼-¥ of a pluralist society with a numerically dominate religious sect can +óGé¼+ôthreaten the dissenting beliefs of other religions and of the nonreligious,+óGé¼-¥ Harvard scholar Ronald F. Thiemann concluded. +óGé¼+ôWhile we proclaim the theoretical separation of religious and political institutions, we often encourage their intermingling in practice.+óGé¼-¥
No one person or event triggered the modern focus on students+óGé¼Gäó rights or church-state separation as it pertains to public schools, but the movement did not start in the twentieth century. Conflict over funding among +óGé¼+ôquarreling and envious religious sects+óGé¼-¥ prompted the New York state legislature in 1842 to establish a public school system in which no +óGé¼+ôreligious sectarian doctrine or tenet should be taught, inculcated, or practiced.+óGé¼-¥ The Bible Riots in Philadelphia in May 1844 was the accumulation of years of resentment and hostility between Protestants and Catholics. Fighting erupted on May 6 between the rival sects in reaction to a new state law that the Bible to be used as a textbook in public schools, although most had been doing it for years anyway. The Protestant King James version often contradicted or even offended Catholics and Catholic interpretation +óGé¼GÇ¥ some of these Bibles even referred to the pope as the anti-Christ. Protests by local Catholic clergy prompted Protestant riots, in which several homes were vandalized, several residents were injured and a handful were killed.
More progressive measures took root later in the nineteenth century to keep church and state separate. Connecticut had ceased all denominational instruction in public schools by 1850 +óGé¼GÇ¥ although Bible recitation, prayers and hymns remained +óGé¼GÇ¥ and by 1855, Massachusetts had forbid state funding for sectarian schools. President Ulysses S. Grant promoted statutes for prohibitions on public funding for sectarian schools, and a plank for the 1876 Republican Party advocated a constitutional amendment banning public money used for sectarian education. Although the measure failed at the federal level, several states adopted similar provisions for their constitutions, which were collectively known as +óGé¼+ôBlaine Amendments,+óGé¼-¥ named for the original sponsor, U.S. Senator James G. Blaine. Driven in part by anti-Catholic sentiment and in part +óGé¼+ôto ensure that there would be universal, free and non-sectarian public education,+óGé¼-¥ as law professor Steven K. Green explained, 37 state constitutions would eventually include explicit language forbidding use of public funds for sectarian schools. Protestant-leaning education statutes resulted in the formation of many parochial schools. Also, every state in the union had mandatory public school attendance laws by the turn of the century.
Dayton, Tennessee, became the center of the universe during a hot July in 1925 with the focus on a science teacher named John Thomas Scopes. A wave of progressivism and modernity in the Roaring Twenties was countered with a conservative backlash, especially in the South. Several Southern states endorsed statutes that buttressed religious teachings and relegated Darwinian science of evolution. Conservative attacks on Darwin were rooted with more than dogmatic religious matters because such traditionalists saw evolution, and the biological synthesis of evolution science called eugenics, +óGé¼+ôas the damnable consequence of Darwinian thinking: First assume that humans evolved from beasts and treat them like cattle,+óGé¼-¥ professor Edward J. Larson explained in Summer for the Gods in 1997. Tennessee+óGé¼Gäós Butler Act outlawed any public school educator +óGé¼+ôto teach any theory that denies the story of the Divine Creation of man as taught in the Bible, and to teach instead that man has descended from a lower order of animals,+óGé¼-¥ although the governor saw it as a symbolic law and didn+óGé¼Gäót expect it to be strictly enforced. Teachers, as agents of the state, were expected to obey the law, even though evolution was mentioned in the state-approved biology textbooks. The American Civil Liberties Union +óGé¼GÇ¥ which had been formed only five years earlier +óGé¼GÇ¥ saw such statutes as an unconstitutional attack on free speech and sought litigation. Scopes, who had been chosen by pro-Darwin town officials to be the defendant, substituted for a biology class where he mentioned basic evolutionary concepts. Two of the most famous legal minds in the nation represented the two legal parties: William Jennings Bryan, a fundamentalist Christian who believed the literal interpretation of Scripture, and Clarence Darrow, an agnostic and lawyer who was known for his lost-cause cases. Bryan, a former secretary of state and three-time presidential candidate, had argued for years that Darwinian evolution disqualifies as science and only breeds atheism and violence, especially in the wake of World War I and the rise of Bolshevism. +óGé¼+ôTo destroy the faith of Christians and lay the foundations for the bloodiest war in history would seem enough to condemn Darwinism,+óGé¼-¥ Bryan argued. Darrow wrote about his nineteenth-century education, +óGé¼+ôFrom the first grade to the end of the college course [students] were taught not to think, and the instructor who dared to utter anything in conflict with ordinary beliefs and customs was promptly dismissed, if not destroyed.+óGé¼-¥ The prosecution believed the truth of Darwin was irrelevant and +óGé¼+ôasserted the right of a state to cultural autonomy. +óGé¼-ª The defense, on the other hand, wished to show that the law not only was unconstitutional, but also flew in the face of accepted scientific knowledge.+óGé¼-¥ On the last day of testimony, Darrow questioned Bryan on the witness stand about the contradictory and implausible stories of the Bible, although the judge had previously stipulated that the trial was not about answering questions over evolution and biblical creation. Scopes was found guilty and fined $100, which was later reversed on a technicality. The Scopes Monkey Trial was the first broadcast live to the nation by radio and the first legal battle over religion in public schools to entice the nation. The battle of Darwin versus Genesis in the classroom, however, would not be resolved for more than 40 years.
The Supreme Court started tackling civil rights issues regularly in the 1920s, when it differentiated between appropriate and inappropriate free speech restrictions and declared in 1925 that the Bill of Rights applied to the states, reversing a century-old precedent. One key case in this era concerning public education was Meyer v. Nebraska in 1923 when the Court unanimously ruled that a state law banning the teaching of foreign languages was +óGé¼+ôarbitrary and without reasonable relation to any end within the competency of the State.+óGé¼-¥ The Court ruled that states could overstep their constitutional bounds in regard to public education. Once the Court started deferring economic matters to legislators and the states, new civil rights concerns over individual liberty and the power of government showed up more and more on the docket.
Jehovah+óGé¼Gäós Witnesses hold strong beliefs concerning idolatry and saluting the American flag is considered as such. This was at issue in 1940 when the Supreme Court ruled that compulsory flag salutes in public schools did not infringe the Free Exercise Clause within the religion clauses of the First Amendment: +óGé¼+ôCongress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.+óGé¼-¥ Lillian, 12, and William Gobitas, 10, were expelled from their Pennsylvania school when they refused to salute Old Glory and recite the Pledge of Allegiance (the phrase +óGé¼+ôunder God+óGé¼-¥ was not included into the Pledge of Allegiance until 1954 so that was not at issue). Two lower federal courts ruled in favor of the Gobitas family, but the Supreme Court ruled, 8-1, that +óGé¼GÇ¥ contradictory precedent notwithstanding +óGé¼GÇ¥ +óGé¼+ôthe courtroom is not the arena for debating issues of educational policy,+óGé¼-¥ and the state legislature did not overstep its bounds. Justice Felix Frankfurter wrote for the majority in Minersville School District v. Gobitis (court records misspelled the name), +óGé¼+ôJudicial review, itself a limitation on popular government, is a fundamental part of our constitutional scheme. But to the legislature no less than to courts is committed the guardianship of deeply-cherished liberties.+óGé¼-¥ The ruling fueled violence and harassment across the United States against Jehovah+óGé¼Gäós Witnesses, and several legislatures and school boards adopted similar Pledge of Allegiance and flag-salute statutes; the ACLU noted that 1,488 Witnesses in 335 communities had been attacked by vigilantes in a six-month period. +óGé¼+ôThis was the nationwide answer to Justice Frankfurter+óGé¼Gäós suggestion that the Jehovah+óGé¼Gäós Witnesses appeal to the state legislatures for relief,+óGé¼-¥ professor Paul Finkelman has observed. Justice Harlan Fiske Stone, the lone dissenter in Gobitis, concluded that not only did the expulsion of the Gobitas children infringe free speech rights, but with +óGé¼+ôthis law the state seeks to coerce these children to express a sentiment which, as they interpret it, they do not entertain, and which violates their deepest religious convictions.+óGé¼-¥ Lillian Gobitas later recalled, +óGé¼+ôIt never really occurred to us that the Court+óGé¼Gäós decision would be anything but favorable.+óGé¼-¥
Topics the Supreme Court has reversed itself on in its 220-year history include segregation, executing minors and the mentally ill +óGé¼GÇ¥ and public school flag salutes. Walter Barnette filed suit on behalf of his children to reverse West Virginia+óGé¼Gäós flag-salute statute in 1942. Both a federal circuit court and appeals court rejected Gobitis in favor of the Barnette family. Lawyers representing the Barnettes at the Supreme Court compared Gobitis to the Dred Scott decision of 1857, the case which affirmed the constitutionality of slavery. The Court reversed Gobitis on Flag Day, 1943, with Justice Robert Jackson ruling that +óGé¼+ôfundamental rights may not be submitted to vote; they depend on the outcome of no elections.+óGé¼-¥ The difference in Barnette was that the justices weighed whether the plaintiffs+óGé¼Gäó free speech rights, not religious freedom rights, were being violated, which allowed them to apply the +óGé¼+ôclear and present danger+óGé¼-¥ precedent from the landmark case Schenck v. U.S in 1919. If the students+óGé¼Gäó actions of quietly refraining from the Pledge or flag salute did not infringe the rights of others or threaten the government, then there was no valid reason to suppress their expression. Jackson could simply not univocally compare national security interests with public school students refusing to salute the flag, as Frankfurter had argued in Gobitis. Jackson warned Americans not to act like the oppressive governments of their World War II enemies and said that school boards, as a function and creation of the state, must adhere to the Fourteenth Amendment+óGé¼Gäós promise of civil rights. +óGé¼+ôIf there is any fixed star in our constitutional constellation,+óGé¼-¥ he ruled, +óGé¼+ôit is that no official, high or petty, can prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion or force citizens to confess by word or act their faith therein.+óGé¼-¥
Barnette was a pivotal ruling concerning free speech in public schools pertaining to a religious belief but not strictly a question of freedom of religion. The question of establishment of religion in schools would be raised in Everson v. Board of Education in 1947. Ewing Township allotted public funds for busing for private school students, and the Court ruled that this was a constitutional practice because such provisions, as Justice Hugo Black wrote in the majority opinion, +óGé¼+ôintended to guarantee free transportation of a kind which the state deems to be best for the school children+óGé¼Gäós welfare.+óGé¼-¥ Despite siding against strict interpretation of the Establishment Clause, Black+óGé¼Gäós ruling indoctrinated a new interpretation of First Amendment freedoms: "[N]either a state nor the Federal Government can set up a church. Neither can pass laws which aid one religion, aid all religions, or prefer one religion over another. Neither can force nor influence a person to go to or to remain away from church against his will or force him to profess a belief or disbelief in any religion. No person can be punished for entertaining or professing religious beliefs or disbeliefs, for church attendance or non-attendance."
Everson also reaffirmed +óGé¼GÇ¥ and resurrected +óGé¼GÇ¥ historical precedent from the Founding Fathers first quoted by the Court in Reynolds v. U.S. in 1879 when the Court upheld an anti-polygamy law in the territories. These included James Madison+óGé¼Gäós +óGé¼+ôMemorial and Remonstrance+óGé¼-¥ speech in 1785 in which he +óGé¼+ôdemonstrated +óGé¼-£that religion, or the duty we owe the Creator,+óGé¼Gäó was not within the cognizance of civil government,+óGé¼-¥ and Thomas Jefferson+óGé¼Gäós letter to the Danbury Baptist Association in 1802 in which he said, +óGé¼+ôI contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should +óGé¼-£make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,+óGé¼Gäó thus building a wall of separation between church and State.+óGé¼-¥ Black wrote that in his speech, Madison
+óGé¼-ª eloquently argued that a true religion did not need the support of law; that no person, either believer or nonbeliever, should be taxed to support a religious institution of any kind; that the best interest of a society required that the minds of men always be wholly free, and that cruel persecutions were the inevitable result of government-established religions.
Everson also discusses Jefferson+óGé¼Gäós Virginia Statutes for Religious Freedom in 1779, which stated: +óGé¼+ôThat no man shall be compelled to frequent or support any religious worship, place, or ministry whatsoever, nor shall be enforced, restrained, molested, or burthened in his body or goods, nor shall otherwise suffer on account of his religious opinions or belief ...+óGé¼-¥ Maddox defined Jefferson+óGé¼Gäós +óGé¼+ôwall of separation+óGé¼-¥ as: +óGé¼+ôChurch and state would appreciate each other but would function in separate spheres, free, as much as possible, from interference from one another.+óGé¼-¥
Black+óGé¼Gäós declaration in Everson would reemerge just a year later in McCollum v. Board of Education. The Champaign Council on Religious Education in Champaign County, Illinois, was comprised of Jewish, Catholic and Protestant clergy to teach participating public school students during the school day in the schoolhouse; nearly 2 million students nationwide participated in time release programs such as these in 1945. Vashti McCollum, the plaintiff, who had support from numerous religious groups with her lawsuit, believed her son was suffering from peer pressure and banishment for conspicuously not participating in the program. The Court found in McCollum that sectarian use of tax-funded public property to aid religious groups in their faith was in violation of the First Amendment. Justice Black penned for the majority, +óGé¼+ôFor the First Amendment rests upon the premise that both religion and government can best work to achieve their lofty aims if each is left free from the other within its respective sphere.+óGé¼-¥ To resolve the question of establishment with time release programs, several school districts allowed students to leave school early to attend them.
Such was the case in New York City when the ACLU and American Jewish Counsel encouraged Tessim Zorach and Esta Gluck to challenge a local time release program in 1948 by trying to show +óGé¼+ôthere was substantial public school aid and involvement, and that there was strong pressure on children to participate.+óGé¼-¥ In 1952, the Supreme Court, with a 6-3 vote, upheld the two lower court rulings that such programs did not violate the Establishment Clause and McCollum. Justice William O. Douglas wrote for the majority in Zorach v. Clauson, +óGé¼+ôThe First Amendment +óGé¼-ª does not say that in every and all respects there shall be a separation of Church and State. +óGé¼-ª Otherwise the state and religion would be aliens to each other +óGé¼GÇ¥ hostile, suspicious, and even unfriendly.+óGé¼-¥ He explained, +óGé¼+ôWe are a religious people whose institutions presuppose a Supreme Being. +óGé¼-ª When the state encourages religious instruction or cooperates with religious authorities by adjusting the schedule of public events to sectarian needs, it follows the best of our traditions.+óGé¼-¥ Justice Douglas clarified this position in 1963:
+óGé¼-ª we are Christian because the vast majority of our people profess a Western religion, not one of the East. But that is not the reason why it would violate the Establishment Clause to require Moslem [sic] prayers in public schools. Eastern religions, whether Hindu, Buddhist, or Islam, are as much protected by the First Amendment as any other.
Zorach +óGé¼+ôbecame the symbol of a new constitutional tolerance of governmental friendliness to organized religion,+óGé¼-¥ and Douglas+óGé¼Gäó maxim was widely circulated and repeated to buttress this stance, political science professor Frank J. Sorauf wrote in 2001. +óGé¼+ôThe Zorach decision signaled the Court+óGé¼Gäós entry into a national debate over the place of religion and religious values in public life, and, as such, it altered the terms of that debate+óGé¼-¥ since it seemed to conflict with the stern stance of separation established in McCollum. Justice Douglas would explain years later that with McCollum, +óGé¼+ôIf government introduces religious education into public schools, it violates the Establishment Clause as it puts the weight of the school system behind a particular creed, dogma, or faith,+óGé¼-¥ and that the time release plan in Zorach was permissible, +óGé¼+ôprovided, however, that if coercion is used to get students to use the public school recess to attend religious services then there is a violation of the Free Exercise Clause.+óGé¼-¥
A religious revival swept postwar America in the face of the institutionalized atheism of communist totalitarianism threatening Europe and Asia, and the Everson-McCollum-Zorach trifecta for Establishment and Free Exercise Clause boundaries ignited a new interpretation of First Amendment law. In 1998, professor Phillip E. Hammond wrote about two ideas concerning the religious clauses: separationist and accomodationist. The former +óGé¼+ôclaims to adhere strictly to the No Establishment standard+óGé¼-¥ and +óGé¼+ôuphold the religions of individuals and thus to adhere to the Free Exercise standard,+óGé¼-¥ and the latter claims that +óGé¼+ôgovernment should facilitate, even encourage, religion by making religious actions easier to perform.+óGé¼-¥ Justice Douglas touched on this issue in 1963: +óGé¼+ôChristianity has sufficient inner strength to survive on its own. It does not need state subsidies, nor state privileges, nor state prestige. The more it obtains state support the greater it curtails human freedom.+óGé¼-¥ Ronald F. Thiemann argues in Religion in Public Life in 1996 that a metaphor of +óGé¼+ôseparation of church and state+óGé¼-¥ and notions of +óGé¼+ôneutrality and accommodation+óGé¼-¥ are insufficient in the church-state debate. +óGé¼+ôThe slogan +óGé¼-£the separation of church and state+óGé¼Gäó impedes our understanding of the proper role of religion in American public life,+óGé¼-¥ he asserts. +óGé¼+ôIf the courts are to have the responsibility of judging whether a governmental action has a secular purpose, judges will be placed in the uncomfortable position of being both theological and social critics.+óGé¼-¥ Professors Isaac Kramnick and R. Laurence Moore contended in The Godless Constitution in 1996 that the Constitution was framed with a non-religious, Jeffersonian foundation of religious freedom and twentieth century +óGé¼+ôreligious correctness +óGé¼-ª refuses to recognize secularism as a fundamental principle of American government.+óGé¼-¥ In the wake of Barnette, Everson, McCollum and Zorach, most Americans believed that public schools could serve as religious agents as long as no students were coerced to participate or denounce their own beliefs. Hammond concludes that in more than two centuries of living under the religion clauses, +óGé¼+ôAmerican society has moved from a more accomodationist position to a more separationist position +óGé¼-ª out of necessity +óGé¼-ª+óGé¼-¥ with a +óGé¼+ôstructural+óGé¼-¥ shift.
Teacher-led public school prayer was not uncommon by the early 1960s but was certainly not everywhere. A survey conducted in 1962 indicated that half of American school districts, mostly in the East and South, had some form of mandated prayer, and actual practice was +óGé¼+ôspotty.+óGé¼-¥ Maddox explains, +óGé¼+ôMany defenders of school prayer stuck up for the devotional time more from a concern for the stability and wellbeing of the country than out of concern for the spiritual welfare of the youngsters +óGé¼-ª+óGé¼-¥ Also by this time, the Supreme Court, under the guide of Chief Justice Earl Warren, infuriated many American conservatives with constitutional stances promoting desegregation and criminal rights. In 1951, the New York State Board of Regents established a prayer +óGé¼+ôintended to be nondenominational in content+óGé¼-¥ that read: +óGé¼+ôAlmighty God, we acknowledge our dependence upon thee, and we beg thy blessings upon us, our parents, our teachers and our country.+óGé¼-¥ +óGé¼+ôThe prayer was intended to be optional for both the local school boards and for individual students,+óGé¼-¥ according to professor Paul L. Murphy. +óGé¼+ôAlthough the prayer was supposed to be voluntary, the New Hyde Park school board initially had made no provision for excusing students who did not wish to participate from the classroom.+óGé¼-¥ The parents of ten students, representing Jewish, Unitarian, atheist and Ethical Cultural Society creeds, filed suit against the school board and state. Three lower courts rejected the plaintiffs+óGé¼Gäó protest that +óGé¼+ôthe so-called nondenominational prayer violated their religious beliefs, that the school had coerced their children into participating in a religious exercise, and that the state+óGé¼Gäós authorization of the prayer was a violation of the First Amendment,+óGé¼-¥ before the Supreme Court agreed to hear Engel v. Vitale. The Court ruled 6-1 (two justices took no part in the case) on June 25 to side with the parents. Justice Hugo Black wrote for the majority, "Because of the prohibition of the First Amendment against the enactment of any law +óGé¼+ôrespecting an establishment of religion,+óGé¼-¥ which is made applicable to the States by the Fourteenth Amendment, state officials may not compose an official state prayer and require that it be recited in the public schools of the State at the beginning of each school day +óGé¼GÇ¥ even if the prayer is denominationally neutral and pupils who wish to do so may remain silent or be excused from the room while the prayer is being recited."
Black pointed to America+óGé¼Gäós history of maintaining a secular state and +óGé¼+ôa wall of separation.+óGé¼-¥ Although he explained that +óGé¼+ôNeither a state nor the Federal Government +óGé¼-ª can pass laws which aid one religion, aid all religions, or prefer one religion over another,+óGé¼-¥ Black argued, +óGé¼+ôit has been argued that to apply the Constitution in such a way as to prohibit state laws respecting an establishment of religious services in public schools is to indicate a hostility toward religion or toward prayer. Nothing, of course, could be more wrong.+óGé¼-¥ Engel was the first Court decision to point to Roger Williams, the banished Puritan pastor who founded Rhode Island in 1644, as a central historical figure in American religious freedom history. Williams wrote two books defending his belief in separation and that the Church and the state should not intermingle, as he interpreted in Scripture. In a separate concurrence, Justice Douglas explained that the
First Amendment leaves the Government in a position not of hostility to religion, but of neutrality. The philosophy is that the atheist or agnostic +óGé¼GÇ¥ the nonbeliever +óGé¼GÇ¥ is entitled to go his own way. The philosophy is that, if government interferes in matters spiritual, it will be a divisive force. The First Amendment teaches that a government neutral in the field of religion better serves all religious interests.
Political reaction to Engel was immediate and stinging. Members of Congress declared that +óGé¼+ôthe Supreme Court had set up atheism as a new religion,+óGé¼-¥ the justices had +óGé¼+ôput the Negroes in the schools+óGé¼-¥ and +óGé¼+ôdriven God out,+óGé¼-¥ the ruling provided +óGé¼+ôaid and comfort to Moscow+óGé¼-¥ and was the most +óGé¼+ôtragic+óGé¼-¥ decision in the nation+óGé¼Gäós history; even former President Dwight Eisenhower and former Vice President Richard Nixon publicly condemned Engel. The Senate Committee on the Judiciary proposed a constitutional amendment so +óGé¼+ôany public school system may provide time during the school day for prayerful meditation.+óGé¼-¥ However, former President Harry Truman supported the Court+óGé¼Gäós authority to interpret the Constitution, and President John F. Kennedy pointed out that church and the home were the most proper places for prayer, by advocating Engel. Religious sects were divided on the ruling, but many national Jewish groups and prominent American newspapers supported the Court+óGé¼Gäós decision. In September 1962, a survey conducted by the Religious News Service concluded that +óGé¼+ôfirst samplings of schools in 15 states indicates that they will continue their former practices of prayer and Bible reading without change.+óGé¼-¥ Because a majority of public school administrators and high school principals disagreed with the Court on school prayer, especially in the South, and more than 10 percent of superintendents nationwide reported that prayers continued in some of their schools, litigation concerning school prayer in various forms continued for decades. If Brown v. Board of Education in 1954 sparked Massive Resistance to desegregation, then Engel and subsequent Warren Court cases concerning the Establishment Clause ignited a Second Massive Resistance during the Civil Rights Movement.
Another church-state case, this time concerning mandated Bible and prayer recitation, came before the Court less than a year after Engel. A Pennsylvania law passed in 1959 stated: +óGé¼+ôAt least ten verses from the Holy Bible shall be read, without comment, at the opening of each public school on each school day. Any child shall be excused from such Bible reading, or attending such Bible reading, upon the written request of his parent or guardian.+óGé¼-¥ A family of Unitarians, the Schempps of Abingdon, filed suit because such religious practices in school is +óGé¼+ôcontrary to the religious beliefs which they held, and to their familial teaching.+óGé¼-¥ Heavily citing Engel, Justice Thomas Clark ruled for the majority that a law that passes the Establishment Clause test must have +óGé¼+ôa secular legislative purpose and a primary effect that neither advances nor inhibits religion.+óGé¼-¥ Furthermore, "The wholesome +óGé¼+ôneutrality+óGé¼-¥ of which this Court+óGé¼Gäós cases speak thus stems from a recognition of the teachings of history that powerful sects or groups might bring about a fusion of governmental and religious functions or a concert or dependency of one upon the other to the end that official support of the State or Federal Government would be placed behind the tenets of one or of all orthodoxies. This the Establishment Clause prohibits."
In a lengthy concurrence, Justice William Brennan responded to critics: +óGé¼+ôThe principles which we reaffirm and apply today can hardly be thought novel or radical. They are, in truth, as old as the Republic itself, and have always been as integral a part of the First Amendment as the very words of that charter of religious liberty.+óGé¼-¥ Schempp was accompanied with Murray v. Curlett, which also addressed Bible recitations. Madalyn Murray +óGé¼GÇ¥ who as Madalyn Murray O+óGé¼GäóHair would later found American Atheists +óGé¼GÇ¥ filed suit in Baltimore after her son was forced to wait in the hallway after refusing to participate in classroom recitations. Clark ruled in Murray just as in Schempp that such practices were unconstitutional, even if students were not coerced to participate. The Murray decision pointed out that the U.S. Census Bureau identified 83 separate religious bodies, each with a membership of over 50,000. Billy Graham called the rulings +óGé¼+ôa diabolical scheme,+óGé¼-¥ Alabama Gov. George Wallace and Mississippi Gov. Ross Barnett vowed to ignore the Court, and U.S. Rep. Frank Becker proposed a constitutional amendment that would defend voluntary biblical recitation and prayer in public schools, but there was an understanding that both would be nondenominational. The House Judiciary Committee convened hearings over Becker+óGé¼Gäós proposal in early 1964, where he was asked to define +óGé¼+ônondenominational+óGé¼-¥ and +óGé¼+ônonsectarian,+óGé¼-¥ as well as if the Bible is sectarian or not. During the proceedings, committee member George Senner asked Rep. J. Edgar Chenoweth if students could bring their own Bibles to school and pray on their own. Yes and yes. Senner concluded, +óGé¼+ôBut many of the general public believe that is prohibited by the decision of the Supreme Court.+óGé¼-¥ The debate ignited issues over who should compose the prayers and choose the Bible passages, how this could be achieved by public school teachers as agents of the state without being establishment and if such an amendment was tyranny of the majority. Despite support from four American cardinals and 36 bishops, 223 law professors and the Johnson Administration opposed Becker+óGé¼Gäós amendment, and the proposal died in committee before summer recess. Justice Douglas summed up the debate the school prayer cases provoked: "As to prayers in public schools, we should remember that public schools are supported by all sects +óGé¼GÇ¥ nonbelievers as well as believers, by minorities as by the majority. +óGé¼-ª [P]ublic schools are designed to train American students in an atmosphere that is free from parochial, sectarian, and separatist influences."
The principal question at the center of the Scopes trial +óGé¼GÇ¥ if states could prohibit teaching the theory of evolution +óGé¼GÇ¥ was finally resolved in 1968. The Court unanimously ruled in Epperson v. Arkansas that such statutes were unconstitutional in large part because, +óGé¼+ôThe sole reason for the Arkansas law is that a particular religious group considers the evolution theory to conflict with the account of the origin of man set forth in the Book of Genesis.+óGé¼-¥ Arkansas+óGé¼Gäó anti-evolution law from 1928 conflicted with a biology textbook the Little Rock school administration had its science teachers use, which in 1965 was the first textbook in Arkansas to include Darwin. At the time of the Epperson ruling, only Arkansas and Mississippi had anti-evolution statutes. Justice Abe Fortas penned for the Court that the law was simply too vague and +óGé¼+ôcannot stand.+óGé¼-¥ +óGé¼+ôNo suggestion has been made that Arkansas+óGé¼Gäó law may be justified by considerations of state policy other than the religious views of some of its citizens,+óGé¼-¥ he ruled. +óGé¼+ôIt is clear that fundamentalist sectarian conviction was and is the law+óGé¼Gäós reason for existence.+óGé¼-¥ Fortas pointed to the 1871 case Watson v. Jones +óGé¼GÇ¥ which stemmed from a sectarian land ownership dispute +óGé¼GÇ¥ to buttress his argument: +óGé¼+ôThe law knows no heresy, and is committed to the support of no dogma, the establishment of no sect.+óGé¼-¥
The Court would continue to address Establishment and Free Exercise cases concerning public schools unabated, including questions over teaching +óGé¼+ôcreation science,+óGé¼-¥ school vouchers, moments of silence, benedictions at graduation ceremonies and other prayer activities. +óGé¼+ôThe essential tension reflected in the Court+óGé¼Gäós adjudication of the Constitution+óGé¼Gäós religion clauses is a manifestation of America+óGé¼Gäós basic dilemma regarding the role of religion in public life,+óGé¼-¥ Thiemann concluded. +óGé¼+ôStrict separation+óGé¼-¥ promotes legal disestablishment but ignores patterns of cooperation between church and state in America+óGé¼Gäós history, while +óGé¼+ômutual cooperation+óGé¼-¥ seeks to acknowledge traditional relations between Christianity and the state but ignores growing religious pluralism in the United States. Maddox argues that religious individuals have a mandate to +óGé¼+ôconvert all people to their religion+óGé¼-¥ because +óGé¼+ôa balanced religious faith provides stability and good mental health.+óGé¼-¥ However, +óGé¼+ôReligious people involved in the political process must not make political issues into moral absolutes and moral absolutes into political issues.+óGé¼-¥ Americans may disagree on the Constitution+óGé¼Gäós interpretation and meaning, Hammond argues, +óGé¼+ôbut they are not free to accept or reject its authority. One ceases to be an American citizen in any meaningful sense if one rejects the authority of the Constitution +óGé¼-ª+óGé¼-¥ Kramnick and Moore stipulated that +óGé¼+ômoral and religious convictions will and should play a prominent part+óGé¼-¥ of political, social and policymaking discussion but, +óGé¼+ôWhat is unacceptable to us in light of the godless Constitution is for religious certainty ever to trump politics and for government policy in any way to privilege or codify religious beliefs in ways that preempt a pluralist democratic process.+óGé¼-¥ Justice Douglas observed, "Truth of the religious belief +óGé¼GÇ¥ like sincerity in embracing it +óGé¼GÇ¥ is foreclosed even where the practitioners are charged with a fraudulent intrigue. Religious experience is beyond the competence of courts and juries to prove or disprove. +óGé¼-ª In sectarian circles hunger for secular power is still strong the world over."
Legal precedent that the First Amendment religious clauses meant the federal government could not give explicit favoritism to any one denomination became antiquated during the mid-twentieth century. Increasing religious and cultural pluralism spawned a new consciousness over spiritual freedom and students+óGé¼Gäó rights. As Larson explained, by the time of the Scopes trial a new movement +óGé¼+ôrejected the idea that public education should promote any particular political, economic, or religious viewpoint +óGé¼GÇ¥ even one broadly defined as democratic, capitalistic, or Christian.+óGé¼-¥