Public Schools. Bible Reading without Comment Upheld

1928 ◽  
Vol 13 (12) ◽  
pp. 762
Keyword(s):  
Public Schools ◽  
Bible Reading

Education and Law

2019 ◽  
pp. 19-38
Author(s):  
Candy Gunther Brown
Keyword(s):  
Public Schools ◽  
Emotional Health ◽  
Equal Employment Opportunity Commission ◽  
Establishment Clause ◽  
Religious Discrimination ◽  
Protestant Christianity ◽  
Legal Contexts ◽  
Lemon Test ◽  
Bible Reading

Chapter 1 illuminates the educational and legal contexts in which yoga and meditation entered the U.S. cultural mainstream. Beginning in the seventeenth century, public schools taught Protestant Christianity. Since the mid-twentieth century, public schools have been tasked by courts with providing a secular education and by educational reformers with shaping moral character and ethical behavior. Yoga and meditation appeal to educators because they promise not only to enhance physical, mental, and emotional health but also to instill morality and ethics without promoting religion. The U.S. Supreme Court issued a series of landmark rulings, among them Engel v. Vitale (1962) and School of Abington Township v. Schempp (1963), that prohibited public schools from endorsing religious practices such as prayer and Bible reading. The Court developed constitutional tests, the Lemon test, endorsement test, and coercion test, for identifying violations of the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment, based on principles of religious voluntarism, equality, and nondiscrimination. Through the federal cases Malnak v. Yogi (1979) and United States v. Meyers (1996), courts developed the Malnak-Meyers indicia of religion. In 2008, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) identified the imposition of yoga and meditation as reverse religious discrimination.

The Publishers and Their Books

2021 ◽  
pp. 17-30
Author(s):  
Kathleen Wellman
Keyword(s):  
Public Schools ◽  
Public Education ◽  
Christian Education ◽  
Educational Institutions ◽  
Bob Jones University ◽  
The Supreme Court ◽  
Legal Challenges ◽  
History Of ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Bible Reading

This chapter discusses the three publishers of the textbooks this book treats: Bob Jones University, Abeka Books, and Accelerated Christian Education. It addresses when and why they began to publish and the controversies and legal challenges they subsequently generated. It explores the history of their sponsoring educational institutions and their stated missions. It places them in the context of Christian opposition to public education as it developed in response to the teaching of evolution, the Supreme Court decisions of the 1960s prohibiting prayer and Bible reading in public schools, and, most importantly, desegregation. These three publishers have offered an alternative “Christian” education since the early 1970s.

Democracy, Religion, and American Education

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Emile Lester
Keyword(s):  
Public Schools ◽  
Civil Religion ◽  
The United States ◽  
World Religions ◽  
Democratic Deliberation ◽  
The Social ◽  
Amy Gutmann ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Conservative Christians ◽  
Bible Reading

The debate over religion in public schools in the United States since the 1960s has pitted two forces of democracy celebrated in Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s The Social Contract against each other. The Supreme Court’s exclusion of sectarian prayer and Bible reading reflected democracy’s commitment to respect the rights of all. The politically engaged response of evangelical and conservative Christians has drawn upon democracy’s need for robust participation by ordinary citizens. While Rousseau believed that only an agreement upon a civil religion could reconcile these democratic forces, the results of a required world religions course in Modesto, California, suggests otherwise. The course enhanced students’ respect for religious liberty while allowing them to maintain their sectarian beliefs. Modesto’s course did not resolve all the dilemmas of democracy, however. The aversion to open-ended class discussions neglects the value of democratic deliberation that notable democratic theorists like Jurgen Habermas and Amy Gutmann celebrate.

The Constitution, the Supreme Court, and Religion

1967 ◽  
Vol 61 (3) ◽  
pp. 657-674 ◽  
Author(s):  
William A. Carroll
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Public Schools ◽  
Supreme Court ◽  
National Policy ◽  
The United States ◽  
The State ◽  
Local School ◽  
The Supreme Court ◽  
Liberty Of Conscience ◽  
Bible Reading

The Supreme Court of the United States, whose decisions not only define constitutional law but vitally affect national policy, has long held both an honored and a controversial place in American life. In no area do its decisions bring it more honor or more controversy than in the field of religion; for, as a member of the First Congress under the Constitution said, “the rights of conscience are, in their nature, of peculiar delicacy, and will little bear the gentlest touch of governmental hand. … Thus, the same decision of the Court may be hailed by some as a great landmark in the struggle for religious liberty, and denounced by others as a serious invasion of liberty of conscience. For although it may be pleasant to dream of religion insulated from governmental touch, the dual membership of citizens in the state and in religious bodies insures that conscience and government will touch at some points with inevitable friction, and, to the conscience so touched, it makes little difference whether the governmental hand is that of a local school board, the Congress, or the Supreme Court of the United States.The Court has recently been attacked as antireligious, or at least as callous to our religious heritage, because of its decisions invalidating a state-prescribed prayer and state-prescribed Bible reading in public schools. The first of these decisions prompted the more excited outcry, but the two, at first singly and then together, have precipitated a renewed debate about the proper constitutional relationship between the state and religion.

The School Prayer Cases

2019 ◽  
pp. 249-300
Author(s):  
Steven K. Green
Keyword(s):  
Public Schools ◽  
The Public ◽  
School Prayer ◽  
Public Reaction ◽  
Bible Reading ◽  
State Separation

This chapter examines the background to and the holdings in the two seminal cases involving prayer and Bible reading in the public schools: Engel v. Vitale and Abington Township v. Schempp. It discusses how the justices were cognizant of the potential reaction to the holdings and sought to mollify that response by using particular language in their opinions. It then examines the public reaction to the decisions that precipitated a split among Protestants over church–state separation. Finally, the chapter considers the congressional efforts to amend the Constitution to permit prayer and Bible reading in the public schools.

Bible Reading in Public Schools

1922 ◽  
Vol 17 (6) ◽  
pp. 457-461
Author(s):  
State Laws and Decisions∗
Keyword(s):  
Public Schools ◽  
Bible Reading
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