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In the battles over religion and politics in America, both liberals and conservatives often appeal to history. Liberals claim that the Founders separated church and state. But for much of American history, David Sehat writes, Protestant Christianity was intimately intertwined with the state. Yet the past was not the Christian utopia that conservatives imagine either. Instead, a Protestant moral establishment prevailed, using government power to punish free thinkers and religious dissidents. In The Myth of American Religious Freedom, Sehat provides an eye-opening history of religion in public life, overturning our most cherished myths. Originally, the First Amendment applied only to the federal government, which had limited authority. The Protestant moral establishment ruled on the state level. Using moral laws to uphold religious power, religious partisans enforced a moral and religious orthodoxy against Catholics, Jews, Mormons, agnostics, and others. Not until 1940 did the U.S. Supreme Court extend the First Amendment to the states. As the Supreme Court began to dismantle the connections between religion and government, Sehat argues, religious conservatives mobilized to maintain their power and began the culture wars of the last fifty years. To trace the rise and fall of this Protestant establishment, Sehat focuses on a series of dissenters--abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison, suffragist Elizabeth Cady Stanton, socialist Eugene V. Debs, and many others. Shattering myths held by both the left and right, David Sehat forces us to rethink some of our most deeply held beliefs. By showing the bad history used on both sides, he denies partisans a safe refuge with the Founders.
Today, the ongoing battle between religion and public education is once again a burning issue in the United States. Prayer in the classroom, the teaching of creationism, the representation of sexuality in the classroom, and the teaching of morals are just a few of the subjects over which these institutions are skirmishing. James Fraser shows that though these battles have been going on for as long as there have been public schools, there has never been any consensus about the proper relationship between religion and public education. Looking at the most difficult question of how private issues of faith can be reconciled with the very public nature of schooling, Fraser paints a picture of our multicultural society that takes our relationship with God into account.
From the founding of Harvard College in 1636 as a mission for training young clergy to the landmark 1968 Supreme Court decision in Epperson v. Arkansas, which struck down the state's ban on teaching evolution in schools, religion and education in the United States have been inextricably linked. Still today new fights emerge over the rights and limitations of religion in the classroom. The Oxford Handbook of Religion and American Education brings together preeminent scholars from the fields of religion, education, law, and political science to craft a comprehensive survey and assessment of the study of religion and education in the United States. The essays in the first part develop six distinct conceptual lenses through which to view American education, including Privatism, Secularism, Pluralism, Religious Literacy, Religious Liberty, and Democracy. The following four parts expand on these concepts in a diverse range of educational frames: public schools, faith-based K-12 education, higher education, and lifespan faith development. Designed for a diverse and interdisciplinary audience, this addition to the Oxford Handbook series sets for itself a broad goal of understanding the place of religion and education in a modern democracy.
Over the last few years, Orthodox Jewish private schools, also known as yeshivas, have been under fire by a group of activists known as Young Advocates for Fair Education, run by several yeshiva graduates, who have criticized them for providing an inadequate secular education. At the heart of the yeshiva controversy lies two important interests in education: the right of the parent to choose an appropriate education, which may include values-laden religious education, and the right of each child to receive an appropriate education, as guaranteed by the state. These interests raise further questions. If preference is given to the former, how much freedom should be given to a parent in choosing an appropriate education? If the latter, how does the state define what constitutes an appropriate education or measure the extent to which an appropriate education has been achieved? And when can—or must—the state override the wishes of parents? The purpose of this book is to explore these difficult questions.
Religious freedom is so often presented as a timeless American ideal and an inalienable right, appearing fully formed at the founding of the United States. That is simply not so, Tisa Wenger contends in this sweeping and brilliantly argued book. Instead, American ideas about religious freedom were continually reinvented through a vibrant national discourse--Wenger calls it "religious freedom talk--that cannot possibly be separated from the evolving politics of race and empire. More often than not, Wenger demonstrates, religious freedom talk worked to privilege the dominant white Christian population. At the same time, a diverse array of minority groups at home and colonized people abroad invoked and reinterpreted this ideal to defend themselves and their ways of life. In so doing they posed sharp challenges to the racial and religious exclusions of American life. People of almost every religious stripe have argued, debated, negotiated, and brought into being an ideal called American religious freedom, subtly transforming their own identities and traditions in the process. In a post-9/11 world, Wenger reflects, public attention to religious freedom and its implications is as consequential as it has ever been.
For over one hundred years, Thomas Jefferson and his Statute for Establishing Religious Freedom have stood at the center of our understanding of religious liberty and the First Amendment. Jefferson’s expansive vision—including his insistence that political freedom and free thought would be at risk if we did not keep government out of the church and church out of government—enjoyed a near consensus of support at the Supreme Court and among historians, until Justice William Rehnquist called reliance on Jefferson "demonstrably incorrect." Since then, Rehnquist’s call has been taken up by a bevy of jurists and academics anxious to encourage renewed government involvement with religion. In Religious Freedom: Jefferson’s Legacy, America’s Creed, the historian and lawyer John Ragosta offers a vigorous defense of Jefferson’s advocacy for a strict separation of church and state. Beginning with a close look at Jefferson’s own religious evolution, Ragosta shows that deep religious beliefs were at the heart of Jefferson’s views on religious freedom. Basing his analysis on that Jeffersonian vision, Ragosta redefines our understanding of how and why the First Amendment was adopted. He shows how the amendment’s focus on maintaining the authority of states to regulate religious freedom demonstrates that a very strict restriction on federal action was intended. Ultimately revealing that the great sage demanded a firm separation of church and state but never sought a wholly secular public square, Ragosta provides a new perspective on Jefferson, the First Amendment, and religious liberty within the United States.
This book provides the answers to controversial questions about religious liberties in the United States and connected issues through balanced, thorough, and nonjudgmental coverage of the issues in a reference format. The subject of religious freedom is important to all American citizens, regardless of religious affiliation or ethnicity. Are the rights of religious individuals being eroded, or is religion being unfairly used to deny basic secular rights to individuals? How will religious institutions adapt to changes in legislation that have an impact on how they operate? Does the Supreme Court have the right to enforce these changes? Finally, how can the precarious separation of church and state be maintained while simultaneously respecting both institutions? This single-volume work provides an introduction that addresses the historical background of religious freedom in America, accurately explains the latest legal developments in religious freedom in the United States, and presents an unbiased account of the probable impact of the new Freedom of Religion laws in the continuing culture war. Readers will gain insight into key controversies such as prayer in public schools, creationism versus evolution, abortion, religious objections to medical care, religious displays in public places, same-sex marriage and LGBT rights, and state and federal religious freedom acts. The book also includes perspective essays by outside contributors, a selection of useful primary documents, a listing of print and nonprint resources, a chronology, and a glossary of terms.
Warren Nord's thoughtful book tackles an issue of great importance in contemporary America: the role of religion in our public schools and universities. According to Nord, public opinion has been excessively polarized by those religious conservatives who would restore religious purposes and practices to public education and by those secular liberals for whom religion is irrelevant to everything in the curriculum. While he maintains that public schools and universities must not promote religion, he also argues that there are powerful philosophical, political, moral, and constitutional reasons for requiring students to study religion. Indeed, only if religion is included in the curriculum will students receive a truly liberal education, one that takes seriously a variety of ways of understanding the human experience. Intended for a broad audience, Nord's comprehensive study encompasses American history, constitutional law, educational theory and practice, theology, philosophy, and ethics. It also discusses a number of current, controversial issues, including multiculturalism, moral education, creationism, academic freedom, and the voucher and school choice movements.
All Americans, liberal or conservative, religious or not, can agree that religious freedom, anchored in conscience rights, is foundational to the U.S. democratic experiment. But what freedom of conscience means, what its scope and limits are, according to the Constitution—these are matters for heated debate. At a moment when such questions loom ever larger in the nation’s contentious politics and fraught policy-making process, this timely book offers invaluable historical, empirical, philosophical, and analytical insight into the American constitutional heritage of religious liberty. As the contributors to this interdisciplinary volume attest, understanding religious freedom demands taking multiple perspectives. The historians guide us through the legacy of religious freedom, from the nation’s founding and the rise of public education, through the waves of immigration that added successive layers of diversity to American society. The social scientists discuss the swift, striking effects of judicial decision making and the battles over free exercise in a complex, bureaucratic society. Advocates remind us of the tensions abiding in schools and other familiar institutions, and of the major role minorities play in shaping free exercise under our constitutional regime. And the jurists emphasize that this is a messy area of constitutional law. Their work brings out the conflicts inherent in interpreting the First Amendment—tensions between free exercise and disestablishment, between the legislative and judicial branches of government, and along the complex and ever-shifting boundaries of religion, state, and society. What emerges most clearly from these essays is how central religious liberty is to America’s civic fabric—and how, under increasing pressure from both religious and secular forces, this First Amendment freedom demands our full attention and understanding.