On the issue of separation of church and state, I’ve gone back and forth. As a kid I was for it then got religious as a teen and was vehemently against it. Later as a liberal young adult fresh out of college, I was again fervently for the complete separation, never foreseeing a day I’d change my mind yet again. I wholeheartedly believed in the constitutional Framers’ wisdom and intelligence to keep religious beliefs and practices out of the business of government. But now as I’ve grown much older and perhaps wee bit wiser, I see the error of what has always been an implied constitutional right. The philosophical epiphany came to me while spending years teaching in the public schools.
Long before I even started first grade, Madalyn Murray O’Hair had gone all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court to ensure American children in tax-supported schools would never be imposed upon to hear, speak or see anything remotely religious and in particular Christian. In 1963 the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in her favor. Murray v. Curlett officially ended mandatory school prayer in public schools across the nation.
The new law seemed cut and dry. But when I was in school in the 1970s, prayer and the Pledge of Allegiance were spoken before pep rallies and student assemblies. Our Congress prays before sessions. So something about the ‘separation of church and state’ seemed hypocritical in my mind. Across the land there were always individual kids and parents who spoke up against prayer in school and were equally pushed back by die-hard supporters of school prayer, citing community standards. In those days most communities across America were Christian.
Mixed up
Back in my reporting days, I sought to find how small communities dealt with racial integration—because that was a bygone era I knew nothing about. Integration began with the public schools. What I discovered was the black schools had something called ‘chapel,’ a morning ritual that involved all students and faculty congregating in an auditorium and listening to the principal sort of preach before each school day. What the principals told their students was change was coming. They foresaw the day of complete racial integration, this before a lot of whites would come to terms with the new social reality. The adults I interviewed who went to black-only schools spoke of total pride in their separate education, from shining floors and buildings maintained by meticulous custodians to educated teachers with degrees from some of the best universities in the country, not necessarily in Texas or the South. And their teachers encouraged them to reach for the stars, to feel God’s love and support, and always to stay close to Him in prayer and deed.
But when the public schools integrated during the 1960s and ’70s, black kids were not only frightened to start attending what used to be the ‘white schools’ (because white families were never going to allow their kids to attend former black-only school buildings) but they spoke of a disorientation—of the soul. They believe the restriction of school prayer, or chapel, was the beginning of community breakdown. See, the white schools pretty much removed any type of ritual prayer service along with Bibles and crosses from the classrooms, even references of annual December shows as Christmas concerts. So a whole culture and generation were left to fend for themselves spiritually, perhaps at a time when they needed it most, while attending a new public school system.
Roll Over Tom Jefferson
It’s been decades since all American public schools were integrated and at the same time prayer—even a biblical quote or spoken positive spiritual affirmation—removed. Today most of the country would agree our public schools are broken. But a nation’s schools are a reflection of its society, what we are willing to put up with. As a daily mandatory ‘prayer and preachin’’ were removed from the schoolhouse, so were sincere religious practices from many homes and the family unit. And that family decision had nothing to do with what was not taught in the schools. Americans changed. Churchgoing and practicing a specific denomination or doctrine are not important to many if not most people nowadays.
And nowadays we are accustomed to school shootings and student violence, even student suicide. We know this was incomprehensible during the days of ‘Leave-it-to-Beaver’ public education. Parents of all races are not guaranteed their children will come home from school every single day unharmed one way or another. But they are guaranteed religious and spiritual teachings, prayer, and readings will not be permitted at school.
This is NOT what the men who wrote our nation’s Constitution had in mind. They were Christian, but they were secular Christians, highly-educated products of the Enlightenment. They probably never thought this nation would be anything but Christian. They simply did not want religious ideals to dominate a democracy, they of the 18th century knowing full well of England’s bloody past when it came to ruling Catholics and Protestants. They did not want any American citizens to literally ‘lose their heads’ because they were of one faith or the other—forget world religions, multiculturalism, and perceptions of African Americans as not fully human.
The intent of separation of church and state could not have meant loss of faith altogether. And that is what has happened in our public schools, society, communities, and even families.
Any philosophy I have about teaching is centered on first recognizing human beings are not just and only body and mind … but also spirit. If a portion of Americans do not believe this—and I acknowledge the growing number of atheists and accept their belief in nothing to believe—they are within their rights. But I have come to see most children do have a need for nurturing of the heart and soul. They need constant reassurance that comes from feeling loved, wanted and accepted and that their school is a community united in the well being of everyone. This is what ‘chapel’ provided long ago in the black-only schools.