The First Amendment Consensus Approach to Teaching about Religion in U.S. Public Schools
Some years ago, one of my students stayed after class to speak with me. We had just concluded several sessions reviewing some of the main outlines of some classic stories from the Hebrew Bible. These included stories of the Patriarchs and Matriarchs of the Israelites, and stories of Moses, the Exodus, and the Ten Commandments, among others. My student said that she wanted to thank me for what she had learned during our recent class meetings. She explained that she had not been raised in a religious family and that all of these stories were brand new to her. I thanked her for her comments, and I assured her that even students who had been raised in Jewish or Christian families often needed a “refresher” when it came to the details of many of these Bible stories. I also pointed out that many elements of these stories had become part of the general cultural legacy of people in our civilization, and that most people had at least some familiarity, however vague, with many of the main characters and events in these narratives. “So, for example, even though you don’t come from a religious background, you’ve at least heard of people like Moses,” I said to her. “No, I never heard of Moses before this class,” she replied.
I assumed that she was exaggerating, but after chatting for a little while longer I was persuaded that she was not pulling my leg. Not only had she been unaware of the biblical narratives, she was not familiar with photographs of Michelangelo’s famous sculpture of Moses; she could not recall having ever sung or heard the African-American spiritual, “Go Down Moses,” nor was she aware of William Faulkner’s novel by that same name. She had never watched television broadcasts of The Ten Commandments with Charlton Heston in the role of Moses. (Neither one of us had seen Disney’s 1998 rendition of the story, Prince of Egypt.)
This young woman had been born and raised in the U.S. She was a solid student. She came to class regularly, completed her reading assignments, turned in her written work, and passed exams. Yet, she had completed twelve years of schooling and three years of college before she had “heard” of Moses.
What’s even more disappointing about this story is that this student was preparing to become a high school teacher. She was enrolled in my course, “Religion in American Public Schools,” a course populated by social science and liberal studies majors, most of whom plan on applying to teacher credentialing programs. Not only does this raise questions about the degree of cultural and historical illiteracy among university students in general and among future teachers in particular, it also raises questions about how well these individuals will be able to function as citizens in a religiously diverse society.1
While this particular student was more candid than many Americans about the degree of her own religious and cultural illiteracy, she’s by no means alone when it comes to gaps in knowledge about the world’s religions. In his 2007 book, Religious Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know—and Doesn’t, Stephen Prothero describes a familiar paradox. He writes that “Americans are both deeply religious and profoundly ignorant about religion”:
They are Protestants who can’t name the four Gospels, Catholics who can’t name the seven sacraments, and Jews who can’t name the five books of Moses. Atheists may be as rare in America as Jesus-loving politicians are in Europe, but here faith is almost entirely devoid of content. One of the most religious countries on earth is also a nation of religious illiterates.2
Prothero goes on to cite polls indicating that “most American adults” cannot name all four Gospels and that many high school seniors think that Sodom and Gomorrah were husband and wife. (This reminds me of the joke about the Sunday school pupil who believed that the epistles were the wives of the apostles). He reports that “A few years ago no one in Jay Leno’s Tonight Show audience could name any of Jesus’ twelve apostles, but everyone, it seemed, was able to list the four Beatles. No wonder pollster George Gallup has called the U.S. ‘a nation of biblical illiterates.’”3
A 2010 survey released by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life confirmed many of Prothero’s observations, concluding that “large numbers of Americans are uninformed about the tenets, practices, history, and leading figures of major faith traditions—including their own.”4 When it comes to the place of religion in public schools, the Pew survey found that 89% of Americans correctly understand that public school teachers cannot lead their classes in prayers. At the same time, 67% believe—incorrectly—that public school teachers cannot read from the Bible as an example of literature, and 51% incorrectly think that public schools may not offer a class comparing the world’s religions. In other words, there is considerable awareness of what public schools cannot do with regard to religion; there is much less awareness of what public schools can do. This is due in large part to widespread public misunderstanding of Supreme Court decisions regarding the First Amendment and public education.
The First Amendment Consensus Approach to Religion in Public Schools
The First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution might be described as the sacred civic text that provides the basis for any and all discussions of religion and public schools in the U.S.:
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
The “religion clauses” of the First Amendment—the “establishment” clause and the “free exercise” clause—set the civic ground rules for dealing with religion in the context of public education.
In the school prayer cases of the 1960s, the high court ruled that school-sponsored religious exercises, such as prayer and devotional Bible reading, are violations of the “establishment clause” of the First Amendment. Governmental agencies such as public schools are prohibited from involving themselves in the organization, promotion, or sponsorship of such religious activities. Many Americans—supporters and opponents of school prayer alike—believe that these court decisions effectively banished religion from the public schools altogether. But of course this belief is mistaken.
As noted in the Introduction to this volume, the 1963 case of Abington School District v. Schempp acknowledged the important role played by religion in history, society, and culture, and the court made it quite clear that learning and teaching about religion in the public schools, when undertaken with an academic rather than a devotional aim in mind, is perfectly consistent with constitutional principles. Indeed, as Justice Tom Clark famously wrote in the Schempp decision, “it might well be said that one’s education is not complete without a study of comparative religion or the history of religion and its relationship to the advancement of civilization. It certainly may be said that the Bible is worthy of study for its literary and historic qualities. Nothing we have said here indicates that such study of the Bible and of religion, when presented objectively as part of a secular program of education, may not be effected consistently with the First Amendment.”
The Equal Access Act, passed by Congress in 1984 and upheld by the Supreme Court in 1990, safeguards the religious liberty rights of public school students. In upholding the constitutionality of the Act, the Court noted that there is a “crucial difference between government speech endorsing religion, which the Establishment clause forbids, and private speech endorsing religion, which the Free Speech and Free Exercise clauses protect.”5 Under the terms of The Equal Access Act, secondary school students have the rights to pray individually and in groups, to read the Bible and other types of religious literature, and to form religious clubs. These activities must be initiated and led by students, not by school officials or outside adults, and they are subject to the same “time, place, and manner” restrictions that school officials apply to other student activities. But so long as schools allow other non-curriculum related student activities, they must not discriminate against student religious groups.
To sum up, the key idea when it comes to understanding the proper constitutional relationship between religion and public education is the principle of neutrality. School policies and curricula must have a nonreligious educational purpose, and their primary effect must neither advance nor inhibit religion.6
Despite ongoing misunderstanding of the place of religion in public schools, since the 1980s there has been some movement in the U.S. toward greater inclusion of religion in the curriculum. During this time, both the National Council for the Social Studies (1984) and the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development (1988) issued statements calling for more attention to be given to religion, and an analysis of national and state social studies standards has documented that nearly all fifty states now include the topic in some fashion or another.7 Indeed, as explained by Charles Haynes in this volume, since the late 1980s something of a “new consensus” has emerged regarding the question of why and how study about religion should be incorporated within American public schools.
This new consensus was heralded by the 1988 publication, “Religion in the Public School Curriculum: Questions and Answers,” a statement of principles rooted in the religion clauses of the First Amendment and endorsed by a remarkably broad range of educational, religious, and civic organizations. This and subsequent “common ground” documents have stressed that teaching about religion is not only constitutionally permissible, it also plays an essential role in promoting historical and cultural literacy and encouraging respect for religious liberty.8
At the foundation of the First Amendment consensus is a sharp distinction between teaching about religion on the one hand, and the promotion or practice of religion and religious indoctrination on the other hand.
Since 1988, additional consensus documents endorsed by a similarly diverse coalition of organizations have addressed a range of issues that arise in connection with religion in public schools, and several of these have been distributed by the U.S. Department of Education to every public school district in the nation.10
As Charles Haynes explains, this consensus approach moves us beyond two failed models of religion and public education. On one end of the spectrum are those who advocate a “sacred public school,” arguing that school policies and practices should prefer and transmit their own version of America’s putative Christian or Judeo-Christian religious heritage. Their opponents have advocated a “naked public school,” where religion is relegated to the private sphere and entirely excluded from public life in the name of the constitutional separation of church and state. As Haynes points out, both of these models are unfair to the diversity of religious and nonreligious worldviews found among students and families in our public school system. Moreover, the first model is an unconstitutional violation of the establishment clause of the First Amendment, and the second is unconstitutional if it leads to violations of students’ rights of religious expression. The alternative to the “sacred” and the “naked” public school is a “civil public school,” which respects the religious liberty of students and includes religious perspectives in the curriculum while simultaneously rejecting government endorsement or promotion of religion.11
In what follows, I will describe efforts to implement the First Amendment consensus approach to teaching about religion in public schools that have been undertaken by the Religion and Public Education Project at California State University, Chico. In the course of doing so, I will elaborate more fully on the basic ideals and principles of this approach, and I will consider some if its advantages and limitations.
The Religion and Public Education Project at California State University, Chico
My own involvement with the issue of religion in public schools began in the early 1990s when I was contacted by the curriculum coordinator from our local county office of education, who was seeking a religion scholar to speak at professional development workshops for classroom teachers. I was informed that the schools were now being expected to teach about religion to a greater extent than ever before. Since this was new territory for most teachers, they were seeking assistance from someone who had more experience with the subject matter.
In 1987, the California State Board of Education had adopted a history-social science curriculum that explicitly called for more attention to be given to the study of religion. This curriculum and its subsequent updates stress the importance of religion in human history and stipulate that “students must become familiar with the basic ideas of the major religions and the ethical traditions of each time and place”:12
To understand why individuals and groups acted as they did, we must see what values and assumptions they held, what they honored, what they sought and what they feared. By studying a people’s religion and philosophy as well as their folkways and traditions, we gain an understanding of their ethical and moral commitments. By reading the texts that people revere, we gain important insights into their thinking. The study of religious beliefs and other ideological commitments helps explain both cultural continuity and cultural conflict.13
The reaction to the new curriculum was mixed. Some citizens, educators, and scholars applauded the fact that the academic study of religion was finally being recognized for its important contributions to basic historical and cultural literacy and to civic education. But others were more ambivalent or critical. Some parents and community members were concerned about bias and inconsistency in the implementation of the new curriculum, and several religious and secular advocacy groups sought to politicize the discussion as a means of mobilizing their own constituencies. In some local school districts, these concerns erupted into open conflicts over school board policies, textbooks, curricula, and student religious expression.
For their part, many school teachers and administrators felt unprepared to deal with the new curricular content and with the range of pedagogical challenges and potential or perceived legal issues that might be associated with the study of religion in public schools. This anxiety was compounded by the fact that most public school teachers receive little or no education about religion as part of their professional training. This is despite the fact that religious diversity is nowhere more apparent than in America’s public school classrooms.
It was against this background that my Religious Studies Department colleagues and I began participating as presenters and resource scholars in a series of professional development workshops, forums, and institutes designed to prepare and support teachers in their efforts to teach about the world’s religions in ways that are academically responsible and consistent with the First Amendment.14 In 1995, we launched the Religion and Public Education Project at CSU, Chico. This project now consists of four main components, not only professional development for classroom teachers, but also pre-service teacher education; regional coordination of the California Three Rs Project (Rights, Responsibility, Respect); and partnership with the UN Alliance of Civilizations “Education about Religions and Beliefs” Clearinghouse.
Professional Development for Classroom Teachers
In California, the world history curriculum for sixth, seventh, and tenth grades deals explicitly with the religions of India, China, and the Middle East. Other grade levels deal with the role of religion in U.S. history and society, and some general knowledge of world religions is a necessary background for understanding many of the “current events” that are discussed throughout the K–12 curriculum. Teachers must also be prepared to understand and cope with the religious diversity that typically exists in their own classrooms. A basic knowledge of the world’s religions not only helps teachers to teach more effectively about ancient civilizations, current events, or the history of the U.S., it also helps them to communicate with students and parents from a variety of backgrounds ranging from Protestant evangelicals to traditional Hmong, from Jews to Jehovah’s Witnesses, from Mormons to Muslims, from Catholics to Sikhs, and from Baha’is to Buddhists to the growing number of Americans who identify with no religion at all.
The Religion and Public Education Project (RPEP), working in collaboration with local school districts, the California International Studies and History-Social Science Subject-Matter Projects, and the CSU, Chico Department of Education, has organized a variety of presentations, workshops, and field trips to local religious sites for classroom teachers. Representative titles of these activities over the past years have included “A First Amendment Framework for Thinking about Religion and Public Education”; “Learning to Live with Our Deepest Differences”; “What, Why, How, (and How Not!) to Teach about Religion in Public Schools”; “Children of Abraham: Learning and Teaching about Judaism, Christianity, and Islam”; “The Historical Roots of the Arab-Israeli Conflict”; “Beyond the Veil: Women, Islam, and Cross-Cultural (Mis-) Perception”; “Religions of India: Conflict and Continuity”; “Religions of the Ancient Greeks and Hebrews”; and “Religion, Politics, and Global Issues: Teaching about Religion after September 11,” and so on.
Beyond introducing the beliefs and practices of diverse religions, these workshops respond to teachers’ practical questions about appropriate and effective techniques for teaching about religions. Is role playing an appropriate way to teach about diverse religious practices? Should teachers allow or encourage students to share their own religious beliefs, practices, and customs? Are teachers allowed to illustrate points by reference to their own religious practices? Should they respond to students’ questions about their instructors’ religious affiliations or beliefs? 15 While these sorts of pedagogical questions are not entirely different from those faced by religious studies professors in state universities, they arise in a particularly sensitive way in the public schools. For this reason, our workshops on world religions are typically presented by religion scholars working in tandem with master teachers and curriculum specialists as they seek to address both content knowledge and practical classroom concerns.
Pre-Service Teacher Education
In addition to what amounts to remedial education for teachers who are already in the classroom, a longer term approach is to include the topic of religion in teacher education and credentialing programs. With this aim in mind, the Comparative Religion and Humanities Department at CSU, Chico, has designed and implemented a course titled “Religion in American Public Schools,” which I referred to at the outset of this chapter. This course introduces prospective teachers to the First Amendment framework for dealing with religion in the public schools, and it introduces them to the basic beliefs, practices, and histories of several of the world’s major religions.
The course was first offered in spring 1997, and since that time approximately 40–80 students per semester have been enrolled in the course. As already noted, its constituency is made up of social science majors who plan to apply to a single-subject teaching credential program on their way to becoming junior or senior high school teachers, and liberal studies majors who plan to apply to a multiple-subject credential program and become elementary school teachers. The course is also part of CSU, Chico’s On-Line Liberal Studies Degree Program, which was initiated with the help of a grant from the CSU Chancellor’s Office.
The California Three Rs Project (Rights, Responsibility, Respect)
The California Three Rs Project is a nonprofit, nonpartisan teacher and community education program geared toward finding common ground on issues of religion and values in public schools. It is sponsored by the California County Superintendents Educational Services Association in cooperation with the Freedom Forum First Amendment Center, which has offices in Nashville and Washington, D.C. Launched in 1991, the Three Rs Project is built on the conviction that the guiding principles of the First Amendment stand at the heart of democracy and at the foundation of citizenship in a diverse society. Foremost among these principles are the “Three Rs” of religious liberty—rights, responsibilities, respect.
Religious liberty, or freedom of conscience, is a basic and inalienable right founded on the inviolable dignity of each person.
Responsibilities
Freedom of conscience is not only a universal right, but it depends upon a universal responsibility to respect that right for others.
Respect
Debate and disagreement are natural elements of democracy. Yet, if we are to live with our differences, not only what we debate, but how we debate is critical. A strong democracy and strong schools rest on a commitment by people of differing convictions to treat one another with civility.16
The idea of the Three Rs as the “golden rule for civic life” originated with the Williamsburg Charter, a public declaration reaffirming America’s commitment to religious liberty released in 1988 on the occasion of the 200th anniversary of Virginia’s call for a Bill of Rights.17 During the 1990s, local school districts in parts of Georgia, Maryland, New York, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, and Texas partnered with Charles Haynes, Oliver Thomas, and the First Amendment Center to promote the Three Rs approach to finding common ground on issues related to religion in public schools. In California and Utah, Three Rs projects were established on a statewide basis. What is being sought by these projects is not agreement on religious beliefs or political policies, but rather a shared commitment to the civic principles by which citizens with deep religious differences can negotiate their differences with civility and work toward “a common vision for the common good in public education.”18
The California Three Rs Project has a statewide organization with a well-developed agenda for working with public school teachers and administrators. Training sessions bring together teams from the public schools—teachers, administrators, school board and community members—who attend a seminar on the First Amendment and the history of Supreme Court decisions regarding religion and public education. Through discussion, case studies, and follow-up meetings, participants learn how to use constitutional principles to negotiate conflicts and to work toward consensus on issues of religion and diversity confronting schools and local communities.
A central aim of the project is to establish a network of resource teachers throughout California that can provide schools with expertise in First Amendment principles and appropriate ways to teach about religions and cultures in the classroom. The regional leaders serve as liaisons to public schools, county offices of education, universities and colleges, and nonprofit educational organizations. They help develop resources for teaching about religion and religious liberty in public schools, organize programs in their regions, present sessions at conferences and institutes, and serve as local Three Rs Project contacts. The Director of CSU, Chico’s Religion and Public Education Project has served on the statewide Steering Committee of the California Three Rs Project since 1997 and is the Three Rs Project coordinator for the northeastern region of California.19
United Nations Alliance of Civilizations “Education about Religions and Beliefs” (ERB) Clearinghouse
In 2009, the Religion and Public Education Project at CSU, Chico, became one of fifteen international partners with the ERB clearinghouse. The Alliance of Civilizations (AoC) was established in 2005 at the initiative of the governments of Spain and Turkey and under the auspices of the United Nations. The Alliance aims to support projects that promote understanding and reconciliation among cultures globally and, in particular, between ‘Muslim’ and ‘Western’ societies. The Alliance works in four program areas: youth, media, education, and migration.
Participants at the AoC’s Madrid Forum in 2008 recognized the important role that education about religions and beliefs can play in promoting cross-cultural understanding and tolerance in an era of globalization. They called for the establishment of an online clearinghouse to support such education. The ERB clearinghouse is in the process of development and focuses on primary and secondary education about religions and beliefs as a starting point. Material on civics, tolerance, ethics, and other forms of education aimed at enabling people with diverse backgrounds and viewpoints to learn to live together will also be featured. This clearinghouse is meant to be useful to policymakers, educators, and researchers in these fields. Partner organizations will periodically act as gatekeepers of the ERB website, soliciting and posting content on the site and contributing articles and comments to the ERB Journal and Forum.
Reflections on the First Amendment Consensus Approach to Teaching about Religion in U.S. Public Schools
Since its inception in 1995, the purpose of the Religion and Public Education Project at CSU, Chico, has been to promote understanding of the First Amendment principles that set the ethical, legal, and pedagogical framework for thinking about religion and public education in the U.S. The RPEP rests on the conviction that the academic study of the world’s religions in public schools not only makes an indispensable contribution to historical and cultural literacy, it is also an integral part of education for citizenship in a pluralistic democracy. It has thus aligned itself with the First Amendment consensus approach to teaching about religion in public schools that has been pioneered by Charles C. Haynes and Oliver Thomas; that has been fleshed out in an ongoing series of “common ground” documents endorsed by a broad range of educational, religious, and civic organizations; and that has been promoted by Three Rs Projects in California and beyond. I think it is fair to say that, since the late 1980s, this approach has been the single most influential framework for thinking about the place of religion in public schools in the U.S.
Not surprisingly, however, there are several features of the First Amendment consensus approach about which questions and concerns might be raised. Among these are questions about the very idea of neutrality in the study of religion. There are also concerns that, when it comes to actual practice in the classroom, the consensus approach lends itself to superficial and uncritical representations of religion. And a third area of concern is that students may not experience this way of studying religion as relevant to their own personal lives and identities.
The Idea of Neutrality in the Study of Religion
As we have seen, one of the key features of the First Amendment consensus on teaching about religion is the idea of neutrality. In drawing the distinction between academic and devotional approaches, the consensus stresses that teaching about religion must be based on sound scholarship, professional training, standards, and expertise, and that it must be accurate, objective, non-doctrinal, impartial, and biasfree.
Yet it might be argued that there is no such thing as a neutral standpoint from which to approach religion or any other topic. In our postmodern era we have come to recognize that all ways of thinking and teaching are “subjective” in that they are influenced by personal, social, cultural, intellectual, and historical factors, and they inevitably bring certain values to bear upon the subject matter. The academic study of religion, known as “religious studies” in the English speaking world, is different than devotional or sectarian approaches to religion, but it is one value-laden standpoint among others and should give up its pretenses to neutrality and objectivity. The reason why a religious studies approach to teaching about religion in public schools is justifiable is not because it is neutral, but because it is the approach that best promotes the values of a pluralistic democracy governed by secular laws.20
This point about the value-laden character of our perspectives on religion is well-taken. However, it is my own view—one that I think is consistent with the assumptions of the First Amendment consensus approach—that it would be a mistake to abandon the notion of neutrality in teaching about religion. This is because the idea of teaching about religion in a neutral fashion remains basic not only to the civic consensus that has been developed since the 1980s, but also to U.S. law since the Supreme Court’s decision in the Schempp case in 1963. As we have already touched on, the courts have regularly judged the acceptability of school policies and curricula regarding religion according to whether they achieve the degree of neutrality that is required by the establishment clause of the First Amendment. Any blurring of the distinction between neutral and non-neutral approaches to the study of religion risks undermining this hard-won civic consensus, running afoul of current law, and setting back what progress has been made toward incorporating religion into the curriculum of U.S. public schools.
The language of neutrality is one of the main things that helps us to distinguish between an academic and a devotional approach to the study of religion, a distinction that has never occurred to a surprising number of people. Indeed, the lack of awareness of this distinction can be viewed as a main symptom of the American public’s widespread religious illiteracy.21 While perfect neutrality in the academic study of religion may not be possible, helping the public to understand the difference between more and less neutral approaches can go a long way toward combating this illiteracy. It has been my own experience that most people get the difference between more and less “neutral” presentations of information about religions and beliefs once it has been called to their attention. Thus I believe it would be a disservice to school students, teachers, and administrators as well as to the general public to make the concept of neutrality overly problematic or to encourage them to abandon its use altogether. Rather we should clarify what the language of neutrality means in the study of religion and in the law, and we should encourage its use rather than abandon it.
Of course we must accept that a secular academic approach to the study of religion is rooted in and committed to certain values—for example, intellectual values such as free and open inquiry, respect for multiple perspectives, and evidence based argumentation. It is also committed to ethical-political values such as respect for freedom of religion or belief and promotion of tolerance. This undoubtedly aligns it with liberal pluralistic democratic polities, and it should be frankly acknowledged that the First Amendment consensus approach is based on the assumption that public schools are appropriately governed by secular laws and values.22
So if neutrality means “value-free,” then we can grant that neither religious studies nor any other academic field or discipline is neutral in that sense. But if “neutrality” is understood as an approach in curricula, teaching, and school policies that neither promotes nor denigrates particular religions nor religion in general, then this remains an accurate and useful way of describing the consensus approach to education about religion. We can recognize that multiple factors influence our vantage points on religion and that perfect neutrality may never be possible to achieve in practice while retaining it as a goal toward which we can aspire—a “regulative” ideal that can be used to assess and critique actual scholarly and pedagogical practice.
The Problem of Superficiality and Lack of Critical Perspective
Apart from the question of neutrality in the study of religion, there are other concerns that might be raised about the consensus approach. One is that, in actual classroom practice, the kind of teaching about religion that often takes place under its auspices is overly superficial and uncritical in its representation of religions. The consensus approach tends to rely on “natural inclusion” as a way of integrating discussions of religion into the classroom. That is to say that religion is rarely considered as a subject matter in its own right. Rather, it is addressed as it arises in the context of history and social studies or literature classes.
It must be admitted that insofar as it has begun to be included in American public schools in the last few decades, teaching about religion is often confined to describing the main ideas and practices of the world’s major religions. There is a tendency to portray religions as discrete and stable systems of belief rather than as fluid and historically dynamic traditions. In other words, there is a tendency to present a snapshot of a religion in a particular time and place—usually a long time ago—rather than showing how religions change over time and rather than looking at their complex manifestations in the present.
Such static portrayals risk leaving students with the impression that religions are relics of ancient history rather than vital parts of contemporary life for millions of people around the world. This point is illustrated by a story that high school student Chana Schoenberger tells. When a classmate learned that Chana was Jewish, she asked Chana whether she sacrificed animals. What this classmate knew about Judaism was based on a snapshot of ritual practice among the ancient Israelites thousands of years ago, and she assumed that modern Jews must still have a religion involving the sacrifice of animals.23
Along with superficiality, there is also a tendency to overstate similarities between religions and to avoid controversial topics, thereby leading to an overly “warm and fuzzy” presentation of religion.24 Over the years, I have frequently encountered well-meaning people both within and outside public schools who believe that the best way to promote mutual understanding is to dismiss the apparent differences between the world’s religions and to assert that ultimately, when all is said and done, deep down, all religions are really saying the same thing.
This is an appealing vision in many ways. It is a belief that is held by many people. It may even be true. But it is important to recognize that this is not just a claim about religions, it is itself a religious claim. This presents an especially significant problem in public educational settings where teachers and schools are prohibited from either promoting or denigrating particular religious viewpoints or religion in general. In our work with educators we encourage them to respect the differences between religions. Of course we can encourage students to identify and appreciate similarities, but we should not gloss over the significant differences that also exist. Often these differences are what matter most to sincere and devout religious practitioners. Minimizing the differences often has the paradoxical effect of impeding mutual understanding rather than promoting it. If people think that their distinctive voices and characteristics are not going to be taken seriously or that they will be blended into some generic form of religiosity, they will have little incentive to support education about religion in public schools.
Now to be fair, the superficiality and lack of critical perspective that often characterizes education about religion is due as much or more to the way that religion is positioned in the curriculum as it is to any inherent feature of the consensus approach per se. As noted previously, despite the rare elective courses on world religions or the Bible as literature, in most public schools the topic of religion typically only arises in the context of history and social studies or literature classes. Textbooks tend to freeze religions in their “classical” forms, and curriculum frameworks and standards tend to concentrate on the origins and basic tenets of religions and largely neglect their historical, cultural, and contemporary variations.
Several authors have called for significant restructuring of the curriculum so as to give more adequate attention to the topic of religion.25 However, the question remains as to how practical these proposals are in view of the current cultural and political climate surrounding American public education. It is a sad fact that in this era of high stakes testing, with math and reading skills being given pride of place, there is less attention than ever being given to history and social studies and to the civic mission of schools, let alone to the question of religious literacy.
Another obstacle is teacher education. In order to provide more than superficial and uncritical discussions of religion, teachers will have to be far more thoroughly trained in religious studies than they are now. Yet the evidence I have seen suggests that teacher education programs still give only scant attention to religion. This is the case even in the context of multicultural education, where religious diversity is typically given far less attention than diversity in the areas of language, race, ethnicity, gender, and class.26
I fear that it will be a long time before we see the kinds of political and cultural changes and educational reforms that make possible serious in-depth attention to religion in public school curricula and in teacher education programs. In the meantime, I hope the “natural inclusion” of religion in history, social studies, and literature courses will continue to increase; that constitutionally appropriate elective courses in world religions and the Bible as literature will grow in number; and that teachers’ opportunities for pre-service education and professional development in the field of religious studies will multiply.
The Relevance of Learning about Religion to the Personal Lives of Students
As we know, the term “academic” is often used to describe something that has very little practical significance—something that’s ultimately beside the point and irrelevant to “real life.” What sort of relevance does the academic, non-devotional study of religion have to the personal lives and identities of students?
We have seen that the legal and cultural situation in the U.S. is such that the study of religion in public schools cannot be approached primarily from the perspective of students’ and teachers’ own personal religious narratives and experiences. While there is considerable latitude for student religious expression in the school environment, current law allows much less latitude for religious expression on the part of teachers, and in the context of the school curriculum both students and teachers are to approach religion in an “academic” rather than an “existential” manner.27
Yet striving for a neutral and objective approach to the study of religion that sets aside or “brackets” one’s own religious or philosophical presuppositions, experiences, and questions, risks undermining students’ sense of the relevance of the subject matter and its connection to their own personal lives. The pedagogical challenge of engaging students with the subject matter is exacerbated by the fact that the First Amendment consensus approach strongly discourages the use of active learning techniques such as role-playing and simulations when teaching about religion. This is because (1) role playing religious rituals, ceremonies, pilgrimages, and so on risks blurring the legal distinction between constitutional teaching about religion and school-sponsored practice of religion, which violates the First Amendment; (2) role playing religious practices risks trivializing and caricaturing the religion that is being studied; and (3) role playing risks violating the religious liberty of students if it puts them in the position of participating in activities that violate their own (or their parents’) consciences. 28
If teaching geared toward the religious nurture and edification of students is inappropriate in the U.S., how else might we cultivate a personal connection with the subject matter? In keeping with the theory and practice of the Three Rs Project, one way to make this personal connection is to focus very directly and explicitly on the linkage between students’ knowledge about the world’s religions and their own day-today encounters with diverse religions and beliefs. It has been my own experience working with American college students that they are very curious about the religious and cultural diversity they encounter in their own communities and in the media. Many elementary and secondary school teachers with whom I have worked confirm that their pupils are also interested in the diversity they see around them.
By focusing on living religious communities—beliefs, customs, ceremonies, holidays, styles of dress and artistic expression, patterns of family life, etc.—it is possible to make the subject matter come alive for students, not so much in the context of developing their own spiritual identities but in the context of developing their identities as citizens of a pluralistic democracy. Teaching about diverse religious and secular worldviews and ways of life becomes an occasion for helping students understand their rights to religious liberty or freedom of conscience as well as their responsibility to protect those same rights for their fellow citizens. By learning about and engaging the differences between religions and cultures in contemporary society as well as in history, students come to understand and cultivate the spirit of respectfulness and civility that is essential for participation in the ongoing conversations, arguments, and debates that constitute public life in a democratic society.
As discussed elsewhere in this volume, research by Emile Lester and Patrick Roberts on the outcomes of a required world religions class in Modesto, CA, suggests that learning about the world’s religions does have a positive impact on students’ civic attitudes and dispositions. Surveys and interviews of students showed statistically significant increases not only in students’ knowledge about other religions but also in their levels of passive tolerance (willingness to refrain from discrimination) and active tolerance (willingness to act to counter discrimination). Among the study’s other findings were that Modesto’s course had a positive impact on students’ respect for religious liberty, and students emerged from the course more supportive of basic First Amendment and political rights in general. 29
Though the context is very different from that of the U.S., there is also research from Europe showing that young people value academic learning about religions and even prefer it over approaches geared to their own religious or spiritual nurture. From 2006–2009 the REDCo project deployed an international team of scholars representing a range of disciplinary specializations in education, the humanities, and the social sciences.30 Focusing mainly on religion in the lives and schools of students in the 14–16 year age group with some attention to teacher attitudes and training and to classroom practices, this team carried out qualitative and quantitative research in eight countries: England, Estonia, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Norway, Russia, and Spain. The REDCo research provides a detailed picture of young peoples’ perceptions of religion and religious diversity in their own personal lives, in their societies, and in their schools.
Among the project’s central findings is that students are conscious of increasing religious diversity in society, and in general they are of the opinion that it is important to respect the religions of others. With regard to the role of religion in school life (e.g., wearing discrete or more visible religious symbols, absences for religious holidays, excusal from some classes for religious reasons) the studies document a range of different attitudes that appear to be determined largely by the students’ own religious backgrounds (or lack thereof), by the role religion plays in (the history of) their respective countries, and by whether religion is more or less private and withdrawn from public life and discussion. While notions of freedom and tolerance are important, students also attach great importance to “equal treatment” and are reluctant to change too much in school policy and curriculum for the sake of a particular group of students. While some students exhibit prejudices against the religions of others, especially with regard to Islam, they appear open to dialogue and hopeful that religion education can contribute to the goal of peaceful coexistence.
As for religion in the curriculum, it appears that these European students generally favor an approach to religion education that provides objective information about different religions and their teachings rather than an approach that guides pupils toward religious beliefs. The majority of those surveyed appear to agree that school is a good place (and for some the only place) to learn about different religions and worldviews, and they generally regard learning about religion in school as more relevant to cultivating respect for people of different religions and learning to live together than it is for learning about themselves and developing their own decisions about right and wrong.
By focusing not only on historical representations of religious beliefs and practices, but also on case studies of contemporary religious cultures and subcultures, students can become more engaged with the subject matter and see its relevance for understanding their own local communities. In this way, the academic study of religion becomes a form of civic engagement, which increases student understanding of real-world problems and solutions and fosters students’ sense of themselves as effective agents in building and sustaining communities.31
Conclusion
Looking back to the 1980s, it is apparent that a great deal has been accomplished when it comes to clarifying the place of religion in public schools—both in the curriculum and in day-to-day school life and policies. Yet looking forward, it is apparent that there is much more that needs to be done. Familiarity with First Amendment guidelines is still not as widespread as it should be, and consequently there are ongoing confusions and controversies in local schools regarding the religious liberty rights of public school students and teachers and regarding exactly how and how not to teach about religion in the classroom. The need for initiatives such as the California Three Rs Project is as pressing as ever, and yet it is increasingly difficult to find sources of funding for this work in an era of difficult economic circumstances and severe budget cuts to public education.
When it comes to promoting civic and religious literacy in the schools, perhaps the most positive recent development has been the 2010 publication of the American Academy of Religion’s Guidelines for Teaching about Religion in K–12 Public Schools in the United States. Building on the First Amendment consensus, the AAR Guidelines set forth three basic premises of the academic study of religion: religions are internally diverse; religions are dynamic; and religions are embedded in culture. The Guidelines provide examples of how teachers might follow-up on each of these premises at various grade levels in history-social science and English-language arts classrooms. This is followed by discussion of how teachers might take these premises into account as they respond to frequently asked classroom questions and stereotypes about the world’s religions. Hopefully these guidelines will reach a wide audience and provide the basis for further collaboration between university-based religion scholars and public school teachers.
Notes
1. I have previously related this story in Religious Studies News—Spotlight on Teaching about Religion in the Schools, 17/2, March 2002.
2. Stephen Prothero, Religious Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know—and Doesn’t (San Francisco: Harper San Francisco, 2007), 1.
3. Ibid., 6.
4. U.S. Religious Knowledge Survey, Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life (September2010) at http://pewforum.org/Other-Beliefs-and-Practices/U-S-Religoius-Knowledge-Survey.aspx
5. Westside Community Schools v. Mergens cited in Charles C. Haynes and Oliver Thomas, Finding Common Ground: A First Amendment Guide to Religion and Public Schools (Nashville: First Amendment Center, 2007), 79.
6. Haynes and Thomas, Finding Common Ground, 30–31.
7. National Council for the Social Studies, Including the Study about Religion in the Social Studies Curriculum: A Position Statement and Guidelines, (NCSS, 1984). Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development, Religion in the Curriculum, (Alexandria, VA, ASCD, 1988). Susan L. Douglass, Teaching About Religion in National and State Social Studies Standards (Fountain Valley, CA, Council on Islamic Education and the First Amendment Center, 2000).
8. In addition to his chapter in this volume, see also Charles C. Haynes, “Common Ground Documents,” in James C. Carper and Thomas C. Hunt, eds., The Praeger Handbook of Religion and Education in the United States, two volumes (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2009), 154–159. The texts of many of these “common ground” consensus documents may be found in Haynes and Thomas, 2007.
9. “Religion in the Public School Curriculum,” reprinted in Haynes and Thomas 2007, 98. Among the organizations that endorsed this initial statement of principles were the National Association of Evangelicals, the American Jewish Congress, The Christian Legal Society, the Islamic Society of North America, the National Council of Churches, the National School Boards Association, the American Association of School Administrators, the National Council for the Social Studies, and the American Academy of Religion.
10. See Marcia Beauchamp, “Guidelines on Religion in Public Schools: An Historic Moment,” Religious Studies News- Spotlight on Teaching 17 (2002) 2,4,10; Charles C. Haynes, “U.S. Department of Education Guidelines on Religion and Public Education,” in James C. Carper and Thomas C. Hunt, eds. The Praeger Handbook of Religion and Education in the United States, two volumes (Westport, CT, Praeger, 2009), 449–451.
11. See the chapter by Haynes in this volume; see also Finding Common Ground, 5–6.
12. History-Social Science Framework for California Public Schools, California Department of Education, Sacramento, 1988/1997, p. 7.
13. Ibid., 13.
14. In 2012, the Religious Studies Department at CSU, Chico, was renamed the Department of Comparative Religion and Humanities.
15. These and other questions are addressed in the consensus document, “A Teacher’s Guide to Religion in the Public Schools,” reprinted in Haynes and Thomas, Finding Common Ground, 39–56. The issue of role playing will be touched on later.
16. These definitions are given on the CA Three Rs Project website (http://ca3r-sproject.org/pages/principle.html).
17. For background on the Williamsburg Charter, see the “Foreword” by Nicholas Piediscalzi in this volume.
18. Haynes and Thomas, Finding Common Ground, p. 8.
19. For more detailed discussion of the California Three Rs Project, see Bruce Grelle, “Promoting Civic and Religious Literacy in Public Schools: The California 3 Rs Project,” in Michael D. Waggoner, ed., Religion in the Schools: Negotiating the New Commons (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2013). See also the present volume’s Foreword by Nicholas Piediscalzi, who served as the first Director of the California Three Rs Project.
20. Diane L. Moore makes a persuasive version of this argument in Overcoming Religious Illiteracy: A Cultural Studies Approach to the Study of Religion in Secondary Education (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007).
21. See Guidelines for Teaching About Religion in K–12 Public Schools in the United States, produced by the AAR Religion in the Schools Task Force, Diane L. Moore, chair, American Academy of Religion, 2010, 5; 8 (http://www.aarweb.org/publications/Online_Publications/
Curriculum_Guidelines/AARK-12CurriculumGuidelines.pdf).
22. Ibid., 8.
23. “Getting to Know about You and Me,” originally published in Newsweek, (1993) and reprinted in an earlier edition of Charles C. Haynes and Oliver Thomas, Finding Common Ground: A First Amendment Guide to Religion and Public Education (Nashville, TN: The Freedom Forum First Amendment Center, 1995), 7.11–7.12. All other references to Finding Common Ground in this chapter are to the 2007 edition.
24. See Emile Lester and Patrick S. Roberts, Learning About World Religions in Public Schools: The Impact on Student Attitudes and Community Acceptance in Modesto, Calif. (Nashville, TN: First Amendment Center, 2006), 53.
25. In addition to Diane L. Moore, Overcoming Religious Illiteracy (New York: Palgrave, 2007) and Stephen Prothero, Religious Literacy; see Warren A. Nord, Does God Make a Difference? Taking Religion Seriously in Our Schools and Universities (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010); Nord, Religion & American Education: Rethinking a National Dilemma (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1995); and Warren A. Nord and Charles C. Haynes, Taking Religion Seriously Across the Curriculum (Alexandria, VA Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development, 1998).
26. See Moore, Overcoming Religious Illiteracy, 71–78.
27. For guidelines governing student religious clubs and student religious expression in public schools, see Haynes and Thomas, Finding Common Ground, 232–244.
28. Haynes and Thomas, Finding Common Ground, 56.
29. Emile Lester and Patrick S. Roberts, Learning About World Religions in Public Schools: The Impact on Student Attitudes and Community Acceptance in Modesto, Calif. (Nashville, TN: First Amendment Center, 2006), 6–7. See also Emile Lester and Patrick S. Roberts, “How Teaching about World Religions Brought a Truce to the Culture Wars in Modesto, California,” British Journal of Religious Education, 31:2 (September 2009), 187–200; Emile Lester, Teaching about Religions: A Democratic Approach for Public Schools (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2011).
30. REDCo—“Religion in Education: A Contribution to Dialogue or a Factor of Conflict in Transforming Societies of European Countries”—was a massive three-year research project coordinated by Professor Dr. Wolfram Weisse (University of Hamburg) and funded by a major grant from the European Commission. See Wolfram Weisse, “REDCo: A European Research Project on Religion in Education” and other articles in the Special Focus Section on “The Comparative Study of Religion and Education in Europe and Beyond: Contributions of the REDCo Project,” Religion & Education, 37/3, 2010, 185–222.
31. This was the premise of “California Local Religion Projects: When the Community is the Classroom,” a conference organized by Kate McCarthy and Micki Lennon and sponsored by CSU, Chico’s Center for the Public Understanding of Religion with funding from the Wabash Center for Teaching and Learning in Theology and Religion, September 21–22, 2012.