[As this is a long post, I hope that those who lack the time to read it all will do a “CTRL-F” to pop up a Find box. The entry “The minority in Zorach v. Clauson” will take the reader to a spot that leads into quotations from the dissenting opinions of three Supreme Court Justices on the subject of religious release time programs in the public schools. Those three expressed the objections to religious release time better than I ever could.]
Tennessee is the shiny buckle of the Bible Belt. There are giant crosses 50 feet tall or more close to the highway in various spots in East Tennessee; Chattanooga is the most churched city in the nation, according to the Barna Research group; and in the past, many nonreligious group events could not as a practical matter be scheduled for Wednesday night because so many people had evening church.
Tennessee is largely Protestant, with over 50% of the population being Evangelical Protestant and 73% being Protestant. See the table below from the Pew Research Center Web site (accessed 1/16/20). (The table adds up to only 99%, presumably due to rounding.)
Christian 81% Non-Christian Faiths 3%
Evangelical Protestant 52% Jewish 1%
Mainline Protestant 13% Muslim 1%
Historically Black Protestant 8% Buddhist 1%
Catholic 6% Hindu < 1%
Mormon 1% Other World Religions < 1%
Orthodox Christian < 1% Other Faiths 1%
Jehovah’s Witness 1%
Other Christian < 1%
Unaffiliated (the religious “Nones”) 14%
Atheist 1%
Agnostic 3%
Nothing in particular 11%
Don’t know 1%
Tennessee governmental leaders have not hesitated to mix church and state when motivated by “a higher calling”, notwithstanding federal directives, the practices of other states, or the Establishment Clause in the First Amendment to the Constitution. Recently an egregious example of this surfaced, the so-called Bible release time program proposal in the Knox County School System and some other Tennessee public schools. Before I discuss this proposal, let us review some Tennessee and American history, in more or less chronological order.
A 1963 U.S. Supreme Court ruling affirmed that, while public schools cannot teach devotional practices, they can teach the Bible when it is “presented objectively as part of a secular program of education.” (Curriculum Matters Web site, Brenda Iasevoli, January 10, 2018, accessed 1/16/20)
With regard to freedom of speech and expression in public schools, the Supreme Court ruled in 1969 (Tinker v. Des Moines) that students could wear black armbands to school as a silent protest against the Vietnam War. The principal at a public school in Des Moines, Iowa had told the students they could not do so and that they would be suspended from school if they did, on the grounds that this form of protest might disrupt the learning environment. Those students who did wear armbands to school were in fact suspended. Their parents sued the school system for violating their children’s right to free speech. In a 7-2 ruling, the Court famously declared that neither students nor teachers “shed their constitutional rights to freedom of speech or expression at the schoolhouse gate” and said that school officials could not prohibit the protest solely on the suspicion that the speech (the armbands) might be disruptive. (US Courts Web site, accessed 3/2/20)
In 1987 the Supreme Court declared unconstitutional a 1981 Louisiana law that purported to protect academic freedom by requiring the teaching of creationism whenever evolution was also taught. The Court said that the stated purpose of the law was only pretextual and that the law was actually directed toward making the science curriculum align with a particular religious view. For example, curriculum guides were required to be developed for creation science but not for evolution (Glen Elsasser, Chicago Tribune, 6/20/1987).
In Tennessee in 2012, the state legislature passed a law protecting the right of teachers to teach creationism instead of evolution; this is sometimes referred to as the monkey law. (Readers will recall that the Scopes “monkey” trial was held in Dayton, Tennessee in 1925.) That is, Tennessee public school teachers may teach the “scientific strengths and scientific weaknesses” of theories that can “cause controversy,” specifically evolution, global warming, and cloning. Thus competing theories, such as creationism or “Intelligent Design”, may be presented.
In 1993, Tennessee amended its “moment of silence” law to allow for “non-sectarian non-proselytizing voluntary prayer initiated and given by student volunteers on public school property during non-compulsory student assemblies, school sporting events, and commencement ceremonies” (Tennessee Municipal Technical Advisory Service, “Tennessee Public Acts 1993: Summaries of Interest to Municipal Officials”, 1993). But in 2000, the Supreme Court ruled (Santa Fe Independent School District v. Doe) that student-led, student-initiated prayer at football games violated the Establishment Clause of the 1st Amendment. The Court declared that such prayers were public speech and not private speech and in effect were authorized and endorsed by governmental policy; in addition, they were taking place at official school events on government property and thus there was the appearance that they were sanctioned by the school system. (Oyez Web site, accessed 1/17/20).
The Hamilton County (Tennessee) school system apparently didn’t get the memo: in 2010, on the basis of information received from Soddy-Daisy (Tennessee) High School students, the Freedom from Religion Foundation wrote to the Hamilton County school superintendent to warn him that the prayers broadcast over the loudspeaker at football games and graduations were unconstitutional. One Hamilton County Board of Education member said that the prayers were a tradition and that people who didn’t like them “could put their fingers in their ears”. She added, “Everybody is offended by something. I’m offended by a lot of those little girls running around with their thong panties showing, but I can’t make that go away.” (Kelli Gauthier, Chattanooga Times Free Press, 10/20/10, accessed 1/17/20)
The Knoxville News Sentinel reported that back in the early 2000s a Union County middle school student’s parents had declined to allow her to attend Christian crusade activities during school hours. She was the only child whose parents did so. Consequently, she was bullied and harassed. The parents sued the Union County school system, which settled with them, paying them $50,000. (Knoxville News Sentinel, Kristi L. Nelson, November 5, 2019)
In 2006, students from a Christian college in Dayton, Tennessee were coming to Rhea County, Tennessee to teach the Bible to students in the public school system; this practice was challenged in federal court and the county was ordered to stop it.
In 2008 a Bible literacy act passed in Tennessee. The Tennessee State Bible Curriculum Guide of 2009 states that the course should include “the study of the Bible in its historical, sociological, and cultural contexts, and its impact on later cultures, societies, and religions”. No other book or author is so favored, but still in 2009 the emphasis was supposed to be on the influence of the bible on literature and on American history and culture. But whose Bible? As Henry Fielding had the character Thwackum say in his 1749 novel “Tom Jones”, “When I mention Religion, I mean the Christian Religion; and not only the Christian Religion, but the Protestant Religion; and not only the Protestant Religion, but the Church of England.” This is one of the central problems in state-sanctioned courses on the Bible.
This issue surfaced historically in an interesting way. As David Mislin, assistant professor at Temple University, says in an article reprinted on the Religion News Service Web Site (2/4/19), back in the 1800s “opposition to Bible reading came from Roman Catholics, a growing segment of the population due to immigration. Many schools used the Protestant King James version of the Bible, which differed from the translation familiar to Catholics. Moreover, Bible reading apart from the study of Church teaching was by nature a distinctly Protestant practice.” Consequently, many Catholics in Cincinnati, Ohio moved their children from public schools to parochial schools. Mislin points out that when the Cincinnati School Board voted to end Bible reading in the public schools (so as to draw Catholic children back to the public schools), conservative Protestants were outraged, while liberal Protestants approved of the board’s action. The secretary of the Connecticut state board of education, a minister himself, also supported the Cincinnati board on the grounds that Bible reading in the schools tended to result in religious division (because of the disagreement over, in effect, doctrine), while having all the children in the same school system without religious instruction tended to foster religious tolerance.
Mark Chancey, a professor in the Department of Religious Studies at Southern Methodist University who specializes in the political, academic, and constitution issues raised by Bible courses in public schools, notes that the Philadelphia nativist riots of 1844 were occasioned partly by the use of the King James version in public schools and by what some Catholics regarded as anti-Catholic speech. He states that if someone decides to use the King James version then he is (knowingly or unknowingly) promoting Protestanism. So the best approach is to use multiple versions of the Bible in teaching. (Fox2 News Channel, St. Louis, Missouri, 5/7/29, supplied by CNN Wires, accessed 1/17/20)
In 2009 the Islamic Center of Murfreesboro, Tennessee found itself running out of room in its existing mosque and community center. This Muslim organization had about 1000 congregants, mainly Somali and Iraqi immigrants and international students attending Middle Tennessee State University. So they bought a vacant lot on the outskirts of Murfreesboro and submitted plans for a new mosque and community center to the Regional Planning Commission of Rutherford County. As required by law, the commission ran an advertisement in The Murfreesboro Post (newspaper). The local newspaper, The Daily News Journal, also published a news story on the day the commission was to meet to consider the plans. The commission unanimously approved the plans. Now, county law did not require public meetings on construction projects put forth by religious organizations; all that was required was a satisfactory set of plans, advertisement of the meeting at which the commission would consider the plans, and commission approval. This was consistent with state and federal law and had been the way in which other local buildings put up by religious organizations had been approved.
Despite the commission’s approval, some locals and activists opposed the Islamic Center’s project, while other residents approved of it. Demonstrations were held by both sides regarding the project. Over the next two years, vandals and arsonists struck the Islamic Center. A local judge rejected the opponents’ claim that the project had been improperly approved, but he did find that public notice of the planning commission’s hearing on the action was inadequate and thus barred the issuance of a certificate of occupancy for the building. In August 2012, a US federal court ruled that the judge was wrong to subject the Islamic Center to requirements beyond what other religious organizations faced. So the mosque was able to open in 2012. But appeals and new lawsuits by the opponents kept the litigation going until June 2014, when the lawsuits were finally dismissed by the federal courts. (Wikipedia, “Islamic Center of Murfreesboro”, accessed 1/17/20)
In 2010, Gideon Bibles were handed out in the Hamilton County school system by a private organization (Kelli Gauthier, Chattanooga Times Free Press, 10/20/10).
In 2011, the Sumner County Board of Education entered into an agreement with the ACLU to end the practices of allowing posters advertising religious events in school, opening school board meetings with prayer, putting on school events at churches, letting teachers lead students in prayer; teaching Bible studies, and allowing youth ministers to approach and speak to students at lunchtime in the dining area. (ACLU Web Site, ACLU-TN, 5/20/11, accessed 8/3/20; also another source)
In 2014, a new law in Tennessee and other states defined what rights students should have to talk about God in homework, assemblies, club meetings, and graduation speeches. This was the Religious Viewpoints Anti-Discrimination Act, which stated that “schools could not block students from stating their religious views in public forums, organizing religious groups or stating their views in assignments” (Charles Sisk, The Tennesseean Web site, 3/24/14). The law said, in effect, that student speakers at school events could talk about God as long as school administrators didn’t have any influence over what they said.
This law seemed to be superfluous to many people because religious expression has always been protected under the First Amendment. Charles Haynes, the Director of the Religious Freedom Education Project at the Newseum, answered that contention by stating that “Christian conservative groups have for many years been frustrated by what they see as a hostile environment for religion in public schools. They are convinced—with some justification—that there’s a lot more that public schools can be doing to protect religious expression.” But in a letter to the governor of Tennessee, the ACLU pointed out that one part of the bill required school officials to allow student-led prayer at official school events, such as graduations and sports events, where the students were a captive audience (Hedy Weinburg, from the ACLU Web site, 4/3/14, accessed 8/3/20). The ACLU described the bill as establishing a requirement for a “limited public forum” at each event; the implication of this would be that on each occasion the school would have to define a class of students who were to be allowed to speak, allow each member of that class to speak (so as not to discriminate), and exercise no control over the content of the students’ speech. As the ACLU put it, this would turn these events into “free-for-alls for student expression and impose an administrative nightmare on schools”.
The Tennessee law also allowed “religious expression” by student speakers during school events and during morning announcements (Tierney Sneed, US NEWS Web site, 8/27/14). The law was inspired by the famous instance when a ten-year-old Memphis child, assigned to write about the person she admired the most (her “idol”), was told by her teacher to pick a person other than God. (It is not clear whether the teacher was expressing a personal prejudice, believed that she had to forbid any religious expression in class, or had made the assignment statement such that children would have to pick a human being rather than a deity.) In defiance, the student wrote two essays, one about God and one ostensibly about Michael Jackson. Her mother sought legal help. The student was later allowed to turn in her God essay (and earned a score of 100%). Although the school system caved in, legislators nevertheless claimed to need to remedy the situation for the future.
Others see a different motivation. “Despite its name, this legislation crosses the line from protecting religious freedom into creating systematic imposition of some students’ personal religious views on other students,” claimed Hedy Weinberg, the director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Tennessee, in a press release (4/3/14). There were fears that the law would protect, e.g., anti-gay bullies. Haynes of the Newseum said that “For some people on [the other] side, we’ve come to a place where kids talking about homosexuality being sinful [is considered] unacceptable in public schools.” Haynes added that it can be difficult to distinguish between harassment and free speech, in this case allowing bullying versus censoring religious convictions.
However, as the FindLaw Web site notes, “the right of Tennessee school children to pray in public school (as long as it is private and non-disruptive) is not limited to just the official minute of silence each morning. The Constitution also protects the free expression of religion. For example, students have the right to pray independently and silently before a test. This is different than a teacher or even another student leading the class in prayer, which is strictly prohibited.” (FindLaw Web site, “Overview of Tennessee’s Prayer in Public School Law, accessed 1/14/20)
Since at least 2014 Tennessee has had a law recognizing the first weekend of August as the “Weekend of Prayer Over Students” as they begin school. One of the legislative sponsors explained it thus: “Many students face extreme challenges in school today both academically and due to peer pressure or low self-esteem. This legislation sets a weekend which will serve as a reminder that we need to pray for our students and also give thanks for them and the school personnel who will guide them over the academic year.” This also makes for an occasion to hold religious events at schools – WCBY News noted that in 2014 nearly 1000 people attended prayer walks at 42 schools in northeast Tennessee alone. (WCYB News (Bristol, Tennessee), Olivia Caridi, Tuesday, 5/12/15)
In 2015, the Oak Ridge City Council found itself backed into a corner: the organization Rationalists of East Tennessee pointed out that in order to be compliant with a Supreme Court ruling, the rationalists (atheists) should get a turn at providing the invocation that opens each council meeting. In the past, the council had given this role to a rotating group of Christian and Jewish clergymen. The council decided that to avoid trouble they had to let a rationalist representative speak. However, the representative noted later, although the City Council put the rationalists on the agenda they did not notify the rationalists, who nevertheless found out in time for the representative to appear.
One council member opted not to attend the invocation; she said later that she “suspected [that] the comments [the representative] was going to make were going to be an affront to my own beliefs.” Another council member walked out during the invocation, saying later that he just couldn’t take it any more. He added that he “didn’t appreciate what she was saying. In my opinion, this country was founded on Christian principles.” The representative noted later that she had given the same invocation at public meetings in the cities of Lenoir City and Clinton, but no one had ever walked out before.
The representative said that the mayor (the de facto head of the council) cut her off before she reached the end of her statement, in which she made the comment that “No deities need to be, or should be, invoked at the openings of your meetings.” The city manager later claimed that the representative had exceeded the three-minute time frame normally allowed for public remarks during city meetings, but since the representative was speaking not during the public remarks period but during the apparently unstructured invocation time, that limit would not seem to have been applicable.
What the representative did get to say was this: she urged the council not to bow their heads, but to “hold them high with eyes open so that we may keep them focused on the issues facing Oak Ridge.” She noted that the diverse population of Oak Ridge included people of many religions [which is partly due to the many foreign-born folks working at nearby Oak Ridge National Laboratory] and also people with no religious affiliation. (Note that this type of non-religious invocation is not an invocation of the guidance of a deity, but rather the invocation, or advocacy, of the spirit of cooperation and sober deliberation.) As the representative and, separately, the president of Knoxville’s Atheist Society pointed out, the actions of the council members showed clearly that they deemed atheists to be second-class citizens not entitled to full consideration in civic matters. (Bob Fowler, 1/12/16, The Knoxville News Sentinel Web site, accessed 1/18/20)
In 2016, the Tennessee legislature passed a law declaring the Bible to be the official state book. This was despite an advisory opinion from Tennessee Attorney General Herbert Slatery that making the Bible the official state book would violate the 1st and 3rd amendments of the Constitution because it would be in effect giving preference to a particular religion. Soon thereafter, Governor Bill Haslam vetoed the bill. His reasoning was as follows. “If we believe that the Bible is the inspired word of God, then we shouldn’t be recognizing it only as a book of historical and economic significance. If we are recognizing the Bible as a sacred text, then we are violating the Constitution of the United States and the Constitution of the State of Tennessee by designating it as the official state book.” (NBC News Web site, Anna Merod, 4/5/16, accessed 1/16/20; The Washington Post Web site, Elahe Izadi, 4/14/16, accessed 1/17/20)
In 2018, the Freedom From Religion Foundation sent various letters to the Knox County school district regarding promotion and organization of prayer-related activities. These activities were not initiated and organized by students. Members of one high school administration organized a prayer walk led by a pastor. A school counselor sent an E-mail message to school staff members soliciting their participation in the walk and the principal promoted this event on his Twitter account. At a middle school in Corryton, the principal asked a pastor to organize a prayer walk for her school.
Also, notes the Foundation, the Knox County school system offered in-service time (and credit) for teachers for an conference called “Reach Them to Teach Them”. Many nonreligious teachers attended without being informed that it was a religious meeting. During the meeting, speakers related how faith had been meaningful to them and they advocated bringing religion into the classroom. The conference organizers’ Web site stated the following: “Reach Them to Teach Them is……a call to intentionally be a positive influence in the life of a child…..Adversities at home, peer pressure, and the relentless onslaught of media are so powerful that kids may lose hope and the motivation to make a difference – to be who God created them to be. Yes, God, the One who strengthens us and works for the good of all who serve Him. We are a group of believers. Kids must have someone who believes in them, challenges them, and talks with them about what really matters in life: knowledge, faith, character, hope, love… the greatest of these” (sic, including the split infinitive).
In 2018-2019, complaints were made that a Wilson County school board member led the recital of The Lord’s Prayer before school board meetings. The Wilson County Schools deputy director replied that this was legal since the prayer was recited before the meeting officially started. [This was after everyone had arrived but before the chairman had announced that the meeting was in session.] The Freedom From Religion Foundation pointed out that the school board member was using his position to promote religion to his fellow board members and to members of the public who were present (which action appeared to be sanctioned by the school board). The school board member told the FFRF that he had received notice to quit the recitals, but he averred that he would continue, saying that if someone wanted to stop him, they’d have to “send someone to deal with him”. (Brinley Hineman, Murfreesboro Daily News Journal, Oct. 8, 2019)
In the 2017-2018 school year, 4,068 middle and high school students in Ooltewah, Tennessee took a Bible history class at their public schools; in the 2018-2019 school year 4,568 students took it. The class was sponsored by a private group called Bible in the Schools, which paid for the twenty teachers, Bibles, and other classroom materials. Its representative said that “while Bible History is a robust academic subject, the byproduct of these courses reaches beyond mere academic gains as students are exposed to the hopes, values, and life lessons found in the Bible, many of which are universally relevant today. Students often report that the Bible provides a perspective that encourages them to make healthier choices, and to give more thought to their actions, particularly related to conduct, relationships, and self-care.” The Society of Biblical Literature stated that for this class to be constitutional, “A school’s approach to the Bible must be academic, not devotional. The teacher should teach about the Bible, not lead a “Bible study””. (CNN (Politics) Web site, Erika Ryan, 5/7/19, accessed 1/15/20; David Gee, Friendly Atheist Web site, 8/10/18, accessed 1/16/20; The Chattanoogan.com, 7/31/19, accessed 1/17/20; The Tennessee Star Web site, Chris Butler, 8/19/18, accessed 1/17/20)
In 2018, a student gave an invocation over the loudspeaker prior to a Bradley Central High School football game. An informant who was an employee of the Bradley County school system complained to the Freedom From Religion Organization and also spoke anonymously to a Chattanooga television station. In response to the complaint, Bradley Central students and a graduate organized a prayer walk and service at the high school. Said the graduate, “I feel like students on school property should have freedom of speech.” Another organizer stated that everyone has the right to an opinion about the constitutionality of praying before games. (Alana LaFlore, WTVC (Chattanooga), 1/22/18), accessed 1/15/20)
In 2018, a law was passed requiring that the national motto, “In God We Trust”, be displayed in a prominent area such as a school hall or cafeteria. Representative Susan Lynn, the House sponsor of the bill, stated that “Our national motto is on our money. It’s on our license plates. It’s part of our national anthem”. (Various sources have reported this.) It is not clear what she meant by the motto’s being on the license plates – such a plate is available in Tennessee only as a vanity plate, with an extra charge. The motto is indeed in the national anthem, but not until the fourth verse, while “In God We Trust” was adopted as the national motto only in 1956. Note that the Freedom from Religion Foundation brought legal challenges to the phrase “In God We Trust,” both as the national motto and on currency, but lost when a US court deemed the phrase to have only patriotic and historical significance, not religious significance (underlining mine). The Supreme Court has never ruled on this issue.
In 2018, Coffey County District Attorney Craig Northcutt made the news by issuing various problematic statements on his official Coffey County District Attorney Facebook page. The comments were in favor of Christians and against non-Christians such as Muslims and atheists. At a pastors’ conference, he characterized “atheism, humanism, Muslims,” as “others” and “the enemy” and deemed them to be “chomping at the bit to take over our government.” He admitted that in his official capacity he had failed to provide equal protection to LGBTQ people: he stated that he refused to honor the Supreme Court decision in Obergefell vs Hodges (on same-sex marriage). He also stated that he refused to recognize domestic violence occurring in an LGBTQ relationship. He averred that he uses “God’s standard” in deciding whether to ask for the death penalty or not. (Note that at the time he was the chairman of the Tennessee District Attorneys General Conference’s Committee on Capital Punishment.) (Chris Butler, 8/19/18, The Tennessee Star Web site, accessed 1/16/20; the Freedom From Religion Foundation Web site, accessed 1/15/20)
In 2018, the Freedom From Religion Foundation intervened to prevent some Tennessee State workers from having religious passages included in their state-mandated Department of Human Services training. FFRF was tipped off by a child care provider, who reported that the official required training for certification of child-care workers, online version, contained a module called “Building Strong Brains: Tennessee’s ACE Initiative,” that included “religious statements, Bible verses and a clear misunderstanding of basic scientific principles”. [Note that this is not to be confused with the Ace Initiative, allegedly an Internet scam; ACE stands for Adverse Childhood Experiences and is concerned with enhancing proper brain function and behavior.]
One of the lessons, titled “Frederick’s Experiment”, was provided by an organization called Digma. The title was a reference to the famous alleged experiment sanctioned by Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II in which babies were suckled but not spoken to or touched by wet nurses. The point was to see what “natural” language the babies eventually spoke. The result was that the babies died from what today would be called failure to thrive, occasioned by the almost complete lack of physical and social contact with others. The lesson, after challenging evolution, concluded with this analogy to the babies’ experience: “We can’t help but ask the obvious question at some point: What is the something more that we so desperately long for? In two simple declarations, the Bible offers the answer: ‘God is love’ ….and ‘God made mankind in His own image’ (Genesis 1:27). Mystery solved!” Clearly, although babies were involved in the description of the experiment the lesson was not actually about child care, but about religion. (FFRF Web site, 1/31/19, accessed 1/16/20)
In 2019 the ACLU of Tennessee, representing two atheist families, filed a lawsuit against Smith County Schools. The families alleged that the school system allowed prayer at mandatory school events and condoned proselytizing by students. Further, there were Bible verses posted in the hallways and a cross painted on a school athletic facility. The families said that this promotion of religion made them feel “like second-class citizens” (Rebeka Pewitt, WTVF, Nashville, 2019). There were also Monday assemblies called “family meetings,” where the principals would solicit prayer requests from students and staff (Washington Times, 11/19/19). Gideons International visited an elementary school to distribute Bibles, which were found in prominent positions all over the school, e.g., in the main office and in classrooms (Heman Mehta, 11/19/19, Friendly Atheist Web site). One teacher spoke frequently to her class about students’ need to put Jesus in their lives and she showed the film “The Passion of the Christ” at Easter.
In 2019, two student football players were baptized on a Robertson County school playing field after practice. A resident of the area reported this to the Freedom from Religion Foundation, which wrote a letter of protest to the Robertson County School Superintendent. It was also reported that the school system had hired a “character coach” to help instill positive values via religion in students; the character coach is a minister who participated in the baptisms. (Taameen Mohammed, Newsweek Web site, 9/12/19). The superintendent stated that the coaches were volunteers, not school system employees, and claimed that the activities were “student-initiated and student-led” and took place after practice. He asserted that the school and its staff thus did not violate the law. He objected to the fact that the resident got in touch with “organizations (sic) that aren’t even based in Tennessee” rather than with the school district office.
The letter that the FFRF sent to the district cited Borden v. School District of the Township of East Brunswick, a 2008 case in which Marcus Borden, a Delaware high school football coach, sued the school district for telling him could no longer lead his players in prayers before games. After several appeals, the Third Circuit Court rejected Borden’s argument that he had a First Amendment right to lead or join his students in prayer. “We find that, based on the history of Borden’s conduct with the team’s players, his acts cross the line and constitute an unconstitutional endorsement of religion,” wrote Judge D. Michael Fisher.
In 2019 the Freedom from Religion Foundation reminded the Fayette County Public Schools that certain of their activities were illegal. These activities included posting and sharing religious messages on multiple official Twitter accounts (which show the district’s logo and give the superintendent’s E-mail address for correspondence); posting on official school accounts “In GOD East Trusts!!!!” (for East High School); and posting ditto the lyrics “Now I know my ABCs….Next time won’t you PRAY with me!!!!” (Capitalizations and exclamation points are in the original postings.) (Freedom from Religion Foundation Web site, 2/21/19, accessed 1/16/20)
On October 4, 2019, Tennessee Governor Bill Lee issued a proclamation for a “Day of Prayer, Humility, and Fasting”. Participation in the prayer, humility, and fasting was of course voluntary. But Lee made it clear in the first paragraph that he was speaking for “the people of Tennessee” and continued with “we” statements: “we seek forgiveness from (sic) our transgressions, “we acknowledge our rich blessings, our deep transgressions” and “further acknowledge the need to give thanks to God Almighty, to turn from our transgressions and ask for God’s forgiveness, and to humble ourselves and seek God’s wisdom and guidance”. As David Plazas of the USA Today Network and The (Nashville) Tennesseean noted (10/9/19), the governor’s pronouncement “could reasonably create the impression that Governor Lee, the chief executive of our state, is sanctioning a particular set of beliefs that may encourage other citizens to discriminate against those who do not share his beliefs”.
In 2019, at a Christmas potluck at the community college where I (Janet Westbrook) had worked for many years, our manager announced that we would have a prayer by one of our coworkers to bless the food. She added that anybody who felt uncomfortable at this could step into a side room for a minute or two. (Nobody did, even several foreign-born folks who were likely Catholic, non-Christian, etc.) I love that coworker, whose deep faith has carried him through a major disabling event and who is liked by everybody, but his prayer was explicitly Christian and, to my ears, very Protestant.
In 2020, a bill to designate the Bible as the official book of Tennessee was again introduced in the legislature. This time the sponsor, Representative Jerry Sexton, offered two reasons for making the Bible the state book: many families historically recorded their genealogies in their family Bibles and Bible printing companies are an important part of the Tennessee economy (“a multi-million-dollar industry”). Some of his fellow representatives pushed back. Representative Johnny Shaw, a pastor, quoted the Bible and asked, “We’re going to make the Bible the state book and turn away refugees?….We’re going to make it the state book and not expand Medicaid?” Representative Kevin Vaughn was applauded when he said that the vote was “not a referendum on your personal beliefs or your personal relationship with your creator and savior”. He added that he did not believe that “bestowing a ceremonial title on the living word of God is something that this body needs to engage in.” In June 2020, the bill was tabled and no further action was taken. Governor Bill Lee has not said whether he will follow in the footsteps of his predecessor and veto the bill, if it ever passes; it appeared likely that he would support it, however. (Fox 17 News, Nashville, Tennessee, 19 June 2020, accessed 11 July 2020; Channel 11 (WJHL), Nashville, Tennessee, 19 June 2020, accessed 11 July 2020)
In 2020, the lesbian parents of a boy who wanted to play basketball at West Valley Middle School in Knox County sued the basketball coach, Chuck Comer. The lawsuit stated that although this was not stated at the time of signup, players on the school-sponsored team had to participate in a “Teens for Christ” program. As part of that participation, students had to show up early for school in order to listen to the coach read from and interpret the Bible for about 30 minutes. During such sessions, the coach explicitly addressed LGBTQ issues and identified them with sin. The parents reported this to the assistant principal and expressed their concerns about the “Teens for Christ” program, but his answers led them to believe that the principal and the Knox County school system were well aware of what the coach was doing. Furthermore, the practice of associating participation in the “Teens for Christ” program with playing on the basketball team had apparently gone on for at least 8 years. As of this writing, the suit has not been settled. (Jamie Satterfield, Knoxville News-Sentinel, 3/25/20)
With the history above as a background, let us turn to the so-called Bible Release Time program. The Anderson County school system had piloted a “release time” program of Bible study in May 2019 and then approved a policy allowing the program in all schools, presumably starting in the fall of 2019. In November 2019, the Knoxville News Sentinel (Kristi Nelson, 11/5/19) reported that this program was adopted on a pilot basis by the Knox County school system. Note that Knox County constitutes most of the greater Knoxville area, containing about 450,000 people. The Knox County school district has 94 schools: 51 elementary schools, 16 middle schools, 16 high schools, and 11 special schools. It has 8,339 employees serving approximately 60,500 students in the cities of Knoxville and Farragut as well as all other communities in the county (Wikipedia, accessed 9/1/20). Thus the program could potentially draw in tens of thousands of public school students.
In the Knox County pilot program, 70 Sterchi Elementary School students were leaving school for an hour once a month in order to go to an evangelistic church for a Bible lesson. The second-graders were missing an hour of language arts, while the third-, fourth-, and fifth-graders were missing music, art, or library class. Attendance was voluntary, but school credit could be given for the course.
This was consistent with a new Tennessee law (HB 307/ SB 1373) allowing for such a voluntary program (a revision of a previously existing law to the same effect). The update allows for the children to be “released” for Bible study as often as every school day (….deleting the old language “up to one (1) class period during each school week” and substituting instead the Ianguage “no more than one (1) class period per school day” “). Both the old and the new law describe the course content as “religious moral instruction”, not as Bible study, but specify that children cannot be released from classes in which they might tested by the state (e.g., math). The text also states that “This act shall take effect July 1, 2019, the public welfare requiring it“ [underlining mine].
Also in accordance with the law, the course was given away from school property (the church being two miles away in the Sterchi case) and the transportation of students to the church was not paid for by the school system. Students had to make up any work they missed. Significantly, although the entity giving the instruction was to keep attendance records for the benefit of the school system, the instructors were not required to be licensed or certified as Tennessee schoolteachers, aides, and volunteers working directly with students are. The Sterchi course consisted of 10 minutes of singing and games; 10 minutes of memory work, prayer, and review; and 25 minutes of Bible study. Note that this adds up to 45 minutes, leaving 15 minutes for the round trip to the church, including load-up time.
The News Sentinel article resulted in a flood of comments to the newspaper, to the school board, and to state and local representatives. The superintendent of Knox County schools had approved the pilot program, but Knox County school board members had not yet had an opportunity to vote on it. Some of these members made public comments also. KCSB member Patti Bounds, who is a former longtime teacher and had a granddaughter attending such a course in another school district, expressed approval of such a policy. She claimed that while most of the E-mail messages she had received had opposed the program, data from other school systems across the country supported it and “the parents” supported it.
But KCSB member Jenny Owen, whose district included the Sterchi site, opposed the policy on the grounds that classroom learning back at the school was important and should not be skipped. E.g., those missed language arts classes: they were being missed since according to the state testing scheme, second-graders were not tested in language arts. But, Owen said, every minute of (regular) instruction time should be regarded as important. (Possibly she had in mind Tennessee’s abysmal record in elementary and high school academics.) Owen asked why the church couldn’t hold the program after school and was told that transportation was an issue, which she found not to make sense. She noted too that one concern she had was that students were returning to class from the church with candy and stories about the fun they had. In addition to her statement, some parents who were Christian but were not sure that the course church’s beliefs were in accordance with theirs expressed concern about their children feeling that they were missing out if they did not attend.
The News Sentinel also reported that the president of the East Tennessee chapter of the Freedom From Religion Foundation handed out fliers at Sterchi Elementary in October 2019. The fliers gave an informational summary of the classes and a sample letter of protest to the Knox County school board that parents could use if they objected to the program. The flier stated that the program “promotes only one view of Christian belief, not the multiplicity of Christian faith traditions”. The response to the handing out of the fliers was mixed, but a few parents did thank the president. However, one man left his car to confront her and to threaten to call the police. She pointed out that she was there in the first place because some parents called her, adding that FFRF does not take action unless someone complains to them.
The nonprofit faith organization Elgin Foundation was behind the Bible release time program. The Elgin Foundation is a mainly philanthropic organization that provides health care to low-income children, advocates for child victims, and carries on a reading program. But as part of their mission they also have the release time program to bring Bible instruction into the public schools. The Knoxville News Sentinel quotes them as citing court cases that they claim back up parents’ right to have their children receive religious education during the school day; the News Sentinel says that this dates “back to the early 1900s, when parents had their children skip playground time to attend Bible classes”. Note that back then no academic time was used for this purpose.
As the News Sentinel tells it, an ad hoc group of people calling themselves Satanists quickly organized a Facebook page called Satanic Children’s Ministry of Knoxville and put up a post that went viral. The post celebrated the Knox County school system and the Sterchi-area church for starting the release program and stated that the Satanists would like to put in place a similar program for their children, i.e., one that teaches about Satanism. The Satanists added that they would like not to have to introduce their own program, but would instead prefer that the Bible release time program be abandoned. They noted that they send their children to school to get a state-approved education, not religious education. Knox County School Board member Bounds commented that while the school board has to respect all religions, she kept returning to the fact that the schools are not forcing children to go to the Bible release time course. Board member Owen noted that the Satanists were correct in saying that if the course was approved (by the school board), other religious instruction courses would have to be allowed.
Subsequently the News Sentinel published an op-ed piece by Roger Byron, senior counsel to the First Liberty Institute, whose stated mission is to defend religious freedom for all and whose motto is “Defending your right to live out your faith”. Although the institute’s Web site contains a piece about the violent attack on a New York synagogue in 2019, the focus is clearly on the Christian faith. Byron states that the Bible release programs have a “proven record of improving student academic performance and well-being”. He says that there is a study by the National Council on Crime and Delinquency that backs him up. I located the study in question; it is from 2003 and was a paid evaluation of the release time program used in the Oakland, California school system (https://www.issuelab.org/resource/summary-of-findings-released-time-bible-education.html). I will leave it to the reader to assess the quality of this report.
Byron notes that in Zorach v. Clauson (1952), the Supreme Court declared 6-3 that a release time arrangement in the New York City schools did not violate the Establishment Clause or the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment because no public funds were used and the instruction was not held on school property. Byron approvingly quotes the majority opinion in that case: “We are a religious people whose institutions presuppose a Supreme Being….When the state encourages religious instruction or cooperates with religious authorities by adjusting the schedule of public events to sectarian needs, it then follows the best of our traditions.” Byron avers that “no genuine criticism has been or can be raised against it. It is a tried-and-true method to improve the life of any student fortunate enough to participate.”
But some Supreme Court members thought that there were genuine criticisms that could be raised against it and wrote separate minority opinions to contradict the majority opinion.
The majority in Zorach v. Clauson claimed that their opinion supporting the release time program was consistent with the Court’s earlier decision in McCollum v. Board of Education (1948), in which the court rejected a release program as unconstitutional. According to a Wikipedia article (McCollum v. Board of Education (Champaign, Illinois) (1948), Wikipedia, accessed January 22, 2020), the principal elements of the McCollum complaint were that in practice some Protestant groups running the program had an advantage over other Protestant denominations; the term “voluntary” was in name only because school officials coerced or forced students’ participation; and the power exercised by the Champaign Council on Religious Education in its selection of instructors and by the school superintendent’s oversight of the instructors determined which religious faiths participated in the program. This constituted a prior censorship of religion, according to the (1948) majority opinion written by Justice Hugo Black. The majority in Zorach v. Clauson thought that these elements of McCollum v. Board of Education were not found in Zorach v. Clauson (1952) and so the court could reach a different conclusion.
However, the minority in Zorach v. Clauson (Justices Hugo Black, Felix Frankfurter, and Robert H. Jackson) strongly dissented on the grounds that the majority was ignoring some elements of McCollum that were also found in Zorach and that these elements did show violation of the Establishment Clause. They really let the majority have it in their three scathing dissents.
Justice Black quoted from McCollum v. Board of Education in his Zorach dissent: “Pupils compelled by law to go to school for secular education are released in part from their legal duty [to attend school] upon the condition that they attend the religious classes. This is beyond all question a utilization of the tax-established and tax-supported public school system to aid religious groups to spread their faith….. The State also affords sectarian groups an invaluable aid in that it helps to provide pupils for their religious classes through use of the State’s compulsory public school machinery [including the taking of roll, which information was supplied to the schools to ensure that students were not playing hookey].” He added this: “Here the sole question is whether New York can use its compulsory education laws to help religious sects get attendants [students] [who are] presumably too unenthusiastic to go unless moved to do so by the pressure of this state machinery. That this is the plan, purpose, design and consequence of the New York program cannot be denied. The state thus makes religious sects beneficiaries of its power to compel children to attend secular schools. Any use of such coercive power by the state to help or hinder some religious sects or to prefer all religious sects over nonbelievers or vice versa is just what I think the First Amendment forbids….. The First Amendment was therefore to insure that no one powerful sect or combination of sects could use political or governmental power to punish dissenters whom they could not convert to their faith. Now as then, it is only by wholly isolating the state from the religious sphere and compelling it to be completely neutral, that the freedom of each and every denomination and of all nonbelievers can be maintained.”
Justice Frankfurter said this: “The Court [majority] tells us that in the maintenance of its public schools, “[the State government] can close its doors or suspend its operations” so that its citizens may be free for religious devotions or instruction….Of course, a State may provide that the classes in its schools shall be dismissed, for any reason, or no reason, on fixed days, or for special occasions. The essence of this case is that the school system did not “close its doors” and did not “suspend its operations.” There is all the difference in the world between letting [all] the children out of school and letting some of them out of school into religious classes….The pith of the case is that formalized religious instruction is substituted for other school activity which those who do not participate in the released-time program are compelled to attend. The school system is very much in operation during this kind of released time. If its doors are closed, they are closed upon those students who do not attend the religious instruction, in order to keep them within the school. That is the very thing which raises the constitutional issue….Again, the Court [majority] relies upon the absence from the record of evidence of coercion in the operation of the system. “If in fact coercion were used,” according to the Court, “if it were established that any one or more teachers were using their office to persuade or force students to take the religious instruction, a wholly different case would be presented.” Thus, “coercion” in the abstract is acknowledged to be fatal. But the Court disregards the fact that as the case comes to us, there could be no proof of coercion, for the appellants were not allowed to make proof of it [underlining mine].”
And finally, Justice Jackson: “This released time program is founded upon a use of the State’s power of coercion ……Stripped to its essentials, the plan has two stages: first, that the State compel each student to yield a large part of his time for public secular education; and, second, that some of it be “released” to him on condition that he devote it to sectarian religious purposes. No one suggests that the Constitution would permit the State directly to require this “released” time to be spent “under the control of a duly constituted religious body.” This program accomplishes that forbidden result by indirection. If public education were taking so much of the pupils’ time as to injure the public or the students’ welfare by encroaching upon their religious opportunity, simply shortening everyone’s school day would facilitate voluntary and optional attendance at Church classes. But that suggestion is rejected upon the ground that if they are made free many students will not go to the Church. Hence, they must be deprived of freedom for this period, with Church attendance put to them as one of the two permissible ways of using it. The greater effectiveness of this system over voluntary attendance after school hours is due to the truant officer who, if the youngster fails to go to the Church school, dogs him back to the public schoolroom. Here schooling is more or less suspended during the “released time” so the nonreligious attendants will not forge ahead of the churchgoing absentees. But it serves as a temporary jail for a pupil who will not go to Church. It takes more subtlety of mind than I possess to deny that this is governmental constraint in support of religion. It is as unconstitutional, in my view, when exerted by indirection as when exercised forthrightly.”
Jackson added that, “As one whose children, as a matter of free choice, have been sent to privately supported Church schools, I may challenge the Court’s suggestion that opposition to this plan can only be antireligious, atheistic, or agnostic. My evangelistic brethren confuse an objection to compulsion with an objection to religion [underlining mine]. It is possible to hold a faith with enough confidence to believe that what should be rendered to God does not need to be decided and collected by Caesar. The day that this country ceases to be free for irreligion it will cease to be free for religion except for the sect that can win political power…..If we concede to the State power and wisdom to single out “duly constituted religious” bodies as exclusive alternatives for compulsory secular instruction, it would be logical to also uphold the power and wisdom to choose the true faith among those “duly constituted.” We start down a rough road when we begin to mix compulsory public education with compulsory godliness.”
Back to the Sterchi School case: following Byron’s column in the News Sentinel, various letter writers weighed in. Jack Love said (11/24/19) that “no rational reason exists for depriving students of their full educational day for such a purpose. Parents who desire to provide religious education to their children have ample means to do so before and after school and on weekends…..[The reason why Byron et al. want this program is to] place something of a seal of approval on religious education from the public education system.” He further noted that having some of the children gone places a burden on administrators and teachers because of the disruption of departures and returns and because of teachers having to work around providing lessons to only part of the children [and by implication, having to help the absent students make up their work]. He added that he was sure that Byron and his organization would not want to ensure that children were released to atheist or Satanist programs.
Letter writer John Neiswender said (11/27/19) that there was an obvious violation of separation of church and state. He suggested that children be taken out of school for nature study, in order to appreciate living things and face what he termed the future environmental crisis.
In yet another op-ed (there did not seem to be any anti-release time op-eds published by the News Sentinel), Tim Rogers, the executive director of the Elgin Foundation, which provided funds and materials for the Sterchi release time program, reiterated the decision in Zorach v. Clauson (Knoxville News Sentinel, 12/2/19). He stated that every state representative and senator voted to approve the Tennessee release time statute (underlining mine). He added that the Tennessee Baptist Mission Board, representing several thousand churches, passed a resolution urging school boards to support release time programs. He asserts that a release time program gives parents “additional opportunities to become even more involved” in their children’s education. (He did not specify how parents were involved in a release time program other than by approving their children’s attendance.)
Rogers also said that a study done in Kentucky showed that students at schools with Bible release time programs scored more than twice the state average in academic ratings. (Note that this is not to say that the students participating in the programs scored higher than those at the same school who were not in the program.) He said that those who oppose the Sterchi program were trying “to hinder how parents access this opportunity to improve their child’s educational experience” and “obfuscate(sic) a parent’s…..access to release time, and thus impede parental rights”. Like Byron, he claimed that research demonstrated that children who attended release time classes “perform better academically, have fewer disciplinary issues, and enjoy better socio-economic health”. He reiterated that release time “affirm[s] a parent’s right to be more involved and allow the school system to accommodate those parents who want religious and moral instruction as part of their child’s curriculum”.
On December 4, 2019 the Knox County School Board met in a work session to discuss many items of business. But the one that prompted a full house of spectators was the release time issue, which the board would need to vote on in the near future. As the Knoxville News Sentinel noted (Kristi L. Nelson, December 6, 2019), the school board was clearly divided on the issue. Member Patti Bounds dismissed the concern that missing an hour of class a month would affect the students adversely. Member Jennifer Owen warned against pushing the policy through before the pilot had been completed [since the fall semester was not over yet]. She brought up various questions: What if some schools were offered the program and others not – would that be disparate treatment of students? Who would have liability if a student were injured in a church bus accident? Given the variety of languages spoken by elementary school children, who would be responsible for translating the course materials and the parental waivers? For students who needed to have a nurse at school [e.g., to administer daily medication], how would the schools provide such care for the program? Member Tony Norman attended one of the release time sessions as an observer and found it “impressive” (with singing, dancing, etc.); however, he added that he could not get past the idea that the program could have a negative effect on the children left behind at school. His solution was to have the program after school. But Board Chair Susan Horn said that with 70 out of 300 Sterchi students participating [23%], it was clear that parents wanted the program. She added “We are in a time right now when parental rights are being challenged. We need to remember that it’s the parents’ right to educate their child, however they choose to do that….They are “our children” [the school system’s children]…., but only because the parents have given us authority over their child.”
As the News Sentinel reported, some 15 audience members had signed up to address the board on the issue. Among them, a Campbell County school board member said that her district had had such success with a release time pilot four years earlier that the program had been expanded to include all eight elementary schools and was to include the middle and high schools. In the high schools, the release time course would count for academic credit, as allowed by Tennessee law. Tim Rogers of the Elgin Foundation also spoke, saying that once school boards are made aware that release time programs are legal, they are “excited to communicate to parents and the community that they care about the moral health of children in their communities and they want to accommodate the religious needs of parents’ rights”.
The president of the Atheist Society of Knoxville, a parent, identified himself as also the co-founder and president of the local unaffiliated Satanic Ministry, which was threatening to start its own release program. He said that the Ministry had nearly 200 members and another 100 supporters and was a true nonprofit organization. He added that their preferred solution was not to have any religious instruction time during school hours at all. He alleged that release time programs were “designed to recruit other kids. They separate children of a chosen belief system and reward them with candy, toys, and time away from school…This will continue until only religious minorities are left in the class [at school].”
Three Knox County Schools art teachers spoke against the program, saying that it took instructional time that could not be made up. (As the News Sentinel reminded readers at this point in their article, although the pilot program at Sterchi took only one hour per month, state statute allowed children to miss up to an hour a week for a release time program.) One of the speakers was an art teacher at Sterchi and a Christian; she talked about how hard it was to have only 4 out of 15 students present because the others were at a Bible release time class. She enumerated the various topics or activities that the release time participants had missed. Another art teacher had 700 students at a different elementary school and noted that each gets art instruction every six school days. It is hard to provide continuity across such a large time gap, she said, and it would be even harder if a student missed one of those days. The third art teacher, who works at yet another elementary school teaching 775 students, commented that one hour a month was huge when the teacher got the students only 22 hours a year.
The pastor of the Sterchi release time church played the legal card, saying that “when the dust settles, it’s a law…Parents want to exercise that right…I will assure you [that] the children you watch [in the program] will sing more than they will at school. They may miss out on watercolor. Watercolor won’t change their eternal destiny.” In a non sequitur, he said that other extracurricular activities (sports or academic clubs) exclude children based on ability. Another pastor who was a former prosecutor of child sex abuse cases urged that children’s physical safety be of concern. She pointed out that the state statute does not require school districts to ensure that release time churches perform background checks or provide other such safeguards in a setting where “children are separated from parents and teachers and made to feel special”, as the News Sentinel put it.
Following this school board meeting there were more letters to the Knoxville News Sentinel. David Barg of Teaneck, New Jersey wrote (December 15, 2019) to say that he applauded student release time for religious studies, recalling the time earlier in his life when as part of an after-school program he taught a little bit of Bible studies in a Brooklyn, New York public school to a group that included Jewish teens. But, he said, it seems as if traveling off campus could be disruptive to school scheduling and it limits the program to churches that are near the school. He added that he observed from his teaching that the kids and their families who made sacrifices to participate were the ones who grew from the programs, so that allowing kids “to play hookey” for an hour every month would not result in as much positive growth as encouraging them to take an hour out of their [private] lives for religious study, e.g., by attending Bible class after school.
On December 11, 2019 the Knox County School Board voted on the release time program. What they actually voted on was not the program per se, but on a policy proposal regarding the program. The policy as voted on required all such programs to be offered on the same day at the same time in order to minimize class disruption; it also required churches and other entities to take out liability insurance and conduct background checks on anyone in the program who interacted with children.
Tim Rogers, president of the Elgin Foundation, was allowed to speak before the vote. He reiterated the legality of release time programs and stated that a vote against the policy was “a tacit endorsement of atheism, deferring to families who don’t have religious beliefs”, as the News Sentinel put it. Others spoke for and against the policies, including some parents. One Sterchi parent said, “This program allows my children to build a community, it allows them to praise God, to sing and worship God, and to learn God’s word….This is a tool to combat childhood anxiety and depression.” The director of an inner city youth ministry claimed that Knox County would get a reputation for being “hostile to the Bible” if the school board rejected the release time policy.
But some other people related their own experiences with religious discrimination and thought that release time programs could engender bullying and some cautioned that “more intrusive requests could follow”, as the News Sentinel put it. Some music teachers spoke regarding valuable class time and reminded the school board members that both state and school board policies call art and music (which are the most missed classes for release time programs) core subjects. One teacher said that “there are a fair share of people who tell me I’m not putting God first if I stand in opposition to this policy”. Another asked, “If the teachers are against this, why are we even talking about it any more?” She said that the claim that implementing the release time program was cost-free to the school system was dishonest.
In the end, the board voted 5-4 not to continue the release time program (Kristi L. Nelson, Knoxville News Sentinel, December 13, 2019). The reason was likely not so much to uphold the principle of separation of church and state as to forestall legal challenges and the costs associated with them.
In a final letter to the News Sentinel on this issue, Candy Wansley thanked the school board for their vote (Knoxville News Sentinel, December 16, 2019). As she summed it up, echoing earlier letter writer Jack Love, “Besides the arguments concerning transportation and health insurance issues, as well as separation of church and state, plus bullying of students who don’t participate in Bible Release Time and loss of educational time, there is a valid question of why a public school system would knowingly allow some children to leave school property for a religious program that could be held after or before school or on weekends.”
That seemed to settle the matter. However, the supporters of release time programs in Tennessee are nothing if not determined. In the spring of 2020, as the schools and universities were shutting down and shifting to online mode because of the coronavirus and as the economy was starting to falter, the legislature was devoting time to religious issues. Not only was a bill to make the Bible the official state book of Tennessee introduced again in the Tennessee House (see above), but another bill to allow local school boards to excuse students from school so that they could attend a Bible release time program — now described as “a release time course in religious moral instruction” — passed and was signed into law by Governor Bill Lee. Although the word “allow” was used in news reports, the bill summary actually requires public schools to excuse a student from school to attend the course for one hour per school day if the student’s parents or guardian requests it. (Yes, one hour every single school day.) The bill authorizes school boards that provide school transportation services for students to provide transportation for students attending a released time course if the independent entity giving the course reimburses the board for providing the transportation service. (Melanie Russell, WATE News, Knoxville, Tennessee, 24 June 2020, accessed 11 July 2020)
Thus it would seem that over the objections of many teachers and many parents, students will be allowed to take time out of school for religious instruction despite the disruption in the school day.
From my summary and comments above, some readers may think that I am an atheist or am anti-Christian. That is not true at all: I believe in God and I pray every day. I do not have a home church because I am not able to accept the complete dogma of any religion I know of. But I do think that on balance organized religion is a positive and constructive thing, providing comfort and inspiration to individuals, allowing for pooling of energy and resources in congregations to work in the community, and making it possible for churches to be a force in influencing policy and practices in the United States and around the world. There are some shameful and even evil things done in the name of religion; I find it hard to believe that those of whatever religion who kill and torture and oppress “in the name of God” (or Allah or whoever) are acting as God would wish. It is especially troubling that some view those who are not of their religion as non-people, not deserving of normal consideration or equal treatment (e.g., Christians painting swastikas on Jewish synagogues, Muslims killing Bahai members over in the Middle East). But overall, I believe, religion has focussed people’s attention on the good and the constructive and the transcendent.
My personal belief is that God just wants me to get with the program. I think that that program is first and foremost comforting the afflicted, helping the poor, aiding those caught in natural disasters, etc. Beyond that, the program is educating children, keeping representative government going in a constructive way, making medical and scientific discoveries, catching those guilty of criminal behavior and reforming the reformables, etc. The three P’s of Protestantism – prayer, praise, and proselytizing – are important, but to me the lion’s share of people’s time, money, and effort should go to that fourth P, the program.
From my days of studying physics in college and graduate school, I know that matter tends to disorder (entropy) and that it takes energy to create order that lasts. This, it seems to me, is true of society as well: if we have no laws or organizing principles, if everybody does just as he pleases, we will not work together and things will be destroyed as fast as they are created. That is anarchy. But with organizing principles and laws and a fair amount of tolerance and cooperation, we can create good things – products, homes, institutions – that will benefit everybody and we will make progress toward an even more positively ordered future with few or no wars or other armed conflicts (that Holy Grail of human aspiration, world peace) and with cities, states, and nations working together to eliminate bad things – e.g., slums, cancer, famine, deaths from natural disasters. Religion, with its adherents acting in positive ways as I describe above, can be a very powerful effector of organization and forward progress.
Even so, to me it is clear that mixing church and state is not something that helps us make forward progress, as our Founding Fathers knew from experience in their lifetimes and before. The Pilgrims came to America in 1620 partly because some of them had been persecuted in England for their religious beliefs (either officially or with the authorities turning a blind eye). But not all who came to America found a place where they could practice their religion freely. E.g., as pointed out in the Smithsonian magazine (America’s True History of Religious Tolerance, Kenneth C. Davis, Smithsonian Magazine, October 2010), when a Huguenot or French Protestant colony was established in 1564 in Florida, the neighboring Catholic Spaniards did not like it. In 1565 they wiped out the Huguenots. Most of the Huguenots were hanged because, in the words of the Spanish commander, “they were scattering the odious Lutheran doctrine in these provinces”. As any student of pre-Revolutionary history knows, there was a lot of across-the-board intolerance and even the people who fled from religious persecution could, in the New World, be guilty of it themselves.
We may think that this doesn’t happen in modern-day America, but as we can see from extreme events like some of the mass shootings in synagogues and churches and of course the 9/11 calamity, it does. As Taylor Swift told us, haters gonna hate, hate, hate, hate, hate. So tolerance, especially religious tolerance, should be one of the prime values promoted in schools, as in the anti-bullying campaigns. People should be completely free to read the Bible and share it with others if they choose, but, I argue, religious tolerance would keep such practices out of public activities, particularly education, in any way that might imply promotion of religion.
Let us digress for a moment to review the First Amendment to the Constitution, which applies to religion and free speech. It says this: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or [other rights]”. As someone on the Internet pointed out (I have unfortunately lost the reference), the Establishment Clause restricts the benefits a government may grant a religion or its adherents and the Free Exercise Clause restricts the burden a government may place on a religion or its adherents. The First Amendment is vague as to what constitutes “respecting”, “free exercise”, and “free speech”, but any number of court cases have more or less limned this for us, especially in the area of teaching in schools.
For example, in Bishop v. Aronov (926 F.2d 1066, 11th Cir. 1991), Bishop, a University of Alabama physiology professor, sued the university because he was told that he could not teach “intelligent design theory” or include in his lectures what he called “evidences of God in Human Physiology”. He alleged violation of his right to free speech and of academic freedom. The 11th Circuit court of appeals decided that the classroom was not an open forum and that therefore it was the university that set the curriculum (Wikipedia Web site, accessed 2/2/20). In another case (Edwards v. California University of Pennsylvania, No. 97-3285, 3rd Cir. 1998), Edwards, a professor in a university education department, taught a course on how teachers should use classroom communications media such as projection equipment, chalkboards, photographs, and films. He apparently taught the course as per the school syllabus at first. But then he began to inject discussion of bias, censorship, and religion into the course, putting publications regarding these issues on his recommended reading list. A student complained about his use of the class to push religious ideas and a university official took Edwards to task. He appealed to the president of the university, who upheld the official. But they apparently allowed him to continue to teach, perhaps believing that he had changed his ways. The chairman of his department eventually found that he was still teaching his own syllabus and ordering classroom materials that dealt with religion. Again ordered to stop, he refused and was suspended from teaching. He sued. After a lengthy battle in the courts, the appeals court found that Edwards did not have a First Amendment right to choose classroom materials and subjects that did not agree with the university’s directions. (FindLaw Web site, accessed 2/2/20)
There is another issue if a teacher or professor has tenure. By all accounts, it is very difficult to fire a person with tenure. Thus a school or university administration can admonish a teacher or professor who continually injects religion into what should be a nonreligious class, but unless the administration is minded to go the extra mile, the teacher or professor is fairly free to say what he likes. I am reminded of the time I took the physics course “Electricity and Magnetism” (E&M) in college back in 1969 or 1970: at least once a week my professor would take up 30-40 minutes of class time to testify about faith healing events, most of which he did not personally witness (“…..grew two inches of bone in an hour!”). We complained, as students had done for years, and he was cautioned again and again, but the professor felt that his testimony was more important than our learning the material that he was paid to teach and that was important for our future physics courses. Since he had tenure, he could do as he liked. (After that course, E&M was always my weakest area in physics.)
As I see it, if a kid wanted to write an essay in which he spoke of his religion, that would be tolerated because he has the right to freedom of speech regarding his own beliefs and activities (well, as long as it was consistent with the assigned topic of the essay). But he would not be allowed to harangue his fellow students constantly about, e.g., reading the Bible.
If asked by a student, a public school teacher should certainly be able to say, “Well, I’m a Baptist and I really like it”. The teacher should surely be able to wear a small cross as a necklace – or, to switch to another religion, a headscarf/hijab. But the teacher’s posting Bible verses all over the classroom or assigning daily Bible reading should not be tolerated. Here it would not be a question of her freedom of speech since (a) her promotive actions would violate the Establishment Clause because the children are forced to be there and (b) she is an authority figure and thus her influence over the children might overshadow even parental teaching. As the majority opinion put it in Roberts v. Madigan, “Attendance is compulsory in the classroom. The teacher stands in a position of power as disciplinarian, role model, and educator. Students are constantly in the presence of their peers, who may observe their every action. The students are, in a real sense, a captive audience vulnerable to even silent forms of religious indoctrination.” (The Justia Web site, Roberts v. Madigan, 702 F. Supp. 1505 (D. Colo. 1989), accessed 2/1/20)
From the lengthy list of religion-promoting events in Tennessee that I cited at the beginning of this post, one can see that in Tennessee – a very religious place compared to most of America – there are many encroachments on the principle of separation of church and state in the official public sphere. This has arisen, I think, for two reasons. The first is that adherents of evangelistic religions – call them the evangelizers – sincerely believe that their religious beliefs are correct; sometimes they say that everybody else is going to hell for sure (which fate my Baptist husband worries about for me). Many of them think that it is therefore their duty to try to convert others to their way of thinking – with good intentions and for the others’ own good. This especially extends to schoolchildren, so many of whose parents are regarded as not “right-thinking” or even as Godless. Therefore it is very important to these evangelizers to try to save the children, e.g., by luring them into religious instruction.
The second reason is what I call the “No ‘Count Don’t Count” school of thought. That expression means that those who are of no account – those who are unimportant – don’t deserve any consideration and should not have any say. In the case of religion, this means that those who aren’t “thinking right” can be discounted. Winners, individually and in groups, often believe that they are favored by God or Fate or are just naturally entitled and so it is okay to trample on the losers; of course this is true of any social group, not just religious groups. The way this works with religion is that if you are in the majority denomination or sect, you think that the minority denomination or sect or, most of all, nonbelievers do not really have rights when it comes to activities involved in spreading the Word. It is God’s will trumping man’s will, so to speak.
But if you believe, as so many religious conservatives seem to, that the Constitution, having been written by wise and inspired founding fathers, is in effect also from God and so not in conflict with God’s word, then the Constitution should govern our civic activities. When I went to school, we learned that while the majority rules in most things, the Bill of Rights guarantees core individual rights so that the majority does not ride roughshod over the minority. This means that figuratively speaking there is a little circle around each individual into which the majority cannot trespass. Inside that circle is the right to have your own religion or not have one and also your right not to have to be subjected to other people’s religious beliefs.
This makes things difficult in a place like Tennessee. Here, as elsewhere, many prominent American individuals and companies, including most public officials, are into what nowadays is called virtual-signaling, i.e., exhibiting to others that they have the right moral stuff. In Tennessee we might call this Christian-signaling.You can hardly find a non-Christian public official here – in fact, there are relatively few Catholic or Jewish officials, much less professed atheist officials. When politicians hand out campaign fliers, they often list their religious affiliation or at least mention something about their faith. That is a selling point to some people, but to me there is something hypocritical about politicians’ using religion to promote themselves. It seems to me that this is often pharisaical. (See Luke 18:9-14, where a Pharisee prays loudly so that everyone can hear him: “God, I thank you that I am not like other men” and goes on to detail how righteous he is while those around him, poor schmucks, are not.) Still, politicians have the right to present themselves to best advantage and if most of your prospective constituents are Christian, exhibiting your Christian faith might be your best move in a place like Tennessee.
Religious tolerance demands of all of us that we allow people to display or avow their religion in their personal spheres. For example, there are many small businesses in Tennessee that have Bible verses or religious plaques on the walls (like my nice shoe repair person) and often the owner-operator will take the opportunity to let drop that he is ‘blessed”, so as to underscore that he is a Christian. With so many Tennesseeans being Christians, this may be effective at persuading people to shop or buy services there: people like to go to a place manned by people like them.
Personally, I don’t object to somebody’s posting Bible verses in his own store. It doesn’t bother me that Chik-Fil-A and Hobby Lobby have chosen to be closed on Sundays even though this has been personally inconvenient for me more than once. (When I am traveling with my husband, who has a heart condition and has to follow a low-fat diet, it is nice to spot a Chik-Fil-A because we know they have a grilled chicken option. Alas, if it is a Sunday night and all we can see are the fast-food purveyors of fatty meals, it is a hardship.) But Chick-Fil-A, as a private business receiving no government support, has the right to set hours based on its owners’ religious beliefs.
This is not true of governmental entities, which is why I disapprove of a public school system giving Good Friday off and calling it ”Special Spring Break” (when the actual Spring Break is weeks earlier), hiding that the reason for letting students out is a tacit acknowledgment of the meaning of the day for Christians. Giving everybody time off for religious reasons applicable to only a subset of employees seems to be a constant in Tennessee. The State of Tennessee as a whole governmental entity took off Good Friday in 2020. So did the Knox County Health Department, at the height of the coronavirus crisis in Tennessee, although its spokesfolks did hold their daily briefing on the status of the crisis in Knox County.
What we should not tolerate – because it is intolerant in itself – is the rampant use of majority power to impose religious beliefs and practices on the minority, as I believe my summary narrative of events shows occurs in Tennessee. As we have seen, many coaches pray with all their players on the football field and prayers emanate from PA systems at games and in school. The school systems know that this is illegal, but many do it anyway, secure in the knowledge that even if somebody rats on them, all they have to do is promise not to sin again. Similarly, there are teachers who believe that God’s law trumps man’s law, i.e., don’t render to Caesar what is Caesar’s but go whole-hog in your personal interpretation of rendering to God. I think that the Bible verse I just referred to can be interpreted as the official word from above that there is an individual sphere and a public or social sphere and that God’s law is for the individual and “Caesar’s” law is for the public/social sphere. They overlap, of course; for example, we have “Thou [singular] shalt not kill” for the individual and “You [singular or plural] shall not kill” for the public as enshrined in law. But the implication is that as far as proselytizing goes, people are supposed to work within the law – not just the state laws that the Tennessee legislature passes, but also Federal laws. This is for the greater good.
I hope that in time my fellow Tennesseans who have espoused the injection of religion into the schools and other areas of public life will recognize that pushing religion on others is not an effective way to proselytize. It just gets people’s backs up or makes them close their ears even to the nonreligious things you say, which would surely be counterproductive. When I was in college and attended a nondenominational on-campus church service, we used to sing a 60’s song called “They’ll Know We Are Christians By Our Love”. This is to me the quintessential hymn about Christian tolerance: “We are one in the Spirit….and we pray that all unity may one day be restored….. we will work with each other, we will work side by side….and we’ll save each man’s dignity, and guard each man’s pride….And they’ll know we are Christians by our love”. This song emphasizes that in interpersonal relations involving religion, tolerance and respect are the principal qualities required. It also suggests that you persuade best by example, not by exhortation or coercion.
Many people outside the South think that Southerners are mostly a bunch of rubes and rednecks. As my West Tennessee-born grandma would have put it, I’m here to tell you that that isn’t so. In Tennessee there are of course many rednecks (who often are smarter than they may present themselves to be) and some hardscrabble Appalachian types who rival analogous folks in my home state of Arizona in their stubborn and independent bent. But overall most Tennesseeans are like people you meet anywhere. I think this is partly due to the democratizing/socializing nature of the public school system, which I regard as generally positive. So it seems to me that the tight adherence of so many Tennesseeans to their religious beliefs is not due to ignorance or to lack of education, but to culture.
However, one problem with this culture is, as I have alluded to previously, that society tends to develop into We versus They. In the case of Tennessee, “We” are the evangelical Christians who maybe let in some Episcopalians and a few others and “They” are everybody else. “We” regard ourselves as the majority and “They” will just have to go along with what we decide. “We” believe the Bible (our version of it) is the inerrant word of God and it should therefore be taught in the schools, whatever “They” think. “We” believe that prayer and praise-giving are the main activities in which man should engage, so those should be performed at every group activity, including public school football games and city council meetings. “We” are doing God’s work in these efforts, so any attempt by “Them” to thwart the work is ipso facto the Devil’s work, or at least persecution and censorship.
This mindset prompts many religious leaders and even US congresspeople to allege that the Christian religion is being persecuted and discriminated against in American life. Say what?? Really?? To most other observers, it seems to be the other way around: it is the Christian religion, and in particular the evangelical Christian religion, that calls the shots and is constantly pushing the envelope of separation of church and state. As my earlier recital of events shows, this is particularly true in Tennessee.
The sense of persecution comes especially from how Hollywood, television, and the arty literary world portray life. In those portrayals, only the ignorant and the self-deceiving believe in God and practice a religion…..unless that religion is spiritual Native American practices or ethereal Buddhism or the Islamic religion as practiced by those poor Muslims in the Gaza strip that are oppressed by Israel. However, the attitudes shown in those portrayals are not those of a large majority of Americans, who mostly accept that the Christian religion is historically “America’s religion” even if they aren’t practicing Christians. So religious people who argue that there is widespread secularization in our national life are not wrong, but they are missing the point, which is that the expression of antireligious views and indifference to religious values do not constitute “persecution of religious people”. When other people do not subscribe to your beliefs it doesn’t mean that those people are trying to curb your own free expression of your beliefs; when other people push back when you try to inject your beliefs into public business it doesn’t mean that those people are trying to curb your own practice of your religion.
What is going on when many religious people cry persecution nowadays seems to be an attempt to play the victim card – a popular approach in numerous areas today, not just in the area of religion. One way to make people sorry for you and to inspire them to want to help and defend you is to appear to be persecuted unjustly, to be denied your rights. We see this quite often in Tennessee: some legislators and some pastors claim that Tennessee “has” to have religion-fostering legislation in order to counter the massive persecution of religion that they perceive is going on. We see this in particular in the case of release time programs in the schools: as the news media have reported, advocates allege that parents have the right to educate their children in religious concepts, especially moral concepts (true), parents have the right to have their children instructed in these concepts in programs they approve of (true), and parents have the right to have their children excused from school, when other children are not, in order to receive this instruction (false).
Why do I say false? Because, as I have laid out above, allowing some children to leave school while others stay behind and the teachers have to find something for them to do is privileging and prioritizing religion and specifically a particular religion, putting this activity above the need for the school administration to be able to conduct classes in an efficient manner and to vet teachers, provide curriculum, and conduct testing. Having a release time curriculum that is determined on the basis of one religion’s or sect’s dogma may induce intolerance toward religions and sects other than the release time course sponsor’s; the message would be that what is being taught is the right way to believe and other ways are wrong. As noted above with the instances of people leaving school systems years ago because they did not want their children to be taught somebody else’s dogma, having no religious instruction in the public schools is actually more tolerant. Giving a course that includes candy, toys, and songs will induce widespread participation among the student body, but it will divide the student body into a group that appears to be favored, to belong, and another group that appears to be disfavored, to be left behind.
Besides the demoralization of those left behind and the increased work for the school teachers, there is the issue of giving credit for release time courses. If the school system cannot control the content or the delivery of this instruction, how can it give credit, which is in effect the school’s seal of approval?
Many citizens, especially teachers, oppose release time programs not because these citizens are hostile to religion but because they believe that schools should be addressing what they were set up to address: instruction in academic subjects. They believe that if parents want religious instruction, it should be done outside of the school setting and, most importantly, outside of the school time. As many teachers have said, they need every minute of instructional time they can get for the academic subjects, including music and art. Pretty much every church gives religious instruction to the young, but only schools give academic instruction. This, it seems to me, is very much a render unto Caesar question. Those who favor release time programs are surely sincere in their belief that bringing all mankind into their religious tent would be beneficial to all mankind, but they need to realize that as a practical matter this cannot be effected by injecting religion into the public school system.
Also, moral instruction is not absent in the public schools. This is contained mainly in history and literature courses and in sports. In my young days, the American history we studied was in part a story of greater and greater religious tolerance emerging over two centuries, but it was always made clear that faith sustained people who, e.g., trekked across the continent in covered wagons. History is a secular subject as delivered, but the factual narrative always includes details about how religion has influenced our national life. Literature is less factual because of course one is most often dealing with fiction, but even so, there is no attempt to excise religious mentions from the books themselves. (The choice of what to read could be debatable, of course.) Finally, team sports teach students to work together over time and take defeats in sportsmanlike (tolerant) fashion; gym class has a certain democratizing effect.
Allowing Bible release time programs is like letting the camel getting his nose in the tent: soon it may be argued that for convenience, the release time instruction should take place inside the school. This might be attractive to some financially hard-pressed school systems if the sponsors offer to kick in something for the electric and heating bill and do all work of preparing and delivering the courses. Thus religious instruction could become a course conducted and controlled by a religious entity and embedded in the school curriculum – clearly a violation of the principle of separation of church and state.
In conclusion, I urge that we recognize what true religious tolerance is; I urge that we consider what the separation of church and state actually implies. In line with those principles, I urge that the people of Tennessee recognize the release time program for what it is: (1) religious intolerance toward those who do not subscribe to doctrine that seems on the way to becoming our state religion and (2) failure to separate church and state by allowing the priorities of religious people to supersede the efficient running of schools.
