Conservative Christians Join Forces to Get Religion Back Into Nation’s Classrooms

While the nation’s educators are closely watching two key court cases in the South involving public school curriculum and parents’ religious beliefs, a coalition of conservative Christian organizations is pressing to put God, religion and “traditional moral values” back into the nation’s classrooms.

Nearly 400 teachers, administrators, school board members, parents and evangelical leaders met in Anaheim to devise strategy for remaking the public schools in the Judeo-Christian image.

The Christian evangelicals consider public schools a fertile missionary field and are waging war against their perceived enemies: “secular humanism,” “values clarification,” Darwin and evolution, textbook publishers, the American Humanist Society, Planned Parenthood and the National Organization for Women, among others.

Pasadena Connection

The three-day conference last week--the second annual Christian Congress for Excellence in Public Education--was coordinated by Forrest Turpen, executive director of the 1,800-member, Pasadena-based Christian Educators Assn. International.

Even state Supt. of Public Instruction Bill Honig, a keynote speaker, agreed--up to a point--with the congress leaders’ assertion that public-school textbooks have ignored Christian values and life styles and have given little coverage to the significance of religion as a force in shaping the nation’s history.

“Schools have become too value-neutral,” Honig declared, adding that a “pernicious effect” has resulted from omitting moral instruction and religious history from textbooks and public classrooms.

“Neutrality in these issues is basically hostility,” he said. “I do not think you can educate children without moral instruction.”

‘Most Crucial Decision’

Honig said that how to teach ethics and morals in the classroom “is the most crucial decision this country has to face in the next 10 years.” And he promised that textbook publishers will be advised to upgrade coverage of religion in new history books scheduled for use in California public schools three years hence.

Speakers and panelists often referred to a case now pending in Federal District Court in Hawkins County, Tenn., where fundamentalist Christian parents are battling to protect their children from public-school textbooks they say are anti-Christian.

The case, dubbed “Monkey Trial II” by some pundits, pits the public school’s right to introduce a student to a variety of viewpoints--including some directly opposed to the parents’ tightly held religious convictions--against the parents’ right to rear their children in a religious faith untainted by “secular humanism” in the classroom.

The seven fundamentalist families in the Greeneville, Tenn., case have defined secular humanism as doctrine that elevates man and his perspective of life to the exclusion of God and the supernatural--a description generally agreed upon by leaders at the congress in Anaheim.

Drawing the Line

U.S. District Judge Thomas Hull must draw a line between the parents’ right to free exercise of religion and the state’s right to operate schools in an orderly fashion without being compelled to provide separate textbooks to accommodate every parental objection to official materials.

The case has been compared to another Tennessee legal controversy, the 1925 Scopes trial, in which religious fundamentalists and public educators battled over the teaching of evolution.

Meanwhile, in Mobile, Ala., 600 fundamentalists have filed suit in federal court in an effort to remove secular humanism from the state curriculum. The suit alleges that secular humanism is a religion and thus cannot be taught in public schools any more than Christianity.

The case is backed by television preacher Pat Robertson, an undeclared candidate for the Republican presidential nomination in 1988. The trial is scheduled for October.

Paul C. Vitz, a New York University psychology professor and a key witness for the plaintiffs in the Tennessee case, summarized for the Anaheim gathering his recent findings that accuse the textbook publishing industry of systematically excluding traditional and Christian values and life styles from public school texts.

No Mention of Religion

The study, “Religion and Traditional Values in Public School Textbooks,” was released to the U.S. Department of Education. It notes that none of the 40 first- through fourth-grade social studies textbooks Vitz surveyed mentions any religious activity in contemporary American life.

“No text referred to introducing a child to prayer, worship or the active religious life,” said Vitz, who is Roman Catholic.

In one social studies book, a 30-page section on the Pilgrims failed to make any reference to their religion, Vitz said, adding that the text implied that the Pilgrims thanked the Indians rather than God on the first Thanksgiving.

“This is one of the ways we lose track of our history,” Vitz said.

Vitz said his study also found that the role of the black church in support of civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. was “either totally ignored or given incredibly short shrift.”

Vitz’s findings about the lack of balanced and sensitive treatment of religion have been substantiated by two recent surveys by liberal organizations: People for the American Way and the research arm of Americans United for Separation of Church and State.

“While history textbooks talk about the existence of religious diversity in America, they do not show it. Religion is simply not treated as a significant element,” wrote Anthony T. Podesta, president of People for the American Way.

Vitz’s study of social studies books also criticizes an allegedly strong feminist bias in much of the writing and the reversal of traditional male-female roles.

“The notion that marriage is the origin and foundation of the family was never presented,” Vitz said. “In particular, the words ‘marriage,’ ‘wedding,’ ‘husband,’ ‘wife,’ ‘homemaker,’ ‘housewife,’ did not occur once. . . . Not one of the many descriptions or comments on family suggested that being a mother or homemaker was a worthy, dignified and important role for a woman.”

Vitz and another speaker, Richard A. Baer, a professor of natural resources at Cornell University, told the congress that a school voucher plan is necessary to end apparent inequities and discrimination against many religious groups in the education of their children.

The proposal, which was not spelled out in detail by either speaker, would provide parents with federal vouchers averaging about $1,000 a year for sending their children to either public or private schools, according to their choice.

Baer and Vitz said the option would improve the overall quality of education because of “healthy” competition between schools for the funding.

The voucher system is constitutionally permissible, argued Baer, an expert in philosophy and religion.

He said: “In America today there is less choice of basic education than (there is) in any other democracy in the free world. . . . We must insist that the state stop abusing its power in giving Establishment status to humanism, atheism and secularism. . . . There has been a massive censorship by omission in the way we’ve dealt with religion, especially Christianity.”

Honig, in a question-and-answer session after his presentation, said he is against a voucher system because--among other reasons--the Bill of Rights opposes the establishment of religion. Government control over private and parochial schools would creep in under a voucher arrangement, Honig warned, because the state would have to establish guidelines and “oversee certain parts of the curriculum.”

Parental Input Sought

The basic importance of public schools is “too important to write off,” Honig said, adding that “more parental input” to make public schools “less secular” should be tried before resorting to vouchers.

Honig also disagreed with Baer’s contention that it is impossible for public schools to teach about religion in a neutral manner, while avoiding sectarian differences.

The ethics of truth, civic virtue, individual responsibility, tolerance, compassion, brotherhood and the “family of God” are important and legitimate concepts for general orientation in public classrooms, Honig asserted.

But such general moral values, even if they are taught in public schools, are too bland to satisfy the vanguard of the religious right. Most seek to have explicit evangelical and “traditional Protestant” suppositions taught.

“You are the ones saving the children until they can make a decision for Christ,” George Selig, dean of the School of Education at Pat Robertson’s CBN University in Virginia Beach, Va., reminded the conferees in a welcoming speech.

Legal Battles

And before the conference, Turpen, the Christian Educators’ Assn. executive, said legal battles for religious rights in public schools are only part of the answer.

“We’ve got several hundred thousand missionaries--’born-again’ teachers--sitting in those schools, and the church hasn’t even recognized it. . . . There are many ways that we can operate legally and effectively in the classrooms for Jesus Christ,” Turpen said.