Peter N. Herndon
The Scopes trial held in Dayton, Tennessee, in 1925, focused the nation’s attention on issues relating to God’s place in the science classroom. Though the verdict itself was a victory for the anti-evolutionary forces, Christian fundamentalism as a movement suffered a great loss. John Scopes, the high school biology teacher who defied the law by teaching human evolution, was given a small fine and the legal case went no further. Partly because of the religious fervor present at the Scopes trial, revised 1927 editions of Hunter’s
A Civil Biology
national textbook was careful to describe evolution as a scientific “theory,” and relegated Charles Darwin to the status of a leading biologist, rather than the venerated “father of biology.” The later text referred to Darwinism as one “interpretation of the way in which all life changes.” Not until the 1960s did evolution return to the respected place it had occupied prior to 1925. And the evolution-creation classroom controversy continues to be debated in school systems today.
See also my Yale Institute curriculum
unit on the Scopes Trial.
Following Scopes, the Supreme Court began to make decisions on religion and schools that reflected a changing America. In 1925, the Supreme Court ruled in
Pierce v. Society
of Sisters
that Roman Catholic schools were considered valid and that states could not deny their legitimacy. This decision signaled the constitutional right that Catholics and other religious groups had to establish their own schools at their own expense. It is no coincidence that the next quarter century signaled the fastest growth of Catholic parochial schools than in any time in history. Protestant America relative to its schools suffered a significant blow from which many historians claim it was never to recover.
Two Flag Salute Cases
In Minersville, Pennsylvania in 1935, a brother and sister named William and Lillian Gobitas, whose parents were Jehovah’s Witnesses, were expelled from their public school because they refused to salute the American flag. According to their beliefs, any flag is a graven image and therefore saluting it violated one of the Ten Commandments. Ten-year old Billy expressed his reasoning in a letter to the Minersville school officials this way:
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Dear sirs,
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. . . . I do not salute the flag [not] because I do not love my country but
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[because] I love my country and I love God more and I must abide by His commandments. Your pupil,
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Billy Gobitas (quoted in Fraser, p. 134)
The case,
Minersville School District v. Gobitis
(sic) reached the Supreme Court in 1940, the same year that the Supreme Court decided, in
Cantwell v. Connecticut,
that religious protection under the First Amendment applied to state and local laws. The Gobitas’ lost their case, but important questions were raised about religious freedoms and public schools. Could the Pledge be considered a religious rite? To many patriotic citizens, not saluting the flag was not only unpatriotic it was close to treason, especially in a nation fueled by wartime concerns of loyalty and disloyalty. Supreme Court Justice Harlan Fiske Stone, the lone dissenter in the case, warned of the constitutional dangers in denying religious liberties to citizens, even if they were children. He wrote “the state cannot compel belief or the expression of it where the expression violates religious convictions.”
Just three years later, Lillian Gobitas, Billy’s sister, who had often been harassed by her neighbors in Minersville after the court decision was made, was overjoyed when, on Flag Day, 1943, the Supreme Court overturned
Gobitis.
Writing for the majority in the
West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette
, Justice Robert Jackson wrote these memorable words, “If there is any fixed star in our constitutional constellation, it is that no official, high or petty, can prescribe what will be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion or other matters of opinion or force citizens to confess by word or act of faith therein. . . .” (quoted in Alley,
Without a Prayer
, p. 82)
Justice Jackson continued to define the issue as one of fairness for all religious minorities: “Free public education, if faithful to the ideal of secular instruction and political neutrality, will not be partisan or enemy of any class, creed, party or faction.”
(quoted in Fraser, p. 137) The principles stated in this decision helped to protect religious freedom in schools far into the remainder of the twentieth century.
Compulsory School Prayer and Bible Reading
The controversial
Everson
v.
Board of Education
case, decided in 1946, upheld the right of New Jersey school districts to reimburse parents for money they spent for bus transportation for their children to attend Catholic schools. By a slim margin, the court agreed to indirectly aid parochial schools. For the first time, the Supreme Court had made a clear ruling that the Fourteenth Amendment meant that the First Amendment protection applied to state and local law. The five majority judges said that the aid was going to the families, not to the Catholic schools; there were mixed signals sent in this case which have continued to the present as to which forms of parochial school aid are valid and which are not. In a minority opinion, Justice Jackson, who was understanding of the double tax burden for public and parochial school parents stated that support for bus transportation constituted aid for religion. “Catholic education is the rock on which the whole structure rests, and to render tax aid to its Church school is indistinguishable to me from rendering the same aid to the Church itself.”
The 1960s brought two very important challenges to school prayer. The first of these cases was
Engel v. Vitale.
In New York, the State Board of Regents composed a generic undenominational prayer for the public schools of the state: “Almighty God, we acknowledge our dependence upon Thee, and we beg Thy blessings upon us, our parents, our teachers and our country.” For some supporters the prayer was confirmation of religious foundations in a fast-changing world. For others it was acknowledgment that America, as opposed to Communist Russia, was certain of its heritage and belief system. For others it was a reminder to the state’s diverse population of what the dominant culture’s faith was all about. For some teachers it was simply a way of getting the class to quiet down before beginning the daily class work.
But there were others who were very uncomfortable with the Regents prayer. For many children there was a daily decision to be made. Should they go along with the prayer and compromise their convictions by going along with the prayer, or risk being ostracized or being made fun of by not complying? The Roth brothers, who were Jewish, were told by their father to leave the classroom during the prayer; for this they earned taunts, fights and ridicule from other students. Lawrence Roth joined suit with five other parents, including Steven Engel and sued the President of the school board, William Vitale. The Court was clear in its response in
Engel v. Vitale
: no school prayers written by school officials can be considered constitutional under the establishment clause of the Constitution. Unfortunately, in victory, Lawrence Roth was the target of harassing phone calls, threats, even a cross being burned on his lawn. Later, one of the two brothers, Joseph Roth remembered fellow students threatening him and the F.B.I. putting him under surveillance.
The very next year, a decision on compulsory Bible reading and reciting of the Lord’s Prayer was decided that had even larger ramifications nationwide. The Supreme Court, not surprisingly, in the
Abingdon v. Schempp
case, struck down a Pennsylvania statute requiring the reading of the Bible at the beginning of the school day; allowing non-participating students to leave the room if they wished. The court strongly objected to the compulsory practice, but in its decision upheld students’ rights to study the Bible and religion within a proper context. Justice Tom Clark wrote for a clear majority:
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“It certainly may be said that the Bible is worthy of study for its literary and historic qualities. Nothing we have said here indicates that such study of the Bible or religion, when presented objectively as part of a secular program of education, may not be effected consistently with the First Amendment.”
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(quoted in Fraser, page 149)
In other words, the study of religion and classroom discussions about religion were allowed but any in school required religious
practices
were forbidden.
There was immediate and strong reaction to these decisions around the country. Congressman Frank J. Becker of New York proposed a constitutional prayer amendment. In Alabama, Governor George Wallace’s response to taking prayer out of the schools was, “I don’t care what they say in Washington, we are going to keep right on praying and reading the Bible in the public schools of Alabama.”
Many white middle-class Protestant Americans, especially those in the Midwest and South, saw a powerful change sweeping across the nation that contested the whole idea of a dominant Christian culture. Respect for minority rights was now the law, even in the schoolroom, where prayer had always held a prominent place.
