Religious Rights in School

Written by Kathryn Page Camp

This article is courtesy of ParentLife.

All Children are exposed to unchristian influences at some point, and children who attend public schools may be exposed to them sooner rather than later. But that does not have to be bad. It gives parents many opportunities to teach their children to be in the world but not of it, and it lets public school students learn that lesson while they are still living within the shelter of a Christian home.

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In order to be an effective teacher, you need to know what the law says about religion in public schools. When can your child pray? When can he talk about his faith? Unfortunately, the law is not always clear. Although the U.S. Supreme Court has decided some cases about religion in schools, it has not addressed every situation. Until it does, schools are bound by the law in the Federal Circuit where they are located, and the law can vary from one Circuit to another. You also need discernment to determine which issues are worth fighting about and which are not. But use every situation as a teaching opportunity, even if it is simply a lesson in discernment and love.

Prayer and Bible Reading
As far back as the early 1960s, the Supreme Court held that public schools cannot sponsor Bible reading or prayer in the classroom because that violates the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment. A 1992 case banned official prayers at graduation ceremonies, and a 2000 case struck down a school policy facilitating student-led prayer at football games. In each of these cases, the school played an active role in encouraging prayer or Bible reading.

However, the Supreme Court has never prohibited students from praying or reading the Bible on their own initiative. In fact, if a school prohibits those activities, it may violate another part of the First Amendment — the Free Exercise Clause. Your child should be allowed to pray and read the Bible as long as those activities do not disrupt class or keep him from participating. Your child has a right to bow his head and pray silently before eating lunch but does not have a right to pray aloud while the class is taking a test. Your child has a right to read his Bible during recess but not during a class discussion.

Religious Displays
The Supreme Court has decided a number of cases about public religious displays, but only one of those cases involved a school setting. In the school case, a state statute required public schools to post a copy of the Ten Commandments on the wall of each classroom. The Supreme Court said the statute was unconstitutional because it had a purely religious purpose. The nonschool cases also prohibit public displays with a religious purpose (to promote Christianity). But they allow them if they have a secular purpose (to celebrate diversity) and include symbols from multiple religions. These same principles apply to school displays.

Classroom Activities
In the Ten Commandments case, the Supreme Court ruled that schools can use religious writings and activities for secular purposes. It is OK to study the Psalms as literature and the Crusades as history. It is OK to sing religious songs during a school concert as long as the children sing them for their value as music rather than for their religious content.

It is less clear how much freedom a student has to express a religious opinion in the classroom. The Supreme Court has never addressed the issue. Most of the lower courts say teachers and school administrators cannot censor opinions just because they involve a religious point of view. But a teacher can ban religious material that does not pertain to an assignment.

Assume your child writes an essay about Jesus. If the assignment is to write an essay about her favorite person, the teacher cannot reject the essay. But if the assignment is to write about someone they studied in class, the teacher can refuse to accept it.

Speech
Your child’s right to express his opinions is not limited to religious matters. Under the First Amendment’s Free Speech Clause, your child has the same right to express a “politically incorrect” opinion that arises out of his faith but relates to a secular subject.

A note of caution, however. For certain controversial topics, your child’s right may depend on the Circuit in which the school is located. Hopefully these topics will not come up in your child’s school, but they could. If your child is in a sex education class and the teacher says something that condones homosexuality, a recent decision in the Ninth Circuit (which includes California, Washington, and Oregon, among other states) could keep your child from speaking up and calling it a sin.

Extracurricular Activities
One of the best-established principles is that Christian groups must be treated the same as other community groups. The Supreme Court decided two cases where Christian groups had been denied the use of school premises after hours even though the school gave access to nonreligious groups dealing with the same types of issues. In both cases, it held that a school must give religious groups the same access as it gives nonreligious groups. Schools can grant access to all community groups or deny access to all, but it cannot discriminate.

This principle does not just apply to the use of school premises. It also applies to distributing literature on school grounds, posting notices on school bulletin boards, and making announcements over the school’s intercom system. If the school allows it for Girl Scouts®, it must also allow it for the Good News Club.

Of course, what goes for Christianity goes for other religions, too. And that provides you with another teaching opportunity. If your child comes home with questions about Chanukah or Ramadan, you can talk about those religions and explain how Christianity is different. All of these situations give you an opportunity to show your child how to love those with whom he disagrees. And they give your child the chance to witness to non-Christians through his actions.

Sending your child to a public school can provide a wealth of teaching opportunities. You just have to take advantage of them.
 
Kathryn Page Camp is an attorney and the author of In God We Trust: How the Supreme Court’s First Amendment Decisions Affect Organized Religion from FaithWalk Publishing. Kathryn and her husband live in Northwest Indiana and have two children.