Saturday, May 23, 1998

Commission holds hearings on role of religion in schools

By BRIAN LEWIS / Religion News Service

WASHINGTON -- The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights has waded into the roiling waters of religion in the public schools, holding the first of a series of hearings on the volatile topic.

"This commission has a responsibility to ensure that the nation's civil rights laws with respect to schools and religion are being applied and carried out in a non-discriminatory manner," Mary Frances Berry, the commission's chair, said in opening the first of the hearings this week.

The commission heard testimony about curriculum, religious liberty and guidelines that have been issued to explain legal boundaries for discussion of religion in public schools.

Charles Haynes, a senior scholar at the Freedom Forum First Amendment Center in Arlington, Va., told commission members that many teachers teach as if religion was not a factor in world history or literature or they worry it is illegal to mention religion in an educational context.

But Haynes and Oliver Thomas, a special counsel for the National Council of Churches, said many crucial areas of history -- from the Crusades to the civil rights movement -- would be misunderstood if they were taught without their religious contexts.

"We could look at the bloodiest conflicts in the world today from Europe to the Middle East to Asia and we would find that a majority of them have something to do with religion," said Thomas, a lawyer who concentrates on religious and civil liberties. "Similarly, our most divisive domestic issues -- abortion, gay rights, capital punishment -- involve clashes of deeply held religious viewpoints."

Haynes and Thomas -- co-editors of "Finding Common Ground: A First Amendment Guide to Religion and Public Education" -- were among the 15 lawyers, legal experts and scholars who testified before the panel.

While the first hearing featured legal experts, commissioners hope to hear testimony from child development scholars and academics from other disciplines as well at future hearings.

Commissioner Carl Anderson urged the panel to invite more sociologists to the next hearing to address how religion in the schools affects the spiritual lives of children.

Much of the discussion at Wednesday's hearing focused on the political and legal concerns of school teachers. Misunderstandings about the First Amendment cause many of the problems related to religion in the schools, the experts said.

Secretary of Education Richard Riley issued guidelines on religious expression in the public schools in August 1995. These guidelines aimed to help end the confusion that has followed U.S. Supreme Court decisions, said Michelle Doyle, Riley's liaison to the religious community.

For example, she said the National School Boards Association has reported to Riley that inquiries concerning how schools should observe Thanksgiving and Christmas have decreased significantly since the guidelines were issued.

While the guidelines have been helpful, school district administrations generally don't last for more than a few years, and new administrations might not know about the guidelines, Haynes said.

The Freedom Forum has helped many school districts across America "move beyond the battleground of the culture wars to the common ground of the First Amendment," Haynes said.

Previously, the most prominent groups concerned about religion in schools either wanted a "sacred public school" that advocated one faith or a "naked public school" that kept religion out entirely, in part to avoid legal problems.

The Rev. Barry Lynn, executive director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, said every other subject is expected to be taught critically and warned that religion should not be an exception.

"Schools can and must be neutral in their curriculum, especially in this religiously diverse culture," said Lynn. "To do otherwise would be to relegate some students to second-class citizenship state in their own schools."

Mohamed Nimer, director of research of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, said some textbooks and other curricula of public schools contain misinformation about Muslims.

"The treatment of Islam as a foreign religion and Muslims as enemies have contributed to an atmosphere where Muslim students have been tainted and attacked by schoolmates and teachers," he said.

Commissioner Constance Horner asked one panel of experts if teaching the well-known religious music composer Johann Sebastian Bach could pose a problem in some schools.

Meyer Eisenberg, national vice chair of the Anti-Defamation League, said he didn't think it was necessary to exclude religious music.

"But, they don't do it in September, they do it in December," he said. "Why? Because they're making a religious point."