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AUSV Focus: Public Schools and Religion
As part of the Religious Right’s attempt to unify church and state, public schools have become their battleground. We believe that it is by upholding the wall of separation between church and state that we can defend the rights of all public school students to believe as they choose and to practice the beliefs they have chosen
We Can Help
Our chapter can provide information about church state related facts to schools, parents, and students. We would like to encourage you to use our chapter as a resource in the event you have any questions concerning the role of religion in public schools. Email your questions and concerns to us at President@ausv.org.
Resources on Schools and Religion
Dover School District Decision
Your Taxes Support Religious Schools
Is America a 'Christian' Nation?
Understanding Evolution for Teachers
National Center for Science Education
What's wrong with teachers participating in school bible clubs?
By Armineh Noravian, AUSV President
In the Wall Street Journal article “Saving Souls at School” (May 20-21, 2006), Daniel Golden reports on an elementary school where teachers lead Bible clubs in their own classrooms after school. The number of after-school Good News clubs “has quintupled since the Supreme Court held in 2001 that it was legal for the Christian groups to meet in elementary schools.[1]”
To maintain separation of church and state, public school teachers may not promote religion during school hours. However, some teachers are doing exactly this after their school day ends. The practice of teachers participating in the after hours Good News club appears to be happening all over the country.
The article describes two court decisions that allowed this to happen. The first was the 2001 U.S. Supreme Court ruling where the court upheld the right of religious groups to spread their message to children in elementary schools after hours, with the knowledge that people giving the Bible lessons were not schoolteachers.
The second was the 2004 ruling by the Eighth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in St. Louis, where a third-grade teacher who had sued the board for being barred from leading a Good News club at her school, won. The court ruled “the district was unnecessarily restricting the ability of its employees to engage in private religious speech on their own time.[2]” Although this ruling only applies to the Eighth Circuit, it has had a nationwide influence.
In the article, Durham’s superintendent of schools, Ann Denlinger commented that this was blurring the divide between church and state. She said “it’s unrealistic to think that elementary-age children can distinguish when their teacher during the school day all of a sudden becomes a private citizen after the school day.[3]” Denlinger continues to say “I’m fully aware this is the law now, but it doesn’t reflect a whole lot of common sense to me or knowledge of children. De facto, you’re having your school employees promoting one type of religion or another.[4]” She is exactly right. These school teachers are indeed using their positions as teachers to indoctrinate school children in a particular brand of Christianity.
Similarly, the Moab school board president, Kaaron Jorgen, in Utah was concerned that the arrangement breached the separation of church and state, and she said, “Ultimately we had to settle. We’re a very small district. We don’t have the funds to go all the way to the Supreme Court,[5]” when discussing the case teachers brought against her school board when they were denied permission to lead a Good News club after school.
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