How US public schools have become the new religious battlefield

One of the basic democratic principles taught in every basic US history course is: The Constitution prohibits the government from supporting an official religion or favoring one religion over another.

But the moves by two Republican-governed states — Louisiana's requirement that public schools highlight the biblical Ten Commandments and Oklahoma's order that public schools teach the Bible — take aim at the Constitution's "Establishment Clause," which courts have long understood as the separation of church and state.

Lawmakers in 29 states have proposed at least 91 bills promoting religion in public schools this year, according to the group Americans for Separation of Church and State, an organization that supports the lawsuit against the Louisiana law. Rachel Leizer, the executive director of this group, stated that in 2023 they passed 49 similar laws.

The movement has been fueled by conservative opposition to what they call liberal curricula, including a focus on diversity and LGBT rights, as well as the US Supreme Court's willingness to overturn precedents as it shifts American law to the right.

Louisiana's Republican Attorney General Liz Muril, whose office is defending the Ten Commandments law in court, said Monday that lawmakers, frustrated by the lack of discipline in schools, turned to biblical principles to "start a debate about order and peace."

"That's the basic message that exists in our legal structures about what Moses stands for and what the Ten Commandments stand for," Muril said at a press conference.

When asked how non-religious parents might respond to the law, Louisiana's Republican Gov Jeff Landry said at the press conference that he can tell his children not to look at posters of the Ten Commandments.

Conservatives hope the legal challenges will give the Supreme Court an opportunity to revisit longstanding restrictions on religious expression in public schools.

"They see what the Supreme Court is doing," said the law professor Stephen Green from Willamette University in Oregon, author of "Separation of Church and State: A History."

A week after Louisiana in June became the first state to require schools to display the Ten Commandments since the Supreme Court struck down a similar law in Kentucky in 1980, Oklahoma's superintendent of schools, Rajan Volters, ordered all public schools to teach the Bible.

According to Oklahoma's guidelines, teachers will be given a copy of the Bible, and the focus will be on its historical context in Western society and American history, its literary significance, and its influence on art and music. Several Oklahoma school districts have refused to modify their curricula to accommodate this policy change.

Walters did not respond to a request for comment.

In both states, officials said religious texts are important to understanding the origins of American government. This claim echoes the arguments of some Christian conservatives that the United States was founded as a Christian country, an idea that many historians consider incorrect.

Christian legislators

The National Association of Christian Legislators (NACL), founded in 2020, coordinated legislative efforts across various states. It has produced three dozen "model" bills for introduction in state legislatures, including one on the Ten Commandments and another requiring schools to display "In God We Trust" signs.

Republican representative of Louisiana Dodi Horton, a sponsor of the Ten Commandments bill and a member of the association, did not respond to a request for comment.

The next big battleground could be Texas, under Republican administration, which last year passed the first law in the United States allowing public schools to hire priests as counselors. Similar laws were subsequently introduced in more than a dozen states.

The Texas Board of Education will decide in November whether to approve a new elementary school curriculum that includes Bible studies. Republican Texas lawmakers are likely to renew laws requiring the display of the Ten Commandments in schools and allowing publicly funded vouchers to pay tuition at private religious schools.

In an interview last month at the Republican National Convention, NACL founder, former Arkansas state senator Jason Repert, argued that religious values ​​are disappearing from public life in America, which threatens the future.

"The nation's Christian history and heritage have been destroyed in many places," Repert said.

Polls show that while a solid majority of Americans identify as Christians, that number has been declining for decades.

Conservative Supreme Court

In 1962, the Supreme Court ruled that school-sponsored prayer in public schools violated the Establishment Clause. But the court, which now has a conservative 6-3 majority, has opted for a broad interpretation of religious rights in several landmark cases in recent years.

So in 2022, he ruled that a Washington state public school district violated the constitutional rights of a Christian high school football coach who was suspended for refusing to stop leading prayers with players on the field after games. This ignored a 1971 precedent that defined how to determine whether a law violates the Establishment Clause.

The ruling emboldened conservative Christians, as did the court's decision a few days earlier to abolish abortion rights.

The court also made it easier for religious schools and churches to receive public money; exempted family corporations from the obligation to provide employees with insurance that covers contraception for women for religious reasons; and supported a Christian baker and a Christian website designer who refused to provide services for same-sex marriages.

Repert called the change in the court's stance on religion in public life "a great opportunity."

If the new laws on religion and public schools are challenged in the Supreme Court, the court will have to answer questions such as whether they favor a particular denomination or force people to participate in a religion, the law and religion professor said Majkl Helfand from Pepperdine University in California.

Translation: S. Strugar