There are two kinds of religious liberty: basic and full. Basic religious liberty is granted by the First Amendment, which establishes the principle that each person has the legal right to choose his or her own beliefs. Full religious liberty requires that the individual also have access to information required to make an informed decision.
To have full liberty with respect to any topic requires that one have unfettered access to information on that topic. If someone wishes to make an informed decision about religion, for example, he or she needs to scrupulously investigate the topic. Those who aspire to full religious liberty insist that no one has a right to restrict another person’s access to information pertinent to evaluating religious doctrines or practices.
Government’s job is to facilitate public education, especially on behalf of youngsters. That’s why we have public schools and compulsory attendance laws. If we aspire to full religious liberty, the topic of religion should not be excluded from the range of subjects that students are taught in school. In the case Meyers v. Nebraska, Supreme Court Justice James Clark McReynolds affirmed that the Fourteenth Amendment assures students the right “to acquire useful knowledge.” Knowledge pertinent to forming sound beliefs about the existence of God and the purpose of life certainly qualify as useful knowledge.
The last thing we need, however, is to get government enmeshed in sectarian disputes. That’s precisely the kind of unwarranted meddling in spiritual affairs that our founders so wisely crafted the First Amendment to prevent. Government has no business encouraging anyone to embrace or disavow any religion. The First Amendment bars the State from placing its thumb on the scale. The choice of what religion, if any, to believe, is strictly and wholly within the purview of the individual. It’s a private decision, with which no government, corporation, or institution is authorized to interfere.
Although government is rightly barred from indoctrinating children, government has a moral and perhaps even a constitutional responsibility to provide neutral information about religion. As John Adams said, “Liberty cannot be preserved without general knowledge among the people.” Facts and the ability to analyze facts are essential to appraising factual claims on all topics, including religion.
Information about religion is readily available, given that nearly everyone has access to the Internet. Yet, it remains the case that most people acquire their limited knowledge concerning religion primarily during childhood, from mom and dad. Truth be told, many youngsters are taught that exploring information about contrary religious perspectives is unnecessary because those other perspectives are wrong, Satanic, silly, or dangerous. Worse yet, many youngsters are taught not to think. They’re taught that the devil is crafty and can easily outwit a mere mortal. Youngsters thus learn to distrust their own ability to reason on the topic of religion. This is the antithesis of full religious liberty.
In a social environment where indoctrination is common, it’s hardly surprising that the wealth of information available on the Web is not widely dispersed within our society. Merely publishing information on the Web is insufficient. That’s why we don’t just dismissively tell middle school children to obtain their educations by browsing the Web. We instead provide supervised instruction. The ability to appraise religious teachings, like the ability to comprehend other topics, requires supervised instruction by trained educators using peer-reviewed resources.
American society has long accepted that parents have a right, even a responsibility, to share their knowledge and opinions on a variety of topics with their children. This deference to parents gets controversial when parents teach their children to believe things that are perceived to be contrary to science, social convention, or public health. We currently allow government to intervene if parents are, say, teaching their children that it’s permissible for adults to have sex with prepubescent children. We would also allow government to intervene if parents teach their children to eat only cotton candy or if parents prohibit their children from receiving an education.
The case of education is most pertinent to the issue at hand. What one set of parents may believe is a wholesome education in religion, another set of parents might label as mind-numbing indoctrination. Any attempt by government to pick sides in this dispute by, say, pointing out specific cases of indoctrination, would almost certainly result in violations of the First Amendment’s separation of church and state. At the risk of belaboring this point, government may not target any religious perspective for criticism or praise.
That said, the First Amendment does not prevent us from taking action to overcome the mind-closing effects of religious indoctrination and a milieu of anti-intellectualism. We, as a society, can remedy intellectual deprivation by providing schoolchildren with a well-rounded education that incorporates peer-reviewed text books on topics such as comparative religion and logic.
Legitimate constitutional concerns arise only when government action or inaction works in opposition to the maintenance of the right of citizens to decide religious issues for themselves. First Amendment jurisprudence has largely focused on intrusive government action but has neglected to rectify duplicitous government inaction. If government does not permit or facilitate young people in becoming informed about alternative worldviews, then government is complicit in the indoctrination – that is, government is through its inaction stifling the right of individuals to freely and with informed assent affiliate themselves with whatever worldview might appeal to them.
Under no circumstance may government place its thumb on the scale, advocating for or against any religious or atheistic perspective. But neither may government sit idly by while children are systematically deprived of religious literacy and training in logic. The failure of government to educate youths on these topics is as unacceptable as would be the failure to educate youths about history, chemistry, proper nutrition, or mathematics. Special exemption of topics such as religion from the curricula is a form of religious discrimination and a denial of equal rights to children. It places the interests of powerful institutions such as churches above the Constitutional rights of citizens.
The perspective for which I am advocating is hardly radical. Teaching the tenets of the world’s various religions is common practice in comparative religion courses. Students are not taught that some tenets are bad and others are good. They are simply taught what the religious texts and traditions proclaim to be their tenets. This is a neutral presentation. It must be neutral or else it would run afoul of the First Amendment.
Earlier I mentioned that what some parents deem a wholesome education, other parents might deem indoctrination. The fact that parents disagree doesn’t mean that the difference between education and indoctrination is merely one of subjective opinion. We can draw a clear and unambiguous distinction.
To illustrate the distinction between instructing and indoctrinating, consider what happens in a typical geology course. Students are informed about evidence that Earth is 4.6 billion years old. Students are not forced to accept this evidence as veridical. Students are merely provided with this evidence. If students were forced to assent to the age of Earth being 4.6 billion years old, that would be an act of indoctrination and would therefore run afoul of the First Amendment. It would infringe on students’ right to believe in young-Earth creationism.
Teaching Earth science might evoke the ire of young-Earth-creationists who fear it may increase non-theism among students. Likewise, sending children on field trips to the natural history museum might foster non-theism. So might teaching children about biology (especially evolutionary theory) or cosmology. Innumerable courses of instruction that consist of purely secular and nondiscriminatory content may incidentally foster non-theism. That fact alone has no relevance to the First Amendment.
Youngsters benefit from information being made accessible to them and by endowing them with the ability to think logically. If, as a byproduct of this instruction, these youngsters revise their perspective on religious questions, that is incidental. The objective of a good education is not to induce students to revise their opinions. The objective is not to produce Catholics or Buddhists or atheists. Such an objective would be nothing more than a particular species of indoctrination.
The converse is also true. Any time our schools withhold a rich and expansive education out of fear that it might induce students to revise their perspectives on religion, that act of withholding information is tantamount to indoctrination. Schools infringe upon the religious liberty of their students by making accommodations, sacrificing the depth of scrutiny afforded to a religion-related topic, to avoid upsetting either the students or their parents.
Although young-Earth-creationist parents may have a well-founded fear that a geology course will prompt their children to question their religion, to use that as an excuse for exempting children from such an education is to deny those children full religious liberty. This, I hold, violates the spirit of the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment.
There may also be 14th Amendment protections that apply to the question of how much religious education is required to sustain this broader conception of religious liberty.
Suppose there were two groups of people: Group 1 and Group 2. For brevity, I’ll just call them G1 and G2. Suppose that G1 was provided with a broader education than G2. Would that be equitable? Would it potentially violate the “equal protection” clause of the 14th Amendment?
Even if G1 and G2 have identical schools, with identical curricula, that alone might not resolve the equity concerns. Suppose students in G1 have access to information from some other non-school source, whereas G2 does not have access to that source. An analogy would be that some students have access to home computers, whereas others do not. If this (computer or comparative religion) information is deemed educationally important, then the school system’s failure to rectify the defect on behalf of G2 students would represent an inequity.
Modern jurisprudence generally accepts that if G1 and G2 are unequally advantaged on the basis, not of information, but of, say, some protected class such as sex or race, government has an obligation to rectify the inequity. The inequity need not be caused by government action to require government remedy.
Likewise, if G2 were afflicted with economic poverty, government would be statutorily obligated to step in to resolve G2’s poverty. Again, the cause of that poverty is not relevant to the determination that government must provide some mitigation. If G2 is afflicted with general informational poverty—perhaps a lack of decent geography textbooks or too few teachers—government is obliged to step in to resolve G2’s educational poverty.
Why then, when it comes to religious literacy, do we not have any standards for government intervention? The answer seems quite clear, as well as tragic. Religious illiteracy exists precisely because it serves the interests of religious parties that actively strive to suppress education and to deprive youngsters of full religious liberty.
A course of study should be required if it is important for the future well-being of the student. It’s the student’s interests that matters, not the interests of the student’s parents or the government or any religious or anti-religious movement. All that matters is the future well-being of the student.
I believe that a case can be made for mandatory courses in these areas: reading, writing, math, statistics, biology, natural history, Earth science, cosmology, chemistry, health/nutrition/fitness, micro/macro/home economics, civics, logic, philosophy, oratory, music, fine art, American/world history, comparative religion, sociology, literature, home safety and first aid. There may be other courses that should be mandatory as well. I can imagine scenarios in which not just comparative religion courses, but any of these courses, might convey peer-reviewed information that conflicts with some religious or non-religious perspective. That fact provides no excuse for omitting that coursework from the curricula. The tension between peer-reviewed coursework and extraneous philosophical perspectives is simply irrelevant when we put the interests of the student foremost.
It might be objected that teaching courses as electives is constitutionally permissible, but that making the courses mandatory infringes on students’ religious freedom. This argument is applied very selectively. It’s rarely if ever raised to exclude students from math courses. Only topics, like human evolution, in which peer-reviewed information conflicts with religious dogma, are alleged to be infringements on religious freedom. Is there anyone who does not see the irony—the sheer hypocrisy—of this false appeal to religious freedom? The teaching of these courses is opposed precisely because the information they convey facilitates informed assent or dissent from religious doctrines. In other words, the objection arises from the fear of full religious liberty, the fear that students who are informed may change their minds. Making these courses electives enables extraneous interests to intervene to keep children ignorant and to hinder students’ access to a well-rounded education.
A full religious education goes beyond merely having students memorize the dictionary definitions of words such as Old Testament, Hadith, fitna, transubstantiation, communion, mitzvah, and so forth. The coursework must also address the sociological and political stances assumed by believers in the various faiths. What are the religions’ attitudes toward apostasy, sexual orientation, collective or racial guilt, separation of church and state, regulation of marriage, and childhood indoctrination? Surveys of adherents can shed light on how believers in the various religions differ within their own affiliations and from other affiliations. What percentage of adherents in each religion believe in demon possession, the efficacy of prayer, or faith healing? Which religions are most accommodating of modern scientific consensus on topics such as cosmology, biological evolution, and mental illness? This kind of information is not prejudicial for or against any religion. These are just unadorned facts. No student should be deprived of this essential information.
The objective of schooling is not to make students religious or atheistic, communists or capitalists, liberals or conservatives. It is to make them educated. It is to empower them to make their own way in life, as opposed to being mindlessly channeled down a path that some other motivated party believes they should follow. As George Washington Carver said, “Education is the key to unlock the golden door to freedom.”
We should not be content with basic religious liberty. We are morally, and I think Constitutionally, obliged to gift our progeny with full religious liberty.