Preparing for the clothed public square: teaching about religion, civic education, and the Constitution.

• Author: Wexler, Jay D.

Although law and religion scholars have long argued about whether American culture marginalizes religious belief, (1) many important indicators suggest that religion indeed plays a prominent role in contemporary American life. (2) America is an extremely religious nation. Polls consistently show that about ninety percent of Americans continue to believe in God, (3) and both church attendance and membership remain at high levels. (4) This religiosity, moreover, spills out into the public square. A great many Americans rely on religious reasons when thinking and talking about public issues. (5) Ninety percent of the members of Congress, by one report, consult their religious beliefs when voting on legislation. (6) A majority of Americans believe that religious organizations should publicly express their views on political issues, (7) and an even stronger majority believe it is important for a President to have strong religious beliefs,s It came as little surprise, then, when all of the major presidential candidates invoked their religious faith in public speeches during the 2000 campaign. (9)

Americans also strongly believe that religion should play an important role in solving society's problems. Over seventy percent of Americans believe that religious organizations--"clearly the major forces mobilizing volunteers in America," (10) according to one prominent scholar--help solve these problems,u Believing this himself, President George W. Bush, within days of taking office, issued an executive order establishing the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives to expand opportunities for faith-based organizations. (12) Much public debate in the months following this order focused on the desirability of extending charitable-choice legislation to allow more religious service providers to share in public funds. (13) Religion may or may not have played an equally important role in American public life seventeen years ago when Richard Neuhaus first decried the "Naked Public Squarer," (14) but today at least the public square is substantially clothed with religion. (15)

At the same time, in a series of recent decisions, the United States Supreme Court has significantly limited the judicial role in reviewing government action affecting religion. In Employment Division, Department of Human Resources v. Smith, (16) for example, the Court reversed decades of precedent by holding that laws and regulations incidentally burdening religious belief and practice generally would be reviewed under an extremely lenient standard when challenged on Free Exercise Clause grounds. (17) Moreover, in a series of recent Establishment Clause cases, the Court has overruled prior decisions by holding that public institutions can lend computers and other instructional equipment to religious schools (18) and that public school teachers may provide remedial instruction to students on the premises of religious schools. (19) The Court also has upheld a variety of other laws providing aid to religious organizations, (20) as well as laws specifically accommodating religious belief and practice. (21) By limiting the judicial role in these ways, the Court has provided the State with broad latitude to enact legislation affecting religion and therefore has left the primary responsibility for evaluating the desirability of such laws to elected officials and the citizens who elect them.

Both of these states of affairs--the prominence of religion in American public life and the responsibility placed on citizens to evaluate government action affecting religion--strongly suggest that to participate most effectively in public life, citizens must know something about religion. Despite this need, the public institutions that are primarily responsible for preparing citizens for public life in America--the public schools--have not taught students very much about religion. The typical high school curriculum, as interest groups from both sides of the political spectrum agree, has "all but ignore[d] religion." (22) Most public schools do not offer classes about religion. (23) Teachers have not been trained to teach about religion. (24) And although there is some indication things are beginning to change slightly, (25) textbooks in all core subjects, including history, for the most part have treated religious topics in a perfunctory or superficial manner or have ignored them altogether. (26) As a result, students have often graduated from high school without learning anything more about the breadth of the American religious experience than what they have learned about their own religion in their own home or place of worship. (27)

In recent years, however, this situation has begun to change. Committed and sophisticated reformers, (28) seizing on strong dicta from the Supreme Court supporting the need to teach students about religion, have spearheaded a movement to convince schools to teach about religion. These advocates have made remarkable progress in persuading school administrators, school boards, and communities that public schools can teach objectively (29) about religion without running afoul of the First Amendment and without causing paralyzing controversy among concerned parents and lawmakers. (30) They have developed educational materials, trained teachers, and articulated guidelines to help teachers and administrators implement such programs. (31) They have written books and articles to persuade policymakers that teaching about religion is a necessary part of a strong education. (32) Finally, they have convinced diverse interest groups and associations that schools should teach about religion. For example, a 1995 statement of principles stating that "[s]chools demonstrate fairness when they ensure that the curriculum includes study about religion, where appropriate, as an important part of a complete education," was endorsed by such diverse groups as the Christian Coalition, the National Association of Elementary School Principals, the National Association of Evangelicals, the Anti-Defamation League, and the People for the American Way. (33)

Despite this recent success, several important questions remain regarding teaching about religion in public schools. For one thing, the movement could benefit from greater theoretical focus. As the reformers themselves recognize, the "basic principles" of the movement (that teaching about religion objectively is constitutional and "tremendously important if students are to be educated about our history and culture" (34)) are "open to varying interpretations." (35) One critical task for the future is prioritization. Reformers have called for a plethora of curricular changes to inject more religion into the classroom. These include teaching students, among other things, religion's role in U.S. history; (36) religious interpretations of history; (37) theological history; (38) competing views of the First Amendment; (39) religion's role as a buffer to state authority; (40) religious views on contested policy issues; (41) how religion affects political choices; (42) religious views on economic questions; (43) religious meanings in art and literature; (44) the secularization of literature and art in modern times; (45) religious views on the debate over origins, the Big Bang, nature and ecology, technology, genetic engineering, health and healing, and other scientific issues; (46) the Bible as literature, in literature, as history, in history, and as scripture; (47) and world religions, including a comparative study of sacred scriptures. (48) But with limited resources and a host of other subjects vying for space in the classroom, (49) developers of educational materials, school boards, school administrators, teachers, and parents must find some way to decide which elements of religion stake the strongest claim to inclusion in the public school curriculum.

To know what and how to teach about religion, educational policymakers need a coherent general theory of public education to guide their decision making. As Amy Gutmann explains:

All significant policy prescriptions presuppose a theory, a political theory, of the proper role of government in education. When the theory remains implicit, we cannot adequately judge its principles or the policy prescriptions that flow from them. The attractions of avoiding theory are ... superficial. We do not collectively know good educational policy when we see it. (50) Although there are many educational theories from which to choose, (51) this Article argues that, in light of the need to prepare students for legal and political life in a nation suffused with religion, public schools should teach students about religion as part of "civic education," which has as its purpose "the formation of individuals who can effectively conduct their lives within, and support, their political community." (52) The Article contends that schools should teach about religion so that students can make fully informed decisions about laws and other government actions affecting religious belief and practice and so they can understand the myriad ways that religious beliefs affect the way that many Americans think and talk about issues of public importance, including law, in the clothed public square. It explains why recent decisions of the Supreme Court regarding the Free Exercise and Establishment Clauses have made this need for knowledge about religion more acute. It further considers the argument, based on notions of Rawlsian public reason, that knowledge of religion is unnecessary for participation in political life because public discourse and decision making should rest on arguments accessible to all citizens, and it explains why recent scholarship in law and religion undermines this contention.

A second important issue raised by this teaching about religion movement concerns the limitations placed on schools and teachers by the Constitution. Several Supreme Court Justices have...