Guest-blogging over at TPM Cafe, friend Jeremy Gunn, new director of the ACLU's Program on Freedom of Religion and Belief, makes a familiar appeal to James Madison's Memorial and Remonstrance against Religious Assessments to argue against equal funding today for individuals or families who wish to receive schooling or social services from a religious organization.
Madison warned us of the dangers that come when religions vie among each other for political power and for financial support from governments. In doing so, Madison believed, they lose sight of their religious values and their principal mission.
Unfortunately, more than at any other time in American history, some government officials and some religious groups are now seeking to reach into each others' pockets for support.
The good old American approach--articulated perfectly by Madison two hundred years ago--is in danger of being tarnished. Why would we want to abandon an approach that has worked so well in favor of something that has shown itself to have so many problems? We need to show the same wisdom as Madison and avoid the temptations of trading money and influence. The Madisonian approach is good for religion and good for government.
Many co-MOJers and readers may have previously heard these arguments, as well as the counterarguments defending aid programs. But I'd like to put the counterarguments on record here on the blog, given the continuing importance of the issue. (For lengthier versions of these pro-aid counterarguments, see here and here.)
All of the modern aid opponents' appeals to Madison founder on the fact that the aid he was opposing would have funded solely (preferentially) the religious activities of clergy, at a time when government did not fund comparable or competing nonreligious activities. Today, though, the issue is whether, when government already funds education or social services provided in a secular setting, government or private (e.g. public schools, which must be secular), the government may or must give equal (not preferential) funding to religious counterparts providing the same services. In today's context, all of the analogies drawn to Madison's campaign against aid are wrong or are open to serious question.
On the dangers of "vying among each other for support and power": There may be divisions among different groups over the allocation of aid, although these divisions are much reduced if the aid is channeled through the decisions of numerous individuals and families, as with vouchers. But in any event, the divisions over what private schools get aid are easily matched or surpassed by the divisions that occur when people fight over the content of education in the sole government-preferred provider, the public schools. These include fights over, for example, prayers at school events, 10 Commandments in the classroom, sex education classes, intelligent design vs. evolution, and the host of bitter fights that we hear about with wearying regularity. Give people equal treatment in funding and thus a real choice of where to go to school, and these controversies will be greatly reduced.
On "the temptations of trading money and influence," the danger of "losing sight of religious values and mission": It is true that an organization can be compromised in its mission by taking government money, often with attached regulations. But the organization's mission can also be compromised when the organization has to compete with secular alternatives, public and private, that are favored in government funding. As a result of the extra competition on that unequal playing field, the religious school may have to close -- which surely compromises its mission -- or it may change its program in ways dictated not by its mission but by what will attract more students away from the government-favored public schools. Let the school decide which is a greater threat, being denied equal aid or receiving it, and therefore decide whether to take the aid funding with any attached strings.
Tom
Monday, October 10, 2005
... -- the lines whose presence (or absence) will signal its Christian emphasis (or lack of thereof) and maybe its box-office receipts (or lack thereof) -- according to Time, are:
The White Witch: "That human creature is mine. His life is forfeit to me. His blood is my property."
Aslan (later) : "The Witch knew the Deep Magic. But if she could have looked a little further back... she would have known that when a willing victim who had committed no treachery was killed in a traitor's stead, the Table would crack and Death itself would start working backwards."
Tom
The Minneapolis Star-Tribune editorializes against President Bush's proposal to offer vouchers to evacuee Gulf families to send their children to public or private (including religious) schools: "the president and his majority party should not take advantage of a natural disaster to rush through such a plan." There are the usual arguments against vouchers, but a few twists worth noting. First, the paper acknowledges that
[a]n estimated 60,000 Katrina kids were private school students before the hurricane hit. But that doesn't mean they should now receive taxpayer dollars for educations they had financed themselves or through scholarships before.
Of course. The fact that your family has been chased from its (now destroyed) home by a hurricane and flood doesn't mean you have any moral claim on public support to help you continue major features of your family's life. Well ... not if that major feature is the conscientiously motivated decision that your children should have a religious component to their education.
The editorial continues:
Channeling millions to private programs would take much-needed federal help from many already financially strapped public schools. They are the schools equipped and required to accept all students. Private schools, on the other hand, can pick and choose students based on their ability, background or religion. To their credit, many private institutions (such as DeLaSalle in Minneapolis) have generously opened their doors to Katrina victims without the expectation of federal reimbursement.
The first sentence is boilerplate anti-voucher stuff: but what does it have to do with this supplemental program, added on the basis of each new evacuee student to the aid that public schools around the country already receive? In the typical fiscal arguments over vouchers, when proponents point out that public schools receiving less government money because of vouchers will also have fewer students to serve, the usual answer is "Yes, but the fixed-cost items, like buildings, for a larger population will still be there and will then be partly uncompensated." But that argument has no relevance to a program like the Katrina idea, that doesn't reduce the public schools' money but merely doesn't push every evacuee student (with corresponding funds) toward the public schools. The argument here is a nonsequitur. Unless the Star Trib and proponents of the public-school funding monopoly want themselves to "take advantage of a natural disaster" to get more money for public schools than the enrollment choices of parents would justify.
The second argument -- that public schools have to take all students and private schools "can pick and choose based on ability, background, and religion" -- is likewise a typical anti-voucher argument. As is also typical, though, that argument would have more credibility if it confronted the repeated findings that the largest system of private schools around the nation, Catholic schools, has its biggest advantage over public schools with those students who come from the most challenging backgrounds, low-income inner-city minority families (see, e.g., here and here).
Finally, the Star-Trib argues that
the president and his majority party should not take advantage of a natural disaster to rush through such a plan. Though there are limited voucher experiments underway in a handful of U.S. cities, including Washington, both Congress and many public opinion polls reject the idea of a national voucher program. Any attempt to direct nearly a half-billion federal dollars to private and religious schools deserves full debate and discussion.
That's laughable too, because knee-kerk [CORRECTION: knee-jerk] voucher opponents like the Star-Trib do their level best to prevent any of the "limited voucher experiments" in inner cities that contribute to the factual basis for a "full debate and discussion" about the effects of school choice. In addition to helping some people, a choice program for Katrina evacuees might give us a bit more evidence about such effects. But opponents don't want a full discussion about vouchers: they want to stop them by any means available, including litigation under the federal Constitution (until Zelman) and state constitutions (see here) that would decide the issue in court rather than in public debate.
Tom B.
Friday, October 7, 2005
John Allen of the National Catholic Reporter reports:
A forthcoming Vatican document on homosexuals in seminaries will not demand an absolute ban, a senior Vatican official told NCR Oct. 7, but will insist that seminary officials exercise "prudential judgment" that gay candidates should not be admitted in three cases.
The three cases, and the rest of the story, here.
Tom
Thursday, October 6, 2005
... his July Times op-ed about evolution and design. From Reuters via Amy Welborn:
A senior Roman Catholic cardinal seen as a champion of "intelligent design" against Darwin's explanation of life has described the theory of evolution as "one of the very great works of intellectual history".
Vienna Cardinal Christoph Schoenborn said he could believe both in divine creation and in evolution because one was a question of religion and the other of science, two realms that complimented rather than contradicted each other.
Schoenborn's view, presented in a lecture published by his office on Tuesday, tempered earlier statements that seemed to ally the Church with United States conservatives campaigning against the teaching of evolution in public schools. . . .
In his lecture, Schoenborn said his [earlier] article had led to misunderstandings and sometimes polemics. "Maybe one did not express oneself clearly enough or thoughts were not clear enough," he said. "Such misunderstandings can be cleared up."
Looks like Rick was right that Cardinal Schoenborn wasn't challenging evolution as a mechanism -- even on the point of current controversy, evolution across species -- but the op-ed piece was unclear, as the Cardinal admits.
Tom
The next round of debates over "separation of church and cinema," following on last year's The Passion of the Christ, is sure to be over Disney's The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, due out December 9.
However, here is a church-state issue that's already cropped up related to the movie (from the Palm Beach (FL) Post, by way of The Corner):
Gov. Jeb Bush is encouraging Florida schoolchildren to read The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, a parable of the New Testament gospels, for a contest timed with the release of the movie version by a company owned by a prominent Republican donor.
The $150 million film opens Dec. 9, and three sets of winners will get a private screening in Orlando, two nights at a Disney resort, a dinner at Medieval Times and a copy of the C.S. Lewis children's novel signed by Jeb and Columba Bush. . . .
Bush's "Just Read, Florida" campaign worked with Walden [Media, co-producer of the movie with Disney,] earlier this year, when it sponsored a statewide contest centered on Florida novelist Carl Hiaasen's children's book, Hoot. The winner of that contest got a small appearance in Walden's film version of the book, which will not be released until next year.
According to the state's website, the contest is for students to write up to 1,000 words on the question: "If you had the opportunity to become a character in the story, which character would you be and how would it change the ending of the story?" Middle schoolers are to do a piece of artwork on the book, and high schoolers to make a short video reenacting a scene.
The inevitable Barry Lynn of Americans United for Separation of Church and State is on the issue:
"This whole contest is just totally inappropriate because of the themes of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe," said Barry Lynn, director of Americans United for the Separation of Church and State. "It is simply a retelling of the story of Christ."
OUR OWN NARNIA CONTEST: Meanwhile, Time reports reports that "whether four sentences from the C.S. Lewis book make it onto the big screen" will indicate whether LWW "is a Christian film" and may determine its financial success, if the statistics on The Passion are any precedent. Readers, without going to the Time story, can you guess the four lines? (Or is Narnia a Protestant and not a Catholic thing?) First prize to the winner: If you're ever in Minneapolis, I'll buy you a bag of popcorn at the Mall of America.
Tom
Tuesday, October 4, 2005
Mark Noll, leading American historian and evangelical Christian, gave this lecture, "The Bible in American Public Life, 1860-2005," in April at the Library of Congress. It's a rich account of how the Bible has been variously used in American history by some people at the top (Puritans, presidents) and some people who were or are at the margins (Catholics, Jews, African-Americans). It contains a wonderful reminder of how the Bible has inspired our greatest orations, from Lincoln's to King's, in both their sustance and their stirring cadences. The whole thing is very much worth reading, but here are Noll's concluding prescriptions for using the Bible in public life today:
Premise 1: [T]he Bible is true for all people in all times and in all places.
Premise 2: Therefore, the Bible can never be the possession of only one modern nation or of only one faction within a particular nation.
Premise 3: While everything in the Bible can be construed as political, politics can never exhaust, equal, or contain the message of the Bible.
Implication 1: American society would be immeasurably poorer if it was no longer possible to bring the universal message of Scripture to bear on the particulars of American public life as did Abraham Lincoln and Martin Luther King, Jr., with such memorable effect.
Implication 2: Narrow use of the Bible for partisan political advantage violates what the Bible itself says about the dignity of all human beings under God and also what it says about political power as a stewardship bestowed by God for the maintenance of order, the guarantee of justice, and the care of the powerless.
Implication 3: Given the current American situation, the only hope for using the Bible in public life that conforms to the Bible's own message is to employ it humbly, wisely, and on behalf of all people.
Tom
In the New York Times today (free with registration, until they start charging for columnists), Nick Kristof argues that "the main mode for seeking a more liberal agenda, such as permitting gay marriage or barring public displays of the Ten Commandments, should be the democratic process, not the undemocratic courts."
I know, we've heard this before from Mark Tushnet, Jeff Rosen, and other liberal commentators, and then liberals -- and conservatives -- who want a certain result still run right out and try to get the courts to decree it. But it's still worth noting, and applauding, those who raise the argument.
(Not surprisingly, though, Kristof in the short column doesn't distinguish decisions that properly strike down democratically enacted laws from those that do so improperly; instead he lumps them all together under the unhelpful phrase "judicial activism." For example, in arguing that conservative judges are now engaged in activism (because they strike down more congressional laws than liberal judges do), he doesn't even try to distinguish unwarranted conservative constitutional decisions (the 11th Amendment sovereign-immunity project, the equal protection ruling in Bush v. Gore) from warranted ones (the placing of some judicially declared limits on the interstate commerce power).)
Tom
