ThePinch By Rev.Tim Pauls
n the one side, there are those who say that church and state should be totally separate, that religion has no place in public life.
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If you want to give it a name, call it secularism. Among other things, secularism teaches that there should be no prayer in public schools, no nativity scenes at city hall or public displays of the Ten Commandments in parks.Taken to the extreme, secularism also seeks to remove “under God” from the Pledge of Allegiance. Secularism has made a lot of progress over the past sixty-five years (It’s hard to believe that many public schools used to begin the day with students reciting the Lord’s Prayer!), usually by filing lawsuits. It didn’t used to be this way. President Thomas Jefferson signed legislation that sent money to Jesuit priests in part for the purpose of spreading the Gospel among American Indians. No, when the United States was a young country, government could interact with religion as long as
the government did not show favoritism.That’s what the First Amendment to the United States Constitution says. Nevertheless, secularism has changed a lot of things and continues to push hard. On the other side, there are those who argue that nearly all religions should be in public life, especially schools. Call it multiculturalism.The argument goes like this: it’s important to study culture, and religion is just a part of culture.You can’t understand India unless you study Hinduism.You can’t understand the Middle East unless you study Islam.You can’t understand Israel without studying Judaism.Therefore, students should study religion in public school, and they do study religions like Hinduism, Islam, and Judaism.There’s one problrm though. Students may not study Christianity. Why? Because while the other
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