Bu that's not quite what I have on my mind this afternoon. My professor in the American Religion class this summer read my devotional history paper and recommended this book "Secular Revolution." The class on the quad was right next to Suzallo so it was so easy just to go over and get it. The book contains academic essays about the transformation of American institutions from dominated by the powerful Protestant institutions to the Progressive ideal of secularization.
I've plowed through this volume. I can't pretend to be able to understand it all. Certainly the essay on "Reforming Education" was most interesting. It's toward the end of the book and it really made more sense when I read the other essays first.
In the beginning of the 19th century the concept of common schools in America didn't really exist. Education began to be organized first by church-oriented committees which then gave way to secular school boards. The universities also became more secular with the advent of the rise of 'scientific method'. Even in the devotional exercise controversy, the role of faculty of the new Sheffield Scientific School at Yale was much respected. As the universities developed, so did the idea that superintendents and teachers needed to receive education from the new scientific field of education.
Meanwhile the curriculum developed along the lines of non-sectarianism and 'common religion', the underlying idea embraced by the Protestant establishment that there were common parts of religion and morality that 'everybody' could agree on as the basis of morals teaching. At the same time, 'sectarian' schools could not be publicly supported.
The Catholics first called the bluff followed by the increasingly powerful secular reformers who revered scientific methods rather than 'supernatural' beliefs. Bit by bit, the role of religion as the teacher of morality was undermined in the public schools. Even religious symbols were banned (much some people's dismay today).
Some political players of our current time would like to re-institute the hegemony of Protestant control of morals teaching. Even though the preeminent Protestant institutions have completely changed from the mainline denominations to the new evangelical forms. So going back to the roots does not actually go back at all.
And 21st century American contains much more diversity; groups that don't feel that they should endorse the 'new Protestantism' one bit.
What does this mean to me?
The essay has an underlying feeling that the Progressive rise demeaned and destroyed 'traditional values'.
But, to me, attending public schools in the 1950s and 1960s, the increasing view that religious (ie Christian) teaching and symbols were and should be excluded, protected me. It kept me safe from oppression that I always could see just over the horizon.
It protected me from harm from powerful forces.
I cannot over-emphasize this.
I believe that this view separates me as a non-Christian child and adult from the mainstream.
I found this quote in a young adult book about school prayer. It really spoke to me. I included it in my introduction to my devotional exercises paper though I deleted it from the version that I submitted to "Connecticut History" It copies over with the footnote so I'll keep it.
My parents, and
thousands of other Jews, came to this country from Eastern Europe seeking to
enjoy the promise of liberty in a land where there was no officially sanctioned
religion, where the possibilities for their children would not be limited by
their ancestral faith.
That promise was
only partially fulfilled when I was growing up.
Let there be no mistake, I am more grateful than words permit me to
express for the partial religious liberty that even the America of my youth
afforded. But partial liberty was not
what we should accept. Let me recall to
you what the public schools I attended were like. They had an overtly Protestant cast. Prayers and Bible passages were recited
daily. Prayer was not a generic form of
expression and Bible passages (and translations) were not, are not, and should
not be, theologically neutral. The
public school religion I encountered had in every case specific theological
roots and forms. The prayers said in the
public school I attended were distinctly Protestant in content. The students in the school I attended were
largely Jewish; the prayers exclusively Christian.
This disparity
was no coincidence, nor was it simple ignorance, or even a lingering cultural
tradition from a prior generation of students, teachers and school
administrators. The use of Protestant
religion was a part of a deliberate effort by the public schools to suggest to
the American children of Jewish immigrants that these Protestant rituals
represented true Americanism, that the rituals and rhythms of our parents'
houses were alien and foreign, worse, to children who desperately wished to be
accepted, even "un-American."
This use of religion as a means of acculturating aliens caused many
painful gaps between parent and child.
The Jewish
experience is hardly unique. A century earlier, Catholic immigrant
children faced the same difficulties.[1]
[1] Tricia Andryszewski, School Prayer; A History
of the Debate, ( Springfield, New Jersey: Enlow
Publishers, 1997), 17-19. Howard
M. Squadron's testimony on behalf of American Jewish Congress at a House
subcommittee hearing held in New York on July 10, 1995, transcript supplied by
American Jewish Congress.
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