George Will is under the misapprehension that separation of Church and State was imposed after the Civil War by James G. Blaine, thus explaining why state constitutions have “Blaine amendments” forbidding the use of public dollars for religious schools. It is true that there was a wave of anti-Catholic bigotry before and after the Civil War, but support for separation of church and state long predates the adoption of Blaine amendments.
What Will doesn’t understand is that Americans have been asked again and again whether they want public funds to pay for religious school tuition, and they always vote no. They don’t want their taxes to pay for yeshivas where children don’t learn English; they don’t want their taxes to subsidize fundamentalist Christian schools that teach racism, homophobia, and creationism; they don’t want to pay for madrassas, or any of the dozens of other religious schools.
Americans want their tax money to pay for public schools, not religious schools.
Edd Doerr, a scholar of religious liberty, wrote in response to George Will’s column in the Washington Post:
George Will (“Children are paying for 19th century bigotry,” May 19) overlooks the fact that Jefferson and Madison installed the principle of religious liberty, church-state separation and no tax aid for religious institutions in Virginia law well before James Blaine was born. Will also fails to note that in 30 state referenda from coast to coast between 1966 and 2018 voters rejected all plans for direct or indirect tax aid to private schools by an average of 2 to 1.
Yes, there was anti-Catholic sentiment in our early history, a legacy of many years of religious wars and persecution in Europe. This was augmented by Pope Pius’s 1854 Syllabus of Errors and his 1857 public complicity in the kidnapping and forced conversion of a six year old Jewish child, Edgardo Mortara. Most Catholics today support church-state separation and public education, thanks in part to the Supreme Court’s 1962 ending of the last vestiges of Protestantism in our public schools.
Edd Doerr
Diane Ravitch's blog 
It’s really amazing how the ENTIRE elite pundit and political class have utterly abandoned public schools.
It’s as public school students and families don’t exist. Every single opinion, policy proposal, study – whatever- is about private school vouchers or charter schools.
Bernie Sanders k-12 education proposal is 90% ABOUT public schools and public school students, yet the entire discussion will be about charter schools. One ed reform headline I read said “charters lose, unions win”. They disappear our schools and our kids. Say “public school” to these people and the only thing they think about is “labor union”.
Public school students do not exist in this world. Sanders talking about dramatically increasing the funding going to PUBLIC SCHOOL STUDENTS is seen exclusively thru the lens of “labor unions” and “charter schools”.
The biggest lie of ed reform is that they are “student centered”. They never, ever talk about public school students. It’s labor unions, it’s charters, it’s private school vouchers. Try to FIND a story or opinion or proposal for public school students in this “movement”- you can’t.
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Chiara is right. Where is the attention to the nearly 90% of our kids in public schools, the ones responsible to over 12,500 elected local school boards? The underfunded, underappreciated public schools that 70% of people polled regularly grade an A or B? My letter was admittedly rather brief, as letters to editors must be. I wish that more friends of public education would use letters to editors, op eds, and social media to fight back against Trump, DeVos and the gang who are trying to sabotage and privatize our public schools.
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A wonderful letter, Mr. Doerr. It hasn’t escaped my notice that Will, one of the champions of the “interventions” in Iraq and Afghanistan now calls them a horrific mistake, but where was his public apology for helping to lead that charge?
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YES, yes and yes.
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Diane This note points to at least two major issues today:
(1) the importance of KNOWING HISTORY (not for cherry-picking history or for pandering and political propaganda). Jefferson read history in its original languages, and drew from that study, not the need to diminish religion, but rather to distinguish religious (so many different ones) from political order (a governing for/of/by all from whatever tradition). See Jefferson’s prescient letters to his Nephew Skipwith); and
(2) the importance of knowing the difference between SECULAR and SECULARISM in a democratic state. The secular State makes and maintains a distinction between State and Religious concerns and where that State affords a place for ALL/and different religious institutions; but most notably does not allow ONE to gain the reigns of official and institutional political power. (Sorry, Betsy.)
Whereas, “secularism” has become a catch-all term for all that is morally and spiritually wrong with a “secular” state.
It’s oh-so interesting how the movement in education over the last 30-or-so years has been, along with privatization, to remove history and social studies from the curriculum. Why do you suppose that is? CBK
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At the Kentucky public meeting hosted by Gov. Bevin, featuring DeVos (some questions arose about how to get an invitation and why denial of admittance without prior RSVP was necessary), only one religion was listed as having a representative in attendance- the Catholic Church.
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Catherine King. When I looked on line I didn’t find your definition for “secularism”. Here is what I found:
“noun. Secularism is a belief system that rejects religion, or the belief that religion should not be part of the affairs of the state or part of public education. The principles of separation of church and state and of keeping religion out of the public school system are an example of secularism.”
Now you may be right Catherine that currently “”Secularism” is “a catch-all term for all that is morally and spiritually wrong with a ‘secular’ state” by those attacking separation of church and state.
However, these attacks on separation between church and state does not stop me from using “secularism” in its current dictionary form because I can define what I mean by “secularism” by referencing the definition I am using. When some folks made use of “bad” as “good” I used it in context but never abandoned the dictionary use of bad. So far I have had no reason to use secularism as a synonym for what is morally and spiritually wrong with a secular state.
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jim2812 Glad to hear it. Your note points to the distinctions between: (1) the massively fuzzy and sometimes inaccurate, but common usage of terms; (2) the more refined dictionary usage; and (3) even-more refined technical-theoretical usage, which also differs between theoretical fields.
You are right if you mean that my reference in this case was to (1)–“fuzzy,” or to what I have heard in many common conversations in both Catholic and Protestant contexts (even recently on the radio and TV), and then again in the secular college classroom, and where no one was carrying a dictionary. <–FYI as my classes went forward, I always made a point to make these distinctions–all three–and expected my students to become aware of the difference, especially for theoretical usage.
But keep your ear open, so to speak–it’s out there; and even in Catholic publications where “secularism” or anything derived from it, is often used to mean “anti-religious.” I guess the alternative is to employ the language police. CBK
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Jim2812 Addendum: When I hear the “anti-religious” usage of “secularism,” I get chills as it brings up the specter of the encroachment of religious power into State political institutions–as in “Betsy Devos’ dreams about religious schools. CBK
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Go into a church in Europe on Sunday, these days, and you will find it mostly empty. Do that in Florida, and you will find that there are 3,000 attendees and three separate stages for sermons. The US is BY FAR the most religious of the industrialized democracies, with the exception of Ireland. Here, stats for weekly church attendance by adults:
US: 47 percent
Poland: 41 percent
Italy: 31 percent
Greece: 27 percent
United Kingdom: 20 percent
Spain: 19 percent
Austria: 18 percent
Lithuania: 14 percent
Germany: 13 percent
Belgium: 11 percent
France: 11 percent
Czech Republic: 11 percent
Hungary: 9 percent
Sweden: 5 percent
Denmark: 3 percent
Norway: 3 percent
Why? Well, thank the separation of church and state. This separation has allowed for the proliferation of sects. One fundamentalist theologian I read recently (yeah, I amuse myself with that stuff sometimes) suggested that there were 32,000 Protestant Christian denominations in the world. I have NO IDEA where he got his figure, but I do know that there are A LOT OF THEM. So, people can find a church they feel comfortable in. Here in Florida, in recent years, we’ve had a flowering of “prosperity gospel” (Jesus wants you to be rich) churches and churches emphasizing the value of great sex to the married lives of Christians.
All that said, y’all bring yore children on down to Bob’s Real Good Florida School and Bait Shop where you can git ’em a reel education using your Florida State Scholarship. Thank you, Florida legislachur and Govner DeSantis for keepin’ the tally in Tallahassee!
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Bob Shepherd
Well sorry, but it is Florida. God’s waiting room and a place I never have the desire to visit again. Wasn’t Florida one of those countries Trump described as a Sh*T Hole. Okay, so it isn’t a country. It would be fine with me if it were. Just do as Bonzo said and vote with your feet.
The following quote I did not know existed till a few years ago. Although I always suspected that it was the logic behind the separation clause.
“The first settlers in this country were emigrants from England, of the English church, just at a point of time when it was flushed with complete victory over the religious of all other persuasions. Possessed, as they became, of the powers of making, administering, and executing the laws, they showed equal intolerance in this country with their Presbyterian brethren, who had emigrated to the northern government. The poor Quakers were flying from persecution in England. They cast their eyes on these new countries as asylums of civil and religious freedom, but they found them free only for the reigning sect.” Thomas Jefferson
Keep your God damned hands off of my tax dollars. Freedom of Religion means Freedom from Religion. And that was clearly debated by Madison (Jefferson) in Virginia and then put into the Constitution.
“Be it, therefore, enacted, that no man shall be compelled to frequent or support any religious worship, place, or ministry whatsoever . . . nor shall otherwise suffer on account of his religious opinions or belief, but that all men shall be free to profess, and by argument to maintain, their opinions in matters of Religion”
Emphasis support: one of the focal issues in the debate over the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom was being assessed to support the Church.
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Robin Williams once joked that America was founded by people so uptight that even the British couldn’t stand them and kicked them out. The good people of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, as you may know, adopted as their official seal a drawing of a native American with a banner next to his mouth saying, “Come over and help us.” So, in 1638, the Puritans there tried and convicted a thief and expelled him from the colony. When the same guy tried to steal from some natives in what is now Connecticut, the natives killed him. This was all the pretext the Puritans needed. They sneaked up on a palisaded Indian village in what is now Mystic, Connecticut, blocked the two entrances to the village, and set it on fire, killing some 700 men, women, children, and babies. And so it began–helping the Indians.
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In his History of the Plimoth Plantation, Bradford tells how when the Pilgrims first disembarked, they did some exploration and found a village. The Indians, seeing the Pilgrims, had evidently hidden themselves in the woods. The Pilgrims discovered the stores of grain that the Indians had put aside for their winter sustenance and stole them all. Bradford promptly, back in his ship, sat down at his diary and thanked the Lord for so providing. It never occurred to him that the natives, without their winter supplies, and with winter upon them (the Pilgrims arrived in New English on November 11th), they would all, or most of them, perish. And, of course, Cotton Mather and other Puritan preachers wrote often of how the New World had been a land populated by savages and ruled by Satan before they came to “help” the Indians by stealing their land, murdering them, and giving them devastating diseases.
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We do have a way of cleansing history.
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Yup. But as was always the case, people would rather believe their myths.
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While I agree with the depiction of the Puritan history, I would point out that the English practice of dumping excess population led a whole lot of other Europeans to American shores. My impression from studying American religion in history some years ago in grad school is that the consensus among historians is that the Maryland Catholics and the effect of The Calvert family on the Maryland colonial charter, which granted toleration to Catholics, was the genesis of American religious freedom.
To me, the interesting thing here is that fundamentalist Christians, who have the most to gain from separation of church and state, are the chief proponents of governmental actions that push the two entities closer together. From this myopic view, we could get a government that justifies limitations on religious thought based on the majority, which is either not connected to organized religion, or irreligious. Many prominent fundamentalists have expressed this fear, but it apparently has no effect on their party, the Republican Party, for voucher proposals, limitations on the practice of Islam, and other governmental intrusions into private matters pour daily from the legislation factories.
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Bob, re: prosperity gospel, it has been popular for 20+ yrs in PA as well. Driving from NJ to upstate NY to visit my sister there’s a mountainous part of PA’s Bible Belt where all the radio can pull in are local Christian stations. All those yrs I’ve been listening to various pious jokers seriously preaching stock tips etc to the dirt-poor folks around there. It’s basically lottery mentality w/a religious warp.
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All the “one and only god” religions are all “basically lottery mentality w/a religious warp.”
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Religion is attractive to people who live in situations where life is a high punishment crap shoot- income inequality, one medical emergency away from bankruptcy, job insecurity, oppression- the U.S. has the most incarcerated population in the world.
The Koch’s created a nation where religion would flourish.
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There will be pie in the sky when you die. This is a quite attractive notion to people who have nothing. But this was an idea advanced by the official Church. Yeshua of Nazareth himself taught that a Son of Man was going to appear and establish a New Jerusalem right here on Earth in which “the last shall be first, and the first will be last.” It’s little wonder that the authorities hanged him and mocked him as “King of the Jews.” It was a quite revolutionary message.
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Thanks for the history lesson.
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The evangelicals’ self-congratulatory status of “blessed” was a predictable by-product of a self-centric religion where God intercedes for the favored. Colonialism fits perfectly with evangelical selfishness and self-aggrandizement- Christ’s teachings ignored and his name used vainly. The same type of hollow patriotism finds purchase with the Koch’s religious right. (Paul Weyrich)
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First – “wow” – 47% With that attendance you’d think people would be a lot nicer to each other and tolerant of differences and, well, outraged by the madness spewed by the president – – yet hypocrisy is probably at an all time high, too. Far too many have sold their souls to the devil for a seat on the Supreme Court.
Hypocrisy.
The “taxes for religious schools” advocates probably preach tolerance and love thy neighbor – – as long as your neighbor agrees with your political and social policies, was born on your side of the fence – oh, and is a white male stuck in the ’50s.
How do all those church goers feel about trump pardoning murderers of civilians?
How about 10,000+ lies?
(by the way – what is his 10 Commandment scorecard?)
I digress –
Second – “church and state” – – – why?
It ain’t broke, don’t fix it.
Colonies were founded by many seeking religious freedom from the king (a.k.a. state)
Of course – it would be worth the price of admission to watch the saga play out when the Florida legislature debates whether to allocate tax dollars to Muslim academies
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Of course – it would be worth the price of admission to watch the saga play out when the Florida legislature debates whether to allocate tax dollars to Muslim academies.
Ha, ha.Yes, that is going to present a problem for them. LMAO!
BTW, I read a report today about a survey just conducted by CivicScience. They asked Americans whether “Arabic numerals” should be taught in school. Only 26 percent said “Yes.” Prejudice and ignorance. A toxic cocktail.
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Bob: you just saved me a lot of typing. I was going to point all that out but after a way more verbose fashion. Now I can go play church hymns on my guitar and contemplate the idea that some of my freely church people think I am sinful for being accepting of Islam. (Although just as wary of its own wacky believers.)
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Florida can’t deny tax dollars to madrassas.
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wait! what? lives up to his name in raising that issue. The Florida legislature is going to find itself in a pretty pickle. LOL.
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cx: his or her name
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. . . as long as your neighbor agrees with your political and social policies, was born on your side of the fence – oh, and is a white male stuck in the ’50s.”
Horse manure that last thought.
There all types (black, brown, white, young and old, etc. . .) who “think” that way. It is not the exclusive preview of white males. Your identity politics thinking serves to do exactly what you rail against.
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For some, religion is an opiate.
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The US has become two nations. These nations are as different as Papua New Guinea is from Belgium. Consider the abortion debate. A Gallup Poll, just concluded, shows the country at 48 percent pro-life, 48 percent pro choice. On this and on many other issues, the country is split right down the middle, and there seems to be no middle ground acceptable to most on both sides. We are a house divided against itself. I look at a Trump rally and have a difficult time accepting that the attendees are of the same species as those whom I call friends and allies. They seem to me frightful, cretinous, subhuman.
It’s no wonder to me that Vladimir Putin put so much time and money into getting Donald Trump elected, has been using proxies to funnel money and other support to the National Rifle Association, and bought targeted ads on American social media to promote divisive issues, mostly from an extreme right-wing perspective but also from the extreme left. Very, very clever, this dividing us against ourselves. He is Ares/Mars, throwing the apple of discord into the opposing camp. He must be very, very pleased with the results of his investment in IQ45, aka Agent Orange. I can just here him talking to his pals: “I know. Remember this guy Donald Trump whom we’ve been cultivating for so long? The idiot? Let’s give them HIM as president. That will really mess them up.”
It would be simple if this division in the country were entirely regional–if the fundamentalists and gay bashers and sexists and immigration hawks and racists and gun toters and other moronic Trumpeteers were all confined to Arkansas and Florida and other backwaters. The idiots could secede, and we could say, “Good riddance and good luck, because you are going to need it.” But this is not the case. Every major state or federal election here in Florida is now won by an incredibly thin margin. The state is split 50-50.
This gives me hope that as the older Repugnicans die off, and as the racial makeup of the state shifts, things will change dramatically. But it sure is dark before this dawn.
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I used the term “subhuman” above. I know, I shocked myself, using such language. But Donald Trump just came to Florida and held a rally, and here’s what happened at it: he said, about the Southern border, “What are we going to do about these people?” and someone from the crowd yelled, “Shoot them!” And Trump laughed about this–clearly thought this was very, very funny, and the audience exploded with laughter. At the suggestion that poor refugees, fleeing violence and hunger, should be shot by our government. What sort of people are these, who can think such things?
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And somehow it never occurs to the geniuses in the Republican Party to wonder why Putin was so interested in making Trump our President.
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The full quote is so rich, it’s worth mentioning –
“Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people.”
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Thank you, VJ, for that. People miss that other part, which gets wisely at the reasons for its flourishing. Kurt Vonnegut, who is in heaven now, often made this point about Marx, that people only got half of that thought.
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Here was my response in comment thread to Will column:
The duplicity of Will is endless. I know perfectly well from reading him for yrs, he’s a libertarian—if he has any interest at all in state-funded ed it would be along Friedmanesque lines, i.e., 100% vouchers for unmonitored private schools. So he uses the antique anti-Catholic motivation for Blaine amendments to recommend striking them down, piggybacking his privatization goal temporarily onto tax-funded religious indoctrination which “god” knows he doesn’t believe in. (Since when does “religious freedom” mean I pay for your kids’ religious education?) Ignoring that Blaine amendments stand in, in some states, for more explicit wording in others guaranteeing equal access to a “common sysstem of schools.” Taxpayers in Blaine states rely on that amendment for separation of church/ state re: school funding: wanna change it? Tackle the issue head-on & see if taxpayers really want to support religious schools. Don’t sneak it in w/mealy-mouthed drivel about petitioners needing voucherized religious schools for their ‘disabled’ or ‘adopted Chinese’ kids. If Montana can’t meet IDEA law & provide federally-guaranteed SpEd services, sue the district & get a free ride to a special private school—no voucher required.
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A nice piece of unmasking here, bethree!
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I agree completely that his duplicity is endless.
He quite purposefully misrepresents facts on a regular basis.
But he manages to fool a lot of people and has been doing so for a very long time.
It’s actually pathetic that the Washington Post has carried his column for so long. It tells you a lot about the newspapers editors.
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“Americans want their tax money to pay for public schools, not religious schools.” Amen to this comment!
The Measles outbreak, improper use of funds and resources, lack of proper curriculum, lack of language and basic skills in math, reading and writing are just some of the issues in religious school system in this country…
Let’s support our public teachers and local school systems as we all face a new and challenging epoch! The future looks daunting for children living today with the future of climate and social upheavals looming ahead. Education is their best chance for survival!
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yes yes yes
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Does anyone still take George Will seriously?
The fellow has a long history of spewing utter nonsense on climate change, National Arctic Wildlife Refuge and other scientific issues.
Most columnists play fast and loose with the facts, but he may be one of the worst offenders.
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George Will and Jeanne Pirro should get a show together.
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Will would consider that consorting with the useful rabble.
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Will’s opinion of himself doesn’t match reality.
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George is frequently lost in space on another planet….!
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Do the Jesuit universities know or care that most Catholics support public schools?
Is the concept of a representative democracy with its majority rule-minority rights easy to dismiss if money for a religion’s private schools is on the table?
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Diane This just in from WAPO, article WITH AUDIO from a closed-door meeting about “packing” the courts over the last two decades from the so-called conservative right. (ALEC is only one of the cancers that are spreading):
https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2019/investigations/leonard-leo-federalists-society-courts/?utm_term=.733f59fe4afc&wpisrc=al_special_report__alert-politics–alert-national&wpmk=1
CBK See SNIPS/All quotes below:
“Leonard Leo helped conservative nonprofits raise $250 million from mostly undisclosed donors in recent years to promote conservative judges and causes/By Robert O’Harrow Jr./Shawn Boburg May 21, 2019
“Leonard Leo stepped onto the stage in a darkened Florida ballroom, looked out at a gathering of some of the nation’s most powerful conservative activists and told them they were on the cusp of fulfilling a long-sought dream.
“For two decades, Leo has been on a mission to turn back the clock to a time before the U.S. Supreme Court routinely expanded the government’s authority and endorsed new rights such as abortion and same-sex marriage. Now, as President Trump’s unofficial judicial adviser, he told the audience at the closed-door event in February that they had to mobilize in “very unprecedented ways” to help finish the job.
“We’re going to have to understand that judicial confirmations these days are more like political campaigns,” Leo told the members of the Council for National Policy, according to a recording of the speech obtained by The Washington Post. “We’re going to have to be smart as a movement.”
“Leo’s remarks: ‘We stand at the threshold’
“The Washington Post obtained audio of Leonard Leo speaking to members of the Council for National Policy. Listen (2:03) ‘No one in this room has probably experienced the kind of transformation that I think we are beginning to see,’ Leo said.
“At a time when Trump and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell are rapidly reshaping federal courts by installing conservative judges and Supreme Court justices, few people outside government have more influence over judicial appointments now than Leo.
“He is widely known as a confidant to Trump and as executive vice president of the Federalist Society, an influential nonprofit organization for conservative and libertarian lawyers that has close ties to Supreme Court justices. But behind the scenes, Leo is the maestro of a network of interlocking nonprofits working on media campaigns and other initiatives to sway lawmakers by generating public support for conservative judges.
“The story of Leo’s rise offers an inside look into the modern machinery of political persuasion. It shows how undisclosed interests outside of government are harnessing the nation’s nonprofit system to influence judicial appointments that will shape the nation for decades.
“Documentary: Pathways to power
“Conservatives are winning the battle for America’s courts, a triumph decades in the making. This is the story of the ideologues, activists and undisclosed donors who made it happen. At the center of the movement is Leonard Leo, executive vice president of the Federalist Society, who has helped raise hundreds of millions of dollars for nonprofit groups that work behind the scenes to promote conservative judges and causes. Now a private judicial adviser to President Trump, Leo has extraordinary influence over the third branch of government.
“Pathways to power: The conservative movement transforming America’s courts/ 28:51/
(Dalton Bennett, Jorge Ribas and Jesse Mesner-Hage)
“Even as Leo counseled Trump on judicial picks, he and his allies were raising money for nonprofits that under IRS rules do not have to disclose their donors. Between 2014 and 2017 alone, they collected more than $250 million in such donations, sometimes known as ‘dark money,’ according to a Post analysis of the most recent tax filings available. The money was used in part to support conservative policies and judges, through advertising and through funding for groups whose executives appeared as television pundits.
“The groups in Leo’s network often work in concert and are linked to Leo and one another by finances, shared board members, phone numbers, addresses, back-office support and other operational details, according to tax filings, incorporation records, other documents and interviews.
“Nine of the groups hired the same conservative media relations firm, Creative Response Concepts, collectively paying it more than $10 million in contracting fees in 2016 and 2017. During that time, the firm coordinated a months-long media campaign in support of Trump’s Supreme Court nominee Neil M. Gorsuch, including publishing opinion essays, contributing 5,000 quotes to news stories, scheduling pundit appearances on television and posting online videos that were viewed 50 million times, according to a report on the firm’s website. . . . ” SEE MORE of the ARTICLE AT ABOVE LINK
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CBK,
Thanks for posting this article.
I wonder how many women will die of botched abortions because of these zealots.
The courts won’t stop abortions. The abortions will take place at home, with women using coat hangers or other sharp objects; or they will go to back-alley abortionists. In either case, the number of abortions won’t change, but the risk to women’s lives will multiply.
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Hello Diane Tonight, I watched a Frontline program (PBS) that gives some eye-opening background to the larger organizational efforts of the Republicans since early in Mitch McConnell’s career in the Senate. It focused on (1) the Bork hearings where McConnell was a freshman senator and Ted Kennedy was so vehement about Bork’s nomination (they use the term “vengeance” to refer to McConnell’s efforts since then); and on (2) the rise of the Federalist Society in Washington D. C. which (Frontline implies) was a kind of “seed” group for what we are seeing now as massively organized, well-funded, many-group hyper-Republican movement, particularly in their efforts to change the courts (aka: pack them with far-right judges).
The program wasn’t about education as such, but my guess is public education is one of the intended victims of this movement (under the innocuous banner of “public-private partnerships” and other foot-in- the-door methods). The PBS program should run again (and may be online), but it really did give some excellent background for what’s going on presently across-the-board in this country. (I cringe whenever I even see McConnell, almost as much as I do with Trump, but was glad to read here that Betsy was on the hot-seat today.) CBK
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