An obscure board appointed by Oklahoma Governor Kevin Stitt voted 3-2 to approve funding a virtual charter school operated by the Archdiocese of Oklahoma City abd the Diocese of Tulsa. This violates the state constitution, as well as the First Amendment to the Constitution. Randi Weingarten, who is a lawyer, decried this action. The state will end up spending many more millions in legal fees, as it battles for its decision in the courts. If the decision is upheld, Oklahoma and other states can expect to fund yeshivas, madrassas, fundamentalist schools, even Satanic schools. We don’t need schools that indoctrinate; we need public schools that educate children to think for themselves and to respect others.
AFT’s Weingarten on Oklahoma Religious Charter School Approval
WASHINGTON—American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten issued the following statement after Oklahoma approved a taxpayer-funded religious charter school:
“This decision not only threatens to siphon millions of dollars in public money into private hands, it strikes at the heart of our nation’s very foundations. The framers never intended to require public funding of religious institutions or religious schools.
“The combination of the Constitution’s free exercise clause and the concept of separation of church and state is what ensures religious freedom in the United States. This decision turns that idea on its head.
“It also turns on its head the concept that charter schools were supposed to be public schools run in a different way. And it vitiates the distinction between public and nonpublic religious schools in the eyes of Oklahoma.
“It is telling that a bipartisan coalition was opposed to the approval, and that only an obscure, hand-picked board of the governor’s own choosing was able to force it through.
“This ruling will no doubt end up at the Supreme Court. It is a clear and present danger, not only to ensuring public schools are open and accessible to all, but to religious liberty and freedom in our democracy writ large.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Religious freedom ends when the State forces anyone to support someone else’s religion.
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Well said. Religion is by definition divisive. Sending public money to private entities places students in various ideological camps. Our nation is already divided into various factions. Public education brings diverse students together and promotes mutual understanding, respect and tolerance. Not only is public education an essential in a democracy, it contributes to more harmonious relationships among people from different backgrounds, socioeconomic groups and religious beliefs.
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Yes, the line between religious freedom and repression by religion is a fine one indeed! It’s part of the the “Give ’em an inch…” gospel.
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Actually, the line between voluntary contribution and compulsory taxation is the sort of thing drawn with a blazing sword in the sand.
Taxation is an extraordinary power and it requires an extraordinary justfication. That justification is wholly lacking here.
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I would like to hear the reaction of our “national leaders.” I put that in quotation marks because there are quite a few legislators who seem to have forgotten what their job is.
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I have often said that the solution to the problem of religion in schools is to stop fighting it. We should agree that Christianity can be taught. But the stipulation is that there has to be an agreed-on curriculum and all Christians get a seat at the table in preparing that curriculum. Get the Catholics, the mainline Protestants, all the different evangelical sects, the conservative churches, the liberal churches, the radical churches, hell, the Mormons and anyone else who considers themselves Christian – sit them all down at the table and start hammering out issues such as baptism, communion, birth control, the saints (Mary specifically), etc.
Just be sure to have a very large and very well-equipped hazmat team standing by to clean up the carnage. Then they might understand for themselves why we don’t teach Christianity in public schools.
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Dienne,
As a Jew, I would object to having public schools teach any religion, including my own. I don’t want to impose my religion on anyone, and I don’t want Catholics or Protestants or atheists to impose their views on me.
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The point is, no teaching of religion would ever actually happen because the religionists themselves would never allow it because they would never allow other religionists to teach their version. The massive in-fighting would show the religionists themselves why we don’t teach religion.
As long as we actively prevent teaching religion, the Catholics and the evangelicals can pretend they are great allies in the fight against godless heathens/infidels. But if we godless heathens/infidels step out of the way, the very real and very massive divisions between those factions (and other Christian groups) would become unavoidable.
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Dienne I think Jefferson could have said it better (and did); but if I understand your note, it’s pretty-much the same idea.
The totalitarians of every religion or top-down tyrannical political persuasion are standing on democracy while they shoot themselves in the foot . . . it’s only for us to wonder whether they have ANY understanding of the outcome of their deepest desires.
But it’s not only the atheists who stand in the way . . . not very many religious people that I know are made of the stereotyped ideas that tend to frame “religion” or “Catholic” on this site . . . it’s just those who understand why secularity (not secularism) underlines the hope of sustaining a democracy as a political system, but also any hope of maintaining civility, as in “civilizations” that can transpire peacefully from one generation to another.
But the whole thing about the present here in the USA keeps pointing to a lack of history and a basic civics education. It seems to me that so many don’t know what they have and so don’t know what it means to lose it. And BTW, it’s not all about right-wing “religionists” but also about the un-tempered rich. CBK
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Diane: do you oppose teaching ABOUT religions? I do that in my geography classes. Students are fascinated learning about the beliefs of different religions, and many consider it the best lessons of the year. I don’t expect them to agree with any of the faiths; just to know about them so they can become more engaged citizens.
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TOW,
I support teaching about religion. I was a writer of the CA history-social science curriculum in 1987 and religious studies were integral to teaching world history.
Not teaching kids to believe in any religion but to understand the role of religion in history.
For good and ill
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Threatened Exactly that . . . I wrote a note here about that but got no response to it. I think many, however, do not understand the distinction between teaching from a religious doctrinal point of view and teaching about religion in history or, as you say, in a geography class.
Teaching history without referring to religious movements or giving it a “too-lite” treatment is no different than trying to teach U.S. history without talking about slavery, or women’s suffrage, or the civil rights movement. Doing so is propaganda, . . . by omission. CBK
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Catherine – I think the religionists very much understand the difference between teaching about religion vs. teaching from a doctrinal point of view and it’s the former they object to. Three of the worst words to them are “Some Christians believe….”. To them there is only one Christianity (their version, of course) and anyone who doesn’t believe that is not Christian. So they want their religion taught as fact. They certainly don’t want their religion taught the same way we teach Greek mythology.
I think it’s that fact that can be exploited against them. Okay, fine, go ahead and teach Christianity as fact, but first you have to get all Christians to agree what those facts are. There’s a vast gulf between what, say the Catholics believe vs., say, the Mormons or the Quiverful Movement or even the mainline Protestants, that it’s hard to believe they all fit under the umbrella of Christianity. If they all had to come together to create a “Christianity curriculum” those divisions would be unavoidably exposed and the pretense that there is one version of “Christianity” that could be taught in schools would be shredded.
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dienne77 writes: “Catherine – I think the religionists very much understand the difference between teaching about religion vs. teaching from a doctrinal point of view and it’s the former they object to.”
Well, perhaps you are broad brushing a bit? But you aren’t the only one here who makes their own stereotype their only horizon of thought. I do think you are referring to SOME often very loud people who claim a kind of tribal Christianity and who “want their religion taught as fact.” And I would add that a “world religions” course taught as informational and not as doctrinal would probably be insulting to many in that group, such as it is.
Also, I think “religionist” is a rather shallow term covering a huge range of meaning (including me, who doesn’t fit your stereotype?), not to mention human development, and so it is pretty much meaningless and unhelpful to serious discussion, then you define “them” in your own worst-case-scenario way. What a waste of time and mind. CBK
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Religion is better left to yeshivas, sunday school, mosques, etc., but the public shouldn’t be forced to pay for it.
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Diane writes: “If the decision is upheld, Oklahoma and other states can expect to fund yeshivas, madrassas, fundamentalist schools, even Satanic schools.”
That ought to put the fear of God in them (pun intended). I wonder how they plan (if they plan) to distinguish between religious institutions? Because it’s theirs, maybe? For all of the oligarchs’ money and power, could they have really thought it through?
I have thought for a very long time that the voucher/charter thing was only a workaround/go between to get to public funding of religious education, and ultimately to destroying public education.
I also wonder (and it’s only wondering at this point) if the Catholic Church (to which I belong) has lost so much money with sex-abuse payouts (apparently, it’s huge), and the loss of parishioners’ contributions on account of that same problem, that they are easy marks to get “donations” for doing the bidding of the wealthy . . . who openly hate democracy. Catholic education has been around for a very long time, it costs dollars, and is still an excellent education to get; but (that I know of) it’s only been since the oligarchs came on the scene with their anti-public privatization of everything, that elements of the Church have been at odds with the political ground of democracy in the United States. CBK
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“Money is the root of all evil” no longer sounds quite so trite.
Maybe we need to turn over a few money lenders tables in our religious institutions although greed seems to be a universal sin regardless of philosophical or religious persuasion.
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speduktr In *The Republic,” Plato puts greed as a major failure of democracy . . . written in pre-Christian times.
As an aside, I want to know why Koch, big oil, and the Saudis, aren’t spending some of their wealth on cleaning up and/or recycling the plastics and chemicals that come from oil and that are poisoning or killing EVERYTHING in the universe. Imagine that, while we are at it . . . but to your point, this is evil as embedded in “acts” of omission . . . or maybe they are already involved in such movements and I don’t know about it, . . . said the liberal optimist. CBK
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Sort of like everyone up in arms out here in Utah that the Bible has been pulled from elementary and middle school libraries. They are reaping what they sowed. https://www.sltrib.com/news/politics/2023/06/07/clergy-gop-lawmakers-rail-against/
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I have been concerned for some time about the growing strength of Catholic politicization. I am not anti-Catholic–I once was one–but things have changed since JFK became our first Catholic President, and how he felt he had to take special care to explain the relationship of his beliefs to his politics. Now, though, we have Catholics running the country—the Supreme Court, the White House, and much of the Congress. That’s all okay if they would not try to impose their religion–most obvious in their legislating against “choice,” birth control, etc. I respect Catholic education, but I feel kids are better off, and our nation is better off with a secular education. Here’s a piece I published last year:
RELIGIOUS FREEDOM IS WHO WE ARE! Let’s Don’t Go Back to the Bad Old Days of Enforced Religion…
by Jack Burgess July, 2022
We Americans have always traced our history back to the Pilgrims, who left England to escape religious persecution. Actually, they first moved to Holland, where they had religious freedom, but couldn’t make a living, so they came to America to make a better living and, they hoped, convert the “Indians” to their church. Religious persecution in Europe had many extremes, including, in 1431, burning at the stake 19-year-old Joan of Arc—who’d led French armies to drive the English out of France–for the “crime” of wearing men’s clothes!
The Roman Catholic Church, which dominated most of Europe and parts of Africa, South and Central America, had an Inquisition to root out non-believers, especially Jews and followers of Islam. Thousands were executed. Catholicism came here first with Spanish settlement in Florida and Louisiana.
Then came Protestant New England’s witch trials, persecution, and torture—even to death—of people who didn’t agree with the newly established religion. Rhode Island was settled by Roger Williams fleeing those religious extremes and advocating a “wall” of separation between church and state.
So it was a big deal when America’s founding “liberals,” Madison, Jefferson, and others, in 1790 insisted on a Bill of Rights for US citizens, which included religious freedom—before they would ratify the new Constitution.
The very first words of the very first Amendment says, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.”
But isn’t that what we’ve done when we tell women they must, under penalty of law, carry every pregnancy to term? Even if they’re just a child themselves? Or raped? There’s no medical reason for it. In fact, far more women die in childbirth than by legal abortion—unlike abortions done in various, sometimes horrible, ways when legal care is not allowed.
And religious folks who claim they oppose abortion for a “right to life,” often don’t oppose wars, where millions of innocent people die. Nor do they oppose capital punishment, though it’s clear one’s race, income, or home area are predictors of whether they’ll be killed by the state.
The Judeo-Christian Bible says God commanded that we “be fruitful and multiply,” but that was thousands of years ago. We certainly don’t have a shortage of people in the US or the world—the population of the earth and of the US have doubled in just my lifetime. The Bible also says the first woman was created out of the man’s rib. Do members of our Supreme Court believe that? Are we going to be forced to teach that in school?
I guess the problem is that some folks believe the “soul,” starts at conception, so that would make the tiny resulting zygote a complete human, soul-wise. But millions of Americans don’t believe that idea, and it can’t be tested or proven. So clearly we’re establishing a church when we tell a woman and her doctor they’ll go to jail if they terminate the zygote.
Nothing is more important to our culture, our success as a nation, than our freedom of and from religion. That’s why it became the very first amendment. The founders knew well about the wars, persecutions, etc. and they wanted to avoid all that and build a UNITED states. Letting religious views dominate our laws and our courts is a sure way to dis-unite us. Isn’t it time we went back to respecting our religious differences?
Religious freedom is who we are. Or at least what we aspire to and have to achieve if we want a UNITED States in America.
Jack Burgess is a retired teacher of American & Global Studies, and a practitioner of religious freedom, having attended services with various Catholic, Protestant, Buddhist, Hindu, Universalist, Humanist, & American “Indian” groups.
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Ineligibility of newly installed member could invalidate Oklahoma board vote on Catholic school sponsorship
Monday’s national headline-making vote to give state sanctioning and Oklahoma taxpayer dollars to a Catholic school may have been invalid.
It turns out the state Attorney General’s Office believes that Oklahoma City businessman Brian Bobek is ineligible to serve on the Statewide Virtual Charter School Board until November.
But an email to that effect was not received by the board’s chairman and executive director until after Bobek cast the deciding vote Monday to approve state sponsorship for St. Isidore of Seville Catholic Virtual School.
He is also concerned that a lengthy, written statement that Bobek read during Monday’s meeting, which included numerous legal citations, could have influenced the votes of other board members, including Scott Strawn, who was recently appointed to the board by Gov. Kevin Stitt.
https://tulsaworld.com/news/state-regional/education/ineligibility-of-newly-installed-member-could-invalidate-oklahoma-board-vote-on-catholic-school-sponsorship/article_f71f83c6-0478-11ee-93a2-bb85100c09e0.html#tracking-source=home-top-story
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