If you are a long-time reader of this blog, you know that I have a strong friendship with and great respect for the Rev. Charles Foster Johnson, executive director of Pastors for Texas Children. Charlie comes to every conference of the Network for Public Education and is a strong advocate for public schools and the 5.4 million children who attend them. He believes deeply in separation of church and state, as do the 2,000 faith leaders in Texas who are part of Pastors for Texas Children. PTC was deeply involved in the voucher battle, on the side of public schools and church-state separation.
PTC has encouraged the creation of similar groups in other states. One of these groups is in North Carolina. I received this notice and thought some of you might want to participate in their zoom conversation about “Christian nationalism.”
People of Faith for Public Schools
Dear Advocates,
Though it’s still summer, our advocacy doesn’t stop! Have you been hearing about “Christian nationalism” but maybe don’t know quite what it is or why it matters to public education advocacy?
How To End Christian Nationalism Zoom Book Discussion
Pastors for NC Children and Christians Against Christian Nationalism-North Carolina are co-sponsoring a 2 part zoom book discussion of Amanda Tyler’s “How To End Christian Nationalism”.
It will take place on Thursday, July 23 and Thursday, July 30 from 7-8:30pm. July 23 will look at the Introduction and Steps 1-4. July 30 will look at Steps 5-8 and the Conclusion. While we hope you read the book, you are invited to join in even if you haven’t. The discussion will include discussing the steps and how it intersects with our own experiences and life. The discussion will be led by Executive Director Rev. Suzanne Parker Miller.
Thank you to everyone who has made a donation to PNCC’s ministry. WE ARE SO GRATEFUL! Would you consider becoming a monthly donor or make a one time contribution to our goal? Could your church include PNCC in their mission giving? THANK YOU!
When Texas Governor Greg Abbott was promoting vouchers, he usually accused the public schools of “indoctrinating” students. This was untrue. The five million students in the state’s public schools come from every imaginable background, and teachers were not indoctrinating them about anything, neither in politics nor religion.
He wanted them to go to Christian schools, where they were certain to be indoctrinated into the doctrines of one faith. Now that he is spending billions for children who are in private and religious schools, the Texas State Board of Education just passed a measure that introduces religious indoctrination into the public schools.
Which Bible will be used? The Protestant Bible? The Catholic Bible? The answer is obvious.
What about children who are not Christian? Or children whose families don’t believe in religion? Isn’t their right to religious freedom violated?
Bible passages will be taught in Texas public schools, the State Board of Education decided on Friday.
The Republican-majority board voted 9-5 in favor of a required reading list that includes Bible stories but no representation of other religions, wrapping up a monthslong battle.
Roughly 5.5 million children are enrolled in Texas public schools, and the new standards would affect students for years to come…
On Friday, board members decided to stagger implementation of the reading list: elementary school students will see the new standards in the 2030-31 school year, sixth graders in the 2031-32 school year, seventh and eighth graders in the 2032-33 school year, and high school students in the 2033-34 school year…
The new required reading list, mandated by the Texas Legislature in 2023, has over a dozen Bible passages or stories, with at least one biblical text in every grade except kindergarten. In first grade, students will read Noah’s Ark by Peter Spier, and in later grades, excerpts from the books of Luke, Matthew and Genesis.
The list does not include the central texts of any other religions, prompting critics to say the required reading is promoting Christianity, violating the First Amendment. Educators and parents warned that non-Christian students could feel excluded.
Melissa Brown of Chalkbeat wrote about a lawsuit in Tennessee that challenges the state’s ban on religious charter schools. Since the state is currently paying tuition at religious schools with vouchers, the lawsuit seeks to overturn the ban. The state is not defending the ban, inasmuch as its Republican leadership wants to pay tuition at religious schools.
The Wilberforce Academy of Knoxville sued the school board last year after the local district asked it to affirm it planned to open a non-religious school, per state law.
In federal court filings, the school board argued Wilberforce never actually submitted a charter school application, nor has it targeted state officials in its lawsuit, despite the school board following state law enforced by the Tennessee Department of Education. The board had asked the court to dismiss the lawsuit entirely.
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But U.S. District Judge Charles E. Atchley, Jr. in late May ruled Wilberforce didn’t have to submit an actual application to challenge an “allegedly unconstitutional barrier” to applying.
Neither party has commented on the lawsuit.
Tennessee officials have left the Knox County board on its own to defend the state law, which Atchley noted in his May opinion.
Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti declined to intervene in the lawsuit earlier this year, months after he published a legal opinion that argued there was “no compelling interest” in excluding religious charter schools from participating in a “public benefit.”
Skrmetti’s office is also currently paying Wilberforce’s main attorney $400 per hour in a separate case to help Tennessee defend its criminal abortion ban against ongoing legal challenges.
The legal fight over religious charter schools in Tennessee – and the lack thereof from state officials – signal major changes may be on the horizon for the state’s charter landscape.
This spring, lawmakers signed off on a new state law that now allows religious colleges and universities to operate public charter schools. Though the new law currently blocks those institutions from providing religious curriculum in their charter schools, it opens the door to a new class of charter operators in the state that could quickly stand up religious charters if the state’s religious charter ban law were to fall.
And now public dollars are flowing to private religious schools through Tennessee’s voucher program, which is paying millions in private school tuition.
In its lawsuit, Wilberforce focuses in part on this program, arguing the public education funds now funding private religious tuition support the case that religious charters should be included in public funding.
“This enshrined hostility to religious charter schools stands in marked contrast to Tennessee’s recent support of religious schools through its Education Freedom Scholarship Program,” a Wilberforce attorney argued in court documents last year.
A full trial on the lawsuit is scheduled for January 2027, and a group of Tennessee parents and non-religious charter school officials have also intervened in the lawsuit to oppose Wilberforce’s claims.
They have argued opening the door to religious charter schools will result in charter schools being “classified and treated as private schools,” which could effect on things like Tennessee’s public school funding formula and disability protections.
Scott Maxwell is a columnist for the Orlando Sentinel. In this column, he argues that voucher schools in Florida should not be allowed to dodge accountability. And, he explains, they are completely unaccountable. The state Constitution requires that the state provide high-quality education, which voucher schools do not. He neglects to notice that the state Constitution states that no public money should go to religious schools. Not a penny, but most vouchers go to religious schools.
What is more, the voters of Florida rejected an effort to strip that language from the state Vonstitution in 2012.
Scott Maxwell wrote:
Teachers and parents have filed a landmark lawsuit challenging the legality of Florida’s billion-dollar school voucher system
The argument at the heart of their suit is that Florida’s constitution requires tax dollars be spent on “high-quality” education. Yet Florida’s voucher system is a black-hole of accountability, sometimes paying for kids to go to “schools” that are total disasters — where teachers lack degrees, inflate grades and use curriculum that is rubbish.
I’m not convinced the teachers and parents will win this lawsuit. In fact, I doubt they will. Similar challenges have been unsuccessful. And Gov. Ron DeSantis has done a pretty thorough job of stacking the courts with political allies, especially at the appellate level.
But I know for a fact the teachers and parents have a point. In fact, It’s inarguable. This newspaper has spent nearly a decade documenting voucher schools that failed children.
Often, the parents themselves were shocked and outraged to learn that schools were failing their kids and that there was little to no accountability.
The Sentinel’s multi-year “Schools Without Rules” investigation into voucher (or “scholarship”) schools found some schools employed teachers that lacked any teaching credentials or college degrees.
Some were such financial disasters, they shut down in the middle of the year, stranding families. (One in Orlando was evicted from a commercial complex where a neighboring tenant was “Drug Tests R Us.”)
Some refused to serve children with disabilities, whether it was autism or reliance on a wheelchair. Even more refused to teach children who are gay or had gay parents. These were schools eager for the public money but unwilling to serve all the public. None of this was discreet. Some had written policies saying that they wouldn’t serve children with Down’s syndrome or who uttered the sentence: “I am gay.”
Some schools taught junk science and bogus history, suggesting that dinosaurs and humans roamed the earth together and downplaying slavery and segregation.
And at some schools, parents were so appalled at what they found that they reported to the state things like “Cleaning lady substituting for teacher” and “I don’t see any evidence of academics.”
If you think any of that represents “high quality” education, you might also believe the mini tacos at 7-Eleven are five-star dining.
Many private schools that accept vouchers do stellar jobs and fill niche needs that public schools have historically struggled to meet. But too many taxpayer-funded schools are total trainwrecks. And the reason is that Florida has very few standards for voucher schools.
That is, in fact, the crux of the lawsuit, which lists about 20 different things that public schools are required to do by state law, but which all voucher schools are not.
Like providing certain levels of school safety staffing and having threat-management plans in place. Offering vetted curriculum and providing transportation. Hiring qualified teachers. And publicly posting test scores from state assessments that show whether students are actually learning anything. Public schools must do all of that.
The argument from choice-without-standards supporters is that parents should be able to choose any education they want for their kids without exception.
There are two problems with that argument. One is that no other government-funded voucher program works that way — and for good reason. We don’t let recipients of food vouchers use them on Twinkies and Mountain Dew. This is public money meant to provide nutritional sustenance. So there are guidelines. The same way there is for Medicaid and Medicare. You don’t get to spent public money that’s meant to fulfill a public purpose on anything you like just because you invoke cries of “freedom” or “choice.”
The other problem is that using this money to provide “high quality” education isn’t optional. It’s part of the Florida Constitution — a point the lawsuit addresses when it says: “… choice does not change the Constitution. When public funds are used to educate a child, that child is entitled to the same level of educational opportunities, the same quality standards, and the same basic protections.”
You can certainly make the argument that some public schools have failed some students. Do you know how we know that? Because these schools were required by law to disclose their test scores, standards, hiring practices and curriculum. In fact, newspapers in Florida were often the ones that exposed problems at public schools.
And most anytime we did, public officials would spring to action and agree reform was needed. Yet most every time we’ve exposed problems in taxpayer-funded voucher schools, state lawmakers leaders looked the other way. The most pathetic part of all this is that it’s easily fixable.
Florida could still offer “choice,” but also demand that any schools that receive public money meet basic standards. Hire qualified teachers. Post the results of nationally-normed standardized test scores and graduation rates. And ban discrimination.
“To me, this is just common sense,” said Stephanie Vanos, an Orange County School Board member who also happens to be an Orlando mom and joined the lawsuit as a plaintiff in that capacity. “I’m not saying they need the thousands of pages of rules that apply to us, but we need a common-sense set of rules that should apply to everybody.”
She is, of course, right. Schools that do good jobs shouldn’t be afraid of accountability and transparency. Most aren’t.
In fact, ask yourself these basic questions: Why shouldn’t parents and students be guaranteed qualified teachers?
Why shouldn’t taxpayers be able to see what kind of test scores are being produced at all the schools they’re funding?
And why shouldn’t taxpayers be assured that the money they’re spending is actually providing “quality” education, as the Constitution requires? Better yet, ask those who defend the status quo.
At the Harvard commencement, a new graduate gave a remarkable speech about the importance of talking in a civil manner to those with whom you disagree.
Noah Eckstein began his speech to his fellow graduates and faculty with the familiar opening to a joke: “A Christian, a Muslim, and a Jew walk into a bar…”
Everyone waited for the story and the punchline, but it was not what they expected. Eckstein explained that one grandparent was Christian and the other was Muslim. They had a daughter who was raised as a Christian. She married a Jew. They had a child, and that is me, a proud Jew.
He described how his family disagrees without hatred, how they have taught him to respect that other people have other views.
One of his central messages: “Listen before you speak.”
The U.S. Supreme Court has been asked to approve religious charter schools. Given their disregard for the principle of separation of church and state, the majority might approve the idea. This would be yet another raid on the funding of public schools.
We hope this information is helpful to your state.
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE May 26, 2026
Network for Public Education Applauds New Research Brief Warning States of Religious Charter School Threat
Researchers Offer Clear Legislative Path to Ensure Charter Schools Cannot Engage in Discrimination
[New York, New York] — The Network for Public Education (NPE) today praised the release of a critical new policy brief examining the looming threat posed by anticipated U.S. Supreme Court decisions on religious charter schools. Avoiding the Supreme Court’s Religious Charter-School Trap: Governance Change for the New Legal Era, authored by Kevin G. Welner (University of Colorado Boulder), Carol Burris (NPE Executive Director), and Preston C. Green III (University of Connecticut), offers states a concrete legislative roadmap to safeguard public education before it is too late.
Forty-two states and the District of Columbia face sweeping changes to their charter school systems as the Supreme Court appears poised to deliver what the brief calls a “one-two punch.” In the coming terms, the Court is expected first to establish a free-exercise right for taxpayer-funded religious schools to engage in faith-based discrimination, and then to prohibit states from excluding religious organizations from running independent charter schools — effectively exempting religious charter schools from the anti-discrimination and accountability laws that apply to all public schools.
The brief makes clear, however, that states are not helpless to act. States that structure charter governance through public entities — rather than private, independent organizations — are shielded from the Court’s free-exercise reasoning. Four states, Alaska, Kansas, Maryland, and Virginia, already place all charter schools under publicly elected school boards and are therefore already protected. Nine additional states allow district-governed charters as well as independent charters, thus shielding some of their charter sector.
“State legislators can head off the Court’s radical change by strengthening the fundamental publicness of their charter schools,” said Welner. “Legislators can protect the charter-school sectors against the imposed transformation by changing how they are governed.”
NPE President Diane Ravitch applauds this research for providing exactly the kind of actionable guidance that policymakers urgently need. “District-governed charter schools not only preserve civil rights protections and constitutional safeguards — they also provide stronger financial oversight, reduce the risk of mismanagement and fraud, and give voice through their elected school boards.”
Karen Attiah was a writer, editor, and columnist for The Washington Post for more than a decade. She edited the work of Jamaal Khashoggi, the Saudi journalist who was murdered by his government for his views about freedom. She was fired last October because, she said, of comments on social media she made about Charlie Kirk’s assassination. She now writes a blog called “The Golden Hour.”
She wrote recently that journalists were wrong to compare Trump’s golden statue to the golden calf of the Bible. The appropriate reference, she believes, is King Nebuchadnezzar and his fabulous empire of Babylon.
It’s 8:16 pm EST. Welcome to the evening sunset edition of The Golden Hour.
Today, as I watch the light of day literally run out, today’s Golden Hour essay is about golden statues. And how they can be the symbolic bearers of bad news about the light going out in dying empires.
I love gold. It’s my favorite color. ‘The Golden Hour’ is Substack’s name, obviously. I typically only wear gold or gold colored jewelry. I mean, I can’t help it—gold is in my DNA—my family is from the “Gold Coast,” aka Ghana. I have written about gold swords before.
I have been following the news reports about Trump’s colossal gold statue, aka ” Don Colossus,” which was unveiled last week at Trump National Doral Miami resort in Florida. It is 22 feet tall, and reportedly cost about $450,000 to erect. The statue was paid for by the $Patriot memecoin crypto investors.
The statue has drawn immediate backlash, with critics likening it to idol worship. And, plenty in the news media and on social media say that this is like the story of the golden calf in the Bible…
Yes, everyone is making the Golden Calf references. It’s perhaps one of the more recognizable stories and symbols even with non-Christians, so I understand why.
But, Pastor Burns is right, to an extent; my colleagues in the media are getting it wrong.Trump’s statue is not a ‘golden calf’. The golden calf story is the wrong narrative frame. There’s more in the well of Biblical symbols we can draw from to understand ‘Don Colossus’— and the trajectory of the American empire.
Trump is more of a King Nebuchadnezzar figure than he is a golden calf. Which means that America is Babylon. And in both Biblical and historical terms, the Babylonian Empire came to a sad end.
So, the ‘Don Colossus’ statue is a golden warning of America’s fall.
Gather around the fire, friends. Let’s talk about King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon, and what happened when he constructed his ill-fated golden statue of himself.
King Nebuchadnezzar’s Golden Statue
In the Book of Daniel in the Bible’s Old Testament, King Nebuchadnezzar ruled over Babylon from 605 BC to 562 BC. He led the conquest of Egypt and the eventual capture and destruction of Jerusalem.
Nebchadnezzar dreams of a great statue of mixed materials, with a head of gold, a chest of silver, legs of bronze, and feet of clay. In the dream, the statue is destroyed by a meteor. Daniel interprets the dream as signifying that all empires live and die.
King Nebuchadnezzar erected a 90-foot-tall gold statue of himself, going against the prophet Daniel’s warnings. He ordered that all the kingdom’s peoples, officials, and magistrates worship and bow down before the statue, lest they be thrown into a blazing hot furnace.
The King got word that three Jews, Shadrach, Mesach, and Abednego, refused to bow down and worship the statue. They told the king, “If we are thrown into the furnace, the God we serve will deliver us from it. But even if he does not, we will not serve your gods or the image of gold you have set up.” They are thrown into the furnace, but protected from the fire. Nebuchadnezzar is amazed and praises the God of the three men. This is usually how the story stops.
But more is in store for the prideful, but ill-fated Nebuchadnezzar.
A year later, he is walking by his palace, admiring its beauty. Per the Book of Daniel 4:27-33:
“Is not this the great Babylon I have built as the royal residence, by my mighty power and for the glory of my majesty?”
Even as the words were on his lips, a voice came from heaven, “This is what is decreed for you, King Nebuchadnezzar: Your royal authority has been taken from you. You will be driven away from people and will live with the wild animals; you will eat grass like the ox.
Seven times will pass by for you until you acknowledge that the Most High is sovereign over all kingdoms on earth and gives them to anyone he wishes.”
Immediately what had been said about Nebuchadnezzar was fulfilled. He was driven away from people and ate grass like the ox. His body was drenched with the dew of heaven until his hair grew like the feathers of an eagle and his nails like the claws of a bird.
Given what happened to Nebuchadnezzar in the Bible, one would think that Trump’s spiritual advisors would have warned him against building a golden statue.
Alas, they don’t make royal spiritual advisors like they used to. Maybe this is what happens when you order spiritual interpreters from Temu.
He nailed a question that has worried me. I had thought it was odd that the same Christian nationalists who worship Trump insist on posting the Ten Commamdments in every classroom. Have they ever read those Ten Commandments, any version of them? The first commandment is to recognize God as the only Lord and to put no other god before the real one. (“I am the Lord thy God. Thou shalt have no other god before me.”) No worshipping false gods, idols, or golden calves.
Nonetheless, these same supposedly devout “Christians” worship Trump and obey his every command. They ignore his many breaches of the Ten Commandments as well as the Constitution because he is their god.
Trump has a long and well-documented history as a con man with multiple bankruptcies and thousands of lawsuits. Creating his MAGA cult to worship him, to believe his empty promises, is the greatest con of all. And the most profitable! Since he was inaugurated, he and his sons have grown richer by billions of dollars. Not millions. Billions.
Rick Wilson, former Republican insider, offers “A Reading from the Book of Donald.”
Donald 3:28-34
And it came to pass in the year of the Tariff, whilst war raged across the lands of Elam, that the people of all the tribes of MAGA gathered upon the fairway on the Plain of Doral; and the priests came down from among them, both evangelical and influencers, with oil, with incense, and with selfie sticks and cameras.
And they said unto the multitude, “Bring forth thy pelf and thy gold, clicking here, patriots, that we may overlay it; for behold, we have made thee a god of fourteen cubits, that the great orange LORD may know whom thou servest.”
“Thou shalt make unto thyself a graven image; yea, the taller the better, and the gilding shall be thick, and the thinness of the frame shall show the orange LORD’s svelte and manly figure to best advantage.”
And they said to the tribes of MAGA, “Thou shalt bow down before it, and serve it, and thou shalt photograph thyself beside it; for the patron thy god is a jealous patron, and exceedingly photogenic.”
“As for the commandment of old which said ‘Thou shalt have no other gods before me,’ behold, we have CAST DOWN the Hebrew God; and VERILY we worship the One Orange God at Temple of the Reality Star, for it pleases the Donald, and the Donald’s pleasure is the law.”
And the priests laid their hands upon the statue, and pronounced it good; and the people cried, ‘This is thy God, O MAGA, who delivered the billionaires from taxes, who clothed you in the red hats sacred to his worship, who didst provide you with the sacred crypto of his name, and who gave unto you his Tweets.”
And Moses, hearing of it, came down from the mount in haste, with tablets in his hand; but the Secret Service would not admit him at the gate, for his name was not on the list and he had not offered either his donations or his worship.
Rev. Benjamin Cremer is a remarkable pastor, a man of integrity and courage. He was born to a fundamentalist family in Idaho and home-schooled K-12. But as he read the Bible, the stern fundamentalism of his youth faded and was replaced by the teachings of Jesus, most especially His call to care for and protect the neediest.
Here are some quotes from his account in X and BlueSky.
“I just can’t imagine wanting an entire secure ballroom for one man and not wanting gun reform for every child in America.”
*
“Imagine calling Renee Good and Alex Pretti “domestic terrorists” and calling immigrants “animals” then turning around and telling people they need to “tone down their rhetoric.””
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“It is a broken Christianity that says “God protected him!” when a president survives and “thoughts and prayers” when school kids die.
A god who only protects the powerful and not the vulnerable is an idol”
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“Christians should be the loudest voices advocating confronting climate change, not its biggest deniers.
If we truly believe that God created all things, called it good, and called us to be stewards, then acknowledging and confronting climate change is the only faithful response.”
*
“Reading the entire Bible and broadcasting it to the entire nation while actively taking food, healthcare, clean water, clean air, shelter, due process, and basic human dignity away from people is the exact kind of religious hypocrisy Jesus raged against.”
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“No amount of reading the Bible publicly can compensate for a heart that is committed to hate.”
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“One of the biggest lies we Christians have come to believe is that the best and most effective way to address the pressing issues of our time is to gain more control over others rather than become more compassionate towards others.
This is the opposite of the gospel of Jesus.”
*
“Paula White comparing the president to Jesus was met with applause.
The Pope calling for peace and ending the war was met with condemnation.
Beware of any Christian movement that measures loyalty to God by loyalty to the president.”
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“Sean Hannity said that he was no longer Catholic in 2019. How many times is he going to leave the Catholic Church?”
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“Notice how Christian nationalists suddenly believe in the separation of church and state when Bishop Mariann Budde asks the president to be merciful, when the Pope asks the president to be peaceful, and when anyone suggests that the government should take better care of the poor.”
*
“If our Christianity causes us to defend the president rather than the poor, the powerless, the sick, the hungry, the homeless, and the immigrant, that’s when we know we are following someone other than Jesus.”
I sent out a bulletin when I learned that the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals had reversed lower federal courts and approved the Texas law mandating the display of the Ten Commandments in every classroom.
Peter Greene read the opinion and in this post he shows what a lot of malarkey it is. The more than five million children in Texas public schools are attached to many different faiths or to none at all, but the state is promoting only one. The Founding Fatheres would be horrified.
First the court disposes of the Establishment Clause. And boy do they dispose of that.
If you’ve been following the dismantling of the wall between church and state, you may recall that Kennedy v. Bremerton, the case of the coach who wanted to lead prayers on the 50 yard line– a case that SCOTUS decided by actively ignoring facts— put a final stake through the heart of the Lemon Test, a three-pronged test for whether or not someone was violating the Establishment Clause (legal scholars have assured me that Lemon was not really used, anyway, but let’s move on). This new decision makes it a point to dance on Lemon’s grave and then announce the new test of the clause–
In place of Lemon, courts now ask a question rooted in the past: does the law at issue resemble a founding-era religious establishment?
In other words, is the state trying to “establish” a religion the same way that the King of England established the church of England. Colonies in the 1600s achieved religious uniformity through civil power. If we don’t see “laws compelling attendance at the official church; laws controlling doctrine, worship, and governance; laws punishing dissenters; laws exacting religious taxes; and laws deploying churches for public functions,” then there’s no infringement of the Establishment Clause.
The Texas law doesn’t “tell churches or synagogues or mosques what to believe or how to worship” and it doesn’t punish anyone for rejecting the Ten Commandments. It rejects the plaintiffs’ argument that putting the decalogue up in a classroom is inherently coercive. “Not so,” says the glib-ass judges. The law doesn’t require religious observance. So, no Establishment Clause violation, because this law doesn’t all look like the Church of England in the late 1700s.
The plaintiffs had a go at using the historical argument themselves, saying there’s little evidence that schools had a “tradition” of posting the Ten Commandments. But that, says the court, is a whole other thing. The plaintiffs try to argue that “if a practice does not fit within some historical tradition, it violates the Establishment Clause,” but “that does not follow.” See (stay with me here) if something has a root in 18th century tradition, then it is okay, but just because it doesn’t have a root in tradition, that doesn’t mean it’s not okay– so argues the court.
Meanwhile, in states across the country today, simply allowing students to be exposed to a rainbow on a classroom poster is considered too intrusive and might offend some people’s religious beliefs.
Anyway, that’s the new rule according to this court– the state can endorse, publicize, support, pick religious winners and losers, and expose students to as much religion as it wants, as long as it doesn’t start punishing anyone for disagreeing.
The case rested on the idea that being exposed to books with gay characters would disrupt the educational instruction of parents (the decision also rested on misrepresentation of those books as well). But the district court sees something far more sinister. “Those materials were deployed by teachers with lesson plans designed to subvert children’s religiously grounded views on marriage and gender.”
But nobody is making the students recite, believe, or “affirm their divine origin” (a phrase that I think assumes a fact not in evidence), the court believes the plaintiffs didn’t prove that the law “substantially burdens their right to religious exercise.”
There’s lots more (Duncan uses a footnote to take issue with Biery’s “creative” opinion). I’m going to just pick a few moments.
In a concurrence, Oldham argues that maybe the plaintiffs don’t even have standing because this is textbook “offended observer” stuff:
From top to bottom, the idea is that the plaintiffs (1) worry that they will one day see a poster; (2) worry that they might find that poster offensive; so (3) they invoke federal jurisdiction for protection from potential, hypothetical future offenses.
This is, I guess, totally different from being offended that somebody might some day ask you to make a cake for a gay wedding.
The dissent pushes back on some of the legal arguments. Kennedy did not throw out Stone or the Lemon test, and it was plenty clear that it “observed” the “heightened concerns with protecting freedom of conscience from subtle coercive pressure in the elementary and secondary public schools.” The case established a concern about exactly the kind of coercion that SB 10 represents. Put a poster of commandments in front of impressionable children (with the directive that the poster be visible from any place in the room) and you have coercion. And it is true that SCOTUS went out of its way (and far from reality) to argue that the praying coach was praying privately and personally and not exerting any coercion on his players, suggesting it would have been coercive otherwise.
Oh, there are pages and pages of legal argle bargle here, papering over a decision that joins some Texas leaders in saying, “We want to promote our brand of Christianity to be the dominant religion in this state.” And as always, I will argue that this kind of stuff is bad for everyone, that religion is not improved when the state tries to edit sacred texts and commandeer and control expressions of faith.
In that spirit, let’s wrap this up with the opening of Judge Leslie Southwick’s separate dissent.
What is not part of my dissent is a rejection of the importance of searching for faith. Religion, though, is a matter of the mind and the heart. Faith cannot flourish when it is forced. A poem voices my concern and, I humbly offer, that of the First Amendment:
The livid lightnings flashed in the clouds; The leaden thunders crashed.
A worshipper raised his arm.
“Hearken! hearken! The voice of God!”
“Not so,” said a man.
“The voice of God whispers in the heart
So softly
That the soul pauses,
Making no noise,
And strives for these melodies,
Distant, sighing, like faintest breath,
And all the being is still to hear.”
Stephen Crane, The Black Riders and Other Lines, Lines xxxix (1895), reprinted in The Collected Poems of Stephen Crane 41, 41 (Wilson Follett ed., 1930). Like any effective poetry, these lines can give different meaning to different readers at different times. In this opinion, they capture for me that government promotion of religion in every classroom is simulated lightning and thunder, compulsorily seen and heard.
Diane Ravitch's blog 