Guest columnist: Public schools must never be allowed to become Sunday schools
Public schools aren’t — and should never be — Sunday schools. That applies to charter schools, which are taxpayer-funded public schools. Yet, the Catholic Archdiocese of Oklahoma City and Diocese of Tulsa submitted an application to open a public charter school that teaches and preaches religion. If the Oklahoma Statewide Virtual Charter School Board eventually approves it, this would be a sea change for American democracy and violate the separation of church and state that’s promised in the U.S. and Oklahoma constitutions. (The board voted against the plan on Tuesday, but the application can be resubmitted within 30 days.)
Allowing public schools to teach a religious curriculum would threaten the religious freedom of every student and family in Oklahoma. In a vibrant, diverse democracy like ours, public schools must remain neutral when it comes to religion. Schools can teach about religion, but not preach it as truth. Our Constitution establishes this fundamental safeguard to protect the religious freedom of everyone.
But if this charter application is approved, Oklahoma public-school students could be required to take classes about and infused with one religious theology — at taxpayers’ expense. Students and their parents — not school officials — should get to make their own decisions about religion.
Public schools belong to all of us and must be open and welcoming to all. A school that indoctrinates students in the Catholic faith is not truly welcoming to all. A school that reserves the right to discriminate based on disability and reject LGBTQ kids and others who don’t adhere to its religious tenets is not open to everyone. No family should have to allow their child to be subjected to religious coercion and proselytizing by adults in a faith not their own as the price of admission to a public school.
This proposal also jeopardizes the religious freedom of every taxpayer in Oklahoma. Our country is founded on the idea that our government cannot tax citizens and then turn around and use those tax payments for religious education. No one should be forced to fund any religion, let alone a religion not their own. That’s a gross violation of religious freedom, one that Thomas Jefferson labeled “sinful and tyrannical.” Or as the Rev. Lori Allen Walke, senior minister at Mayflower Congregational United Church of Christ in Oklahoma City, warned: “As a faith leader, I understand that when the state taxes my fellow Oklahomans of any faith or none to fund houses of worship and religious schools, it has violated the conscience and religious freedom of all of us.”
More: Multiple efforts underway in Oklahoma to introduce faith in public schools
Some say that rejecting the archdiocese’s application because of the proposed school’s religious curriculum would violate the school’s religious freedom. If the Catholic Church in Oklahoma wants to open private religious schools to exercise its religion, it is free to do so. In fact, it has opened many. But charter schools are, by definition and by Oklahoma law, public schools. Religious denominations have no right to operate public schools of their own in which they use the machinery of the state to impose their religious teachings on a captive audience of schoolchildren on the taxpayers’ dime.
It’s hard to think of a clearer violation of the religious freedom of Oklahoma taxpayers and public-school families than if Oklahoma establishes the nation’s first religious public charter school. Remember, Oklahoma voters rejected changing the state constitution to allow public money to fund religious activities in a 2016 ballot initiative. In a country built on the principle of separation of church and state, public schools must never be allowed to become Sunday schools.
Rachel Laser is the president and CEO of Americans United for Separation of Church and State.
This article originally appeared on Oklahoman: Oklahoma charter schools are public schools, not Sunday schools
