Students need to learn about religion's role in US history | Opinion
James Tackach is a professor emeritus of English Literary Studies at Roger Williams University.
As the new school year opens, educators throughout the nation are grappling with the issue of religion's role in public schools. In June, a fresh debate on the topic was ignited by Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry, who signed legislation requiring school classrooms in his state to display the Ten Commandments. Governor Landry's edict defies a U.S. Supreme Court ruling, Stone v. Graham U.S. 39 (1980), that struck down a Kentucky statute requiring the posting of the Ten Commandments in public schools as a violation of the separation of church and state.
Public schools should instead display the Bill of Rights, the U.S. Constitution's first 10 amendments, and leave the Ten Commandments for Sunday schools. But should religion be completely removed from public schools? Probably not.
If public grammar and high school students study the American experience, they will certainly have to confront religion. High school courses in American history will require students to study the Pilgrims and Puritans who settled in Massachusetts during the 17th century. They were English religious dissenters, leaving to establish a colony in America where they could practice their faith without restrictions or interference from their government.
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In high school American history and literature courses, public school students should confront Puritan writing —sermons like John Winthrop's "A Model of Christian Charity" and Jonathan Edwards's "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God." Winthrop's sermon articulates the idea that the Puritan community in Massachusetts would be a special place blessed by God, "a city upon a hill" that other nations would imitate. Over the centuries, Americans have secularized this idea, but we have retained Winthrop's belief that America is special. Edwards's sermon is a jeremiad, a sermon of warning whose form American orators have used to address secular rather than religious topics.
In courses devoted to early American literature, I would have my students read these sermons, grasp their original messages, and speculate how their form and style have been sustained over the centuries. Americans are still delivering jeremiads. For example, Al Gore's 2006 book on global warming, "An Inconvenient Truth," is a contemporary jeremiad. My students also studied Puritan poets, Anne Bradstreet and Edward Taylor, whose poems often expressed religious themes.
In high school American history courses, students will certainly study the civil rights movement that began during the 1950s. A key document from that movement is a sermon, Martin Luther King Jr.'s "Letter from Birmingham Jail," written in 1963 while King sat in a jail cell after being arrested for leading a peaceful civil rights protest march. In the statement, King compares himself to St. Paul: "... as the Apostle Paul left his village of Tarsus and carried the gospel of Jesus Christ to the far corners of the Greco-Roman world, so am I compelled to carry the gospel of freedom beyond my own home town."
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When I taught American civil rights literature, I always included James Baldwin's "The Fire Next Time," a 100-page autobiographical essay in the form of a jeremiad published in 1962. Baldwin concludes his jeremiad with a biblical warning: If Americans do not "end the racial nightmare, and achieve our country, and change the history of the world," we can expect God's punishment: "God gave Noah the rainbow sign. No more water, the fire next time!" Sadly, Baldwin's prophesy came true. Race riots broke out in Watts, California, in 1965, and in Newark, New Jersey, and Detroit in 1967. Fire destroyed sections of these cities.
To teach students about religion is not the same as teaching or advocating religion. Religion has played an important role in American history and literary history. Students need to learn that.
This article originally appeared on The Providence Journal: To teach students about religion is not the same as teaching or advocating religion.
