The Myth of the Neutral State in Matters of Religion
The radical left’s dogma is being imposed much more forcefully than any other religious tenet taught in most American religious institutions. And it’s not even close.
Now-retired Justice Stephen Breyer’s dissenting opinions in Carson v. Makin, one of the U.S. Supreme Court’s latest cases clarifying America’s robust religious liberty protections, reveals one of the fundamental misunderstandings of the First Amendment which impairs many people’s judgment in such cases. It is the myth of the neutral state.
In comparing religiously affiliated private schools to public schools, Justice Breyer writes that “public schools are religiously neutral.” I was glad I was not taking a sip of my coffee at that moment, or it would have been all over my desk. Can anyone who is aware of what is being taught in our schools seriously argue that schools are “neutral” regarding religious matters?
The radical left’s dogma is being imposed much more forcefully than any other religious tenet taught in most American religious institutions. And it’s not even close.
In Carson, the state of Maine had enacted a tuition assistance program for children in school districts that do not have a state secondary school. The program allows parents to choose the public or private school their children will attend, and the government would pay the school to help defray the cost. Before 1981, parents could choose any school if they met some basic requirements. But in 1980, the state excluded religious schools with a condition that the schools be “nonsectarian.”
The state “considers a sectarian school to be one that is associated with a particular faith or belief system and which, in addition to teaching academic subjects, promotes the faith or belief system with which it is associated and/or presents the material taught through the lens of this faith.”
Are not our public schools overwhelmingly associated with a particular “belief system”? In addition to teaching academic subjects, don’t they promote that belief system in any way they can? Have you seen the modern classroom decor? Have you seen the resources they are spending money to bring into the school? One teacher recently got an entire class of second graders to switch their pronouns. She found it completely normal and worth noting that she represented the only safe space for the children to follow her belief system.
There is nothing religiously neutral about public school education. They are decidedly promoting radical liberalism as a religion that must be followed. There is no deviating. As Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Missouri) experienced recently, you risk being shunned and publicly and privately targeted for daring to question liberal dogma.
But by ignoring all that and pretending there is absolute neutrality, Justice Breyer and his ilk are able to draw a line between money supporting his preferred liberal views (as neutral support) and letting a parent send his kid to a religiously-affiliated school, which to them would be a violation of the other myth they ascribe to, the “wall of separation between church and state.”
They get it all backward. Justice Breyer says that “with greater religious diversity comes greater risk of religious-based strife, conflict, and social division,” and “The Religion Clauses were written in part to help avoid that disunion.” All wrong. With greater religious diversity comes greater union. We can be free to worship and engage each other in the existential questions of life. The Constitution envisions the sort of freedom of religion that strengthens our union.
The Left often accuses Christian conservatives of wanting to impose their religion on others, but nothing could be further from the truth. Faith by compulsion is no faith at all. It is no help to us as Christians for you to believe by force. You won’t be a Christian that way. What we want is what the Constitution wants, freedom to share our faith, and ultimately everyone must be free to believe or not.
The Religion Clauses were not written to help avoid disunion; they were written to protect us from the government in matters of religion and allow people to exercise their consciences. That is why we see the Establishment Clause and the Free Exercise Clause working together in perfect harmony. But Justice Breyer sees them in conflict. “The apparent absolutist nature of these two prohibitions means that either Clause, ‘if expanded to a logical extreme, would tend to clash with the other.’”
That is why he is upset that any taxpayer money, however remotely, is being used by a parent to send their children to a religious school. He quotes Thomas Jefferson saying, “[T]o compel a man to furnish contributions of money for the propagation of opinions which he disbelieves, is sinful and tyrannical.” You have to laugh. Does the irony escape him – how objectionable it is to millions of parents what their children are being taught in public schools?
Thankfully, the Court here concluded that Maine’s “nonsectarian” requirement was unconstitutional, but there is much work to be done in this area of law. Justice Breyer understands the Court to be saying that “a State must (not may) use state funds to pay for religious education as part of a tuition program designed to ensure the provision of free statewide public school education.” But all the Court said was that if you are going to allow a parent to take a subsidy to send children to a school of their choice, you cannot target religious institutions that are otherwise competently qualified as disqualified based solely on their religious affiliation. It is, in fact, a targeting of religion that is not only unconstitutional but also immoral.