By Bill Leonard
Winthrop Hudson, the American Baptist historian, writes: “The most obvious inference to be drawn from our present low spiritual estate would seem to be that the churches are no longer fully measuring up to the specific responsibility imposed upon them by their voluntary status in society.”
Given that reality, he insists that “there has been on the part of many a persistent refusal to acknowledge that the churches have been either derelict in their duty or ineffective in their ministry, and … an equally persistent effort to pin the responsibility for our present spiritual plight upon the state. The absence of formal religious instruction in the public schools is the chief scapegoat. [Some believe that] what the churches have failed to do, the public schools must now do. They must teach the great fundamental truths of religion and thus restore the moral and spiritual foundations of society.”
He concluded: “A moment’s reflection should be sufficient to indicate how ill-equipped the state is to provide such spiritual leadership.”
Hudson wrote those sober words in his classic work, The Great Tradition of the American Churches, published in 1953, a time some see as American religion’s Golden Age, the last great era of public (Protestant) faith.
These debates endure almost 60 years after Hudson published those observations. They are worth revisiting in light of recent news stories about the Texas high school senior who chose to affirm her Christian faith in a valedictory address at commencement ceremonies in the Medina Valley Independent School District near San Antonio.
She concluded her remarks by leading the audience in prayer. Before the event, parents of another graduating senior joined with Americans United for Separation of Church and State in legal action, contending that the prayer constituted compulsory religious activity at a public, state-related event.
A federal judge initially ruled in favor of the plaintiffs but the verdict was reversed by the Circuit Court, a decision that drew praise from the state’s governor and other officials. The valedictory address went on as scheduled, complete with the student’s statements of faith and concluding prayer.
Public prayers and other faith-based affirmations offered in state-based, multifaith settings have created controversies throughout American history. For example, Illinois Methodist preacher Peter Cartwright charged in 1846 that Abraham Lincoln, Cartwright’s Republican opponent for the U.S. Congress, was an “infidel” since he would not publicly acknowledge his Christian faith. Cartwright apparently wanted Lincoln to show his “new-birth” certificate! (Lincoln won the election, and the rest is history.)
In the current Texas case, Professor Hudson’s remarks regarding the church’s dereliction of duty seem a bit overstated. The valedictorian’s faith commitment was clearly nurtured in familial or religious communities. No dereliction there. In fact, the initial court ruling in no way limited her references to her personal faith. Rather, it agreed with the plaintiffs that her proposed prayer represented a type of religious compulsion at a public school-sponsored gathering who could not in good conscience join in the call to prayer.
Therein resides the continuing American dilemma: how to give voice to faith or non-faith, while avoiding even implicit religious compulsion at state-sanctioned gatherings. Hudson’s commentary reaffirms such responsibilities for religious communities.
For Baptists like Hudson, the “fundamental truths of religion” include these affirmations:
— The faith of the valedictorian should be celebrated and taken seriously.
— At state-based public forums even implicit compulsory prayer is problematic, since that is not what governments are about.
— At its best, prayer like faith itself is freely chosen, not implicitly or explicitly compelled of anyone, especially under government auspices.
What if future valedictorians are Muslim, or even Wiccan in their faith commitment? Would others at the graduation join their prayers then? If next year’s valedictorian affirms a non- Judeo-Christian faith, and invites prayer from such a tradition, what might be the response? Given the expanse of American religious pluralism, that day is not simply to be imagined, it is already here. Today’s religious majority can readily become tomorrow’s minority, especially if it is “ineffective in its ministry” whether in 1953 or 2011.
As a native Texan, I fear that other developments complicate the debate. The “Window on [Texas] State Government” recently posted these statistics:
— Texas is No. 49 in verbal SAT scores in the nation (493) and No. 46 in average math SAT scores (502).
— Texas is No. 36 in the nation in high school graduation rates (68 percent).
— Texas is No. 33 in the nation in teacher salaries. Teacher salaries in Texas are not keeping pace with the national average. The gains realized from the last state-funded across-the-board pay raise authorized in 1999, which moved the ranking from 33 to as high as 26th in the nation, have disappeared over the last five years.
— Texas was the only state in the nation to cut average per pupil expenditures in fiscal year 2005, resulting in a ranking of No. 40 nationally; down from No. 25 in fiscal year 1999.
If these trends continue, it might not matter how the courts rule on religious issues, public school students in Texas may not have a prayer anyway.