The American religious landscape has changed, adding fervor to our politics. Between 1937 and 1998, 70% of Americans belonged to institutional churches. Over the next two decades, that figure dropped to less than 50%. Those with no religious association are termed “nones.” Not all nones are anti-religion, but 30% say their choice comes from bad experiences with religious people.
Even so, Shadi Hamid in “America Without God” in The Atlantic argued that despite these religious changes, American faith is as ardent as ever. He writes:
“It’s just that what was once religious belief has now been channeled into political belief. … Acting more like sects than parties, both sides claimed that they were defending the true faith against those who would betray it. Most of all, they became less able to compromise — or even converse — with each other.”
In other words, Americans are not necessarily becoming less religious; instead, many seem to be channeling their devoutness in a different way. Unfortunately, the result translates into caring less about our neighbor and more about destroying our enemies in the political realm.
Another impact is that public schools — and their policies — become a cultural battleground. While public-school teachers aim to fulfill their purpose to help prepare students for their responsibilities of citizenship, culture wars rage around them. These hotly contested political issues appear to many to be unsolvable because they involve fundamental beliefs, where compromise seems impossible.
For a time, culture wars of the late 20th century appeared to subside as politics moved away from national-level moral regulation. Conservatives discontinued agitation for a constitutional amendment on public-school prayer and then lost the battle over the definition of marriage as being solely between a man and a woman.
Many predicted culture war disputes would end with Donald Trump’s first term because, during his 2016 run for president, he appeared to be libertarian on social issues.
However, conflicts over culture are back with a vengeance, as evidenced by debates on questions such as LGBTQ+ issues, as well as how race is taught in schools’ history curriculums. As a result, many dedicated public-school educators fear parents’ heated responses when they are required by state standards to teach historical realities of slavery. They also worry about bullying of LGBTQ+ youth in their schools.
Given that rocky landscape, there are ways we can calm — not solve — these culture war outbreaks if we can amend the common take-no-prisoners mindset to reflect a framework of conscience instead.
This framework is based on the Constitution’s First Amendment understanding of several critical values:
- Everyone has the right of conscience.
- We all have the responsibility to protect that right in others.
- We all have the freedom to respectfully disagree.
A framework of conscience assumes there is a community commitment for individuals to be true to what they believe and also room for others to pursue truth differently. A framework of conscience emphasizes that families and chosen communities actively instill their values and beliefs in the next generation while at the same time acknowledging a broader pluralistic society of American citizens in a diverse public square.
For example, while practicing a framework of conscience, rather than clashing on culture, a family may hold sincere beliefs about the eternal nature of male and female souls while at the same time acknowledging that their children might attend public schools with trans-identifying youth. Parents can continue to hold onto and instill their own views while explaining that others in the school community believe differently yet deserve to be treated with respect and dignity.
Modesto, California, is a mostly conservative community that boasts five evangelical megachurches along with large populations of Muslims, Hindus and Buddhists. Some high schoolers wanted to form a club for gay students. After some parents and community leaders gathered in opposition, the school developed a policy of respecting all regardless of their beliefs and implemented a required Religions of the World class for graduation. The first two weeks of the course laid down a First Amendment framework situated in understanding the rights of everyone to believe, that everyone has a responsibility to protect that right in others, and that we can all respect the freedom to disagree. A 2009 study in the British Journal of Religious Education found that the Modesto program helped students develop attitudes of tolerance without surrendering their own religious beliefs in the process.
Religious families can recognize that a framework-of-conscience approach is a way of bestowing a healthy faith on the next generation. In an interview about her new book, “The EXvangelicals: Loving, Living, and Leaving the White Evangelical Church,” author Sarah McCammon explains a common theme for those leaving that faith who may have “a sense that the world you are presented with in the Evangelical community [in childhood] doesn’t always align with the world that you discover as you learn and grow and maybe get to know people who are different.” Families for whom faith formation of their children is important may better preserve their own values by helping their children develop their own beliefs while also navigating the reality of an American public square where others believe differently.
While public schools are often the main battleground for culture wars, they are also the very institution where young Americans learn how to live with our deepest differences. Preparing children to be true to their personal and family values while also living in a pluralistic society is the best path for American success. As distinguished religious freedom educator Dr. Charles Haynes said, “If we fail in our schools to teach and model the rights and responsibilities that flow from the First Amendment, then surely we endanger the future of our daring experiment in religious liberty.”
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Eleesha Tucker is a Constitutional Literacy Fellow in the Center for Constitutional Studies at Utah Valley University. She teaches a required general-education course, American Heritage, which aims to inform undergraduate students of our foundational ideals and inspire them to fulfill their civic responsibilities. She is also the executive director of the Utah 3Rs Project, promoting rights, responsibility and respect through the lens of the religion clauses of the First Amendment.