The following is Grant’s article to the school community. I would recommend that we all take a moment to read it. It is very helpful with some of the questions and concerns we might have with some of the social issues of our day.
In June of 1962, the Supreme Court of the United States decided that New York public school officials could not prescribe a prayer to be offered at the beginning of public school classes.1 This decision came as a shock to religiously oriented people nationwide.
Public reactions to the Supreme Court’s decision were divided, ranging from quiet elation by supporters to civil disobedience by many school administrators and teachers.2 Six months later, a concerned LDS Church President David O. McKay said: “By making that [New York Regent’s prayer] unconstitutional, the Supreme Court of the United States severs the connecting cord between the public schools of the United States and the source of divine intelligence, the Creator himself…. Now let us remember and emphasize—that restriction applies to the atheist as well as to the believer in God.”3
In the early 1960’s, LDS Church President David O. McKay (left), and University of Chicago Law School Professor Dallin H. Oaks (right), held different perspectives about the Supreme Court’s controversial ruling that banned state sponsored prayer in public schools. Years later, Elder Oaks wrote in his personal memoirs that his limited perspective at the time was “just a small footnote to history compared with the vision of a prophet who saw and described the pernicious effects of that decision in the years to come.”
At the same time, a bright young lawyer named Dallin Oaks—a devout Mormon and former law clerk for Supreme Court Chief Justice Earl Warren—had just been appointed professor of law at the University of Chicago Law School, one of the nation’s most prestigious law schools. In his personal memoirs, Life’s Lessons Learned, Elder Oaks reflected openly and candidly about his feelings at the time: “I reasoned that the [school prayer] case was correctly decided,” because “I interpreted the school prayer decision to forbid only state-authored and state-required prayers, rather than forbidding school prayers altogether.”4 Indeed, what could be the harm? After all, there was no prohibition of private student-led prayer at school.
A few months later, in the next domino to fall in what would be a series of so-called “separation of church and state”5 rulings, the Supreme Court prohibited school-sponsored bible reading.6 President McKay’s response this time was even more emphatic: “Recent rulings of the Supreme Court would have all reference to a Creator eliminated from our public schools and public offices…. Evidently the Supreme Court misinterprets the true meaning of the First Amendment, and are now leading a Christian nation down the road to atheism.”7
Professor Oaks, now also concerned about how the prayer-case precedent was being used to prohibit Bible reading in schools, began to catch a glimpse of the prophetic vision previously articulated by President McKay. Still not ready to abandon his reasoning entirely, Professor Oaks prepared a thoughtful article restating his initial opinion that the prayer case was correctly decided on its facts, but that its precedent must be applied more carefully to avoid “establishing” atheism in public schools (from a First Amendment perspective, this would be as impermissible as the state-sponsored prayers or Bible reading that the Supreme Court was trying so hard not to “establish”).8
Soon came the Supreme Court cases prohibiting state funding to religiously oriented schools and requiring a secular purpose for all activities conducted by public schools,9prohibiting state-sponsored moments of silence in any case that might be viewed as “devotional,”10 prohibiting school sponsored prayer at graduation ceremonies,11and prohibiting use of public school PA systems for prayer prior to athletic contests.12 At last, after five decades of reflection, including a period during which he served as a state Supreme Court justice himself, Elder Oaks wrote the following in his memoirs:
Finally, what I learned from this experience was that my worldly wisdom in writing approvingly of the school prayer case on the “facts” of the decision was just a small footnote to history compared with the vision of a prophet who saw and described the pernicious effects of that decision in the years to come. Exercising prophetic vision, President McKay saw that the school prayer case—which I reasoned to be defensible and probably even essential as a ruling on the facts before the Court—would set in motion a chain of legal and public and educational actions that would cause religion to be separated from education and lead to the current hostility toward religion that threatens religious liberty in our society. For me that was a powerful learning experience on the folly of trying to understand prophetic vision in terms of worldly wisdom.13
Why share this reflection from Elder Oaks’s personal history with the American Heritage School community? The point is not that secularism in education somehow spontaneously combusted in 1962 with a single Supreme Court decision. It didn’t. Secularism versus religion in the public square is a narrative as old as the Garden of Eden. As with other branches of government, the judiciary often reflects the shifting winds of public opinion.14 Nor is the point that we ought to shelve our God-given faculties of reason in trying to harmonize prophetic and scriptural guidance with unfolding societal trends. Just read the monumental collection of essays Educating Zion on the power and necessity to “seek learning, even by study and also by faith” (D&C 88:118).
We are charged with the urgency to learn the language of faith alongside the language of academics. But simply learning these two languages—faith and reason—is not sufficient.
At the risk of putting too fine a point on the state of religious liberty in America, listen to the way one prominent scholar on religion in public life describes the current environment:
Religious liberty is being redefined in America, or at least many would like it to be. Our secular establishment wants to reduce the autonomy of religious institutions and limit the influence of faith in the public square. The reason is not hard to grasp. In America, “religion” largely means Christianity, and today our secular culture views orthodox Christian churches as troublesome, retrograde, and reactionary forces. They’re seen as anti-science, anti-gay, and anti-women—which is to say anti-progress as the Left defines progress. Not surprisingly, then, the Left believes society will be best served if Christians are limited in their influence on public life. And in the short run this view is likely to succeed. There will be many arguments urging Christians to keep their religion strictly religious rather than “political.” And there won’t just be arguments; there will be laws as well. We’re in the midst of climate change—one that’s getting colder and colder toward religion.15
Though I am not comfortable with the labels “Left, Right, Liberal, and Conservative,”—the point for us is that the “Rise of the Nones” (the dramatically increasing number of Americans who profess “no religion”)16 should give rise to neither fury nor fear on the part of the faithful. Urgency, yes. But we must not be shrill, reactive, or combative. Ours is a task of “carrying on” and standing firm “on the rock our fathers planted.”17
We are not a community that points the finger of blame at judges or politicians—as if we had nothing to do with their decisions, appointment, or election. When we understand the principle of representative self-government, we understand that our Republic is a reflection of our collective personal choices and behaviors, not just at the ballot box, but at home, in private, in the way that we consume media, and the way that we voice our opinion (or not)—particularly in the most powerful public square of all called cyberspace.
As an AHS graduate so eloquently summarized at our October benefit gala: “One of the most powerful aspects about an American Heritage education is that the education we receive here requires us to act. It is not enough for us to know the principles. To be meaningful to us at all, they must work in us, change us, and from there they will change our families, our society, our communities, and even our nation.” (Karina Hansen, Class of 2012).
Self-government, upon which our republic still operates, lays responsibility at our own doorstep. The power and influence of a single, principle-centered life is incomprehensible. One man, woman, or child who aligns their life with correct principles can turn the course of history, and turn it relatively quickly. Christ is the superlative example of this, but look at men in recent history like Tyndale, Luther, Washington, Wilberforce, Lincoln, Ghandi, Reagan, and women like Joan of Arc, Beecher Stowe, Nightingale, Mother Teresa, and Thatcher. History is filled with stories like theirs—each a courageous kind of “Christ in miniature,” as Tolstoy once described Lincoln.
What then do we do? If the broad secularization of America is so well established, and its government and intellectual power circles so agnostically or even atheistically entrenched—then what is left for those who have a traditional view of family, law, and government?
America’s founders, most of them Christian, took the Bible as their political textbook18 and agreed that inalienable rights endowed by a Creator God cannot be overridden or taken away by the laws of men.19 Communities of faith have shown tremendous resiliency in the history of mankind. Babylon could not destroy Israel. The Third Reich could not destroy Judaism. Soviet Communism could not destroy Russian Orthodoxy. The secularization of western civilization can marginalize faith for a season, but it cannot root it out of the hearts of children who are born each day with a predisposition to believe. Where did that instinct come from? History has shown, time and again, that religious faith is the most powerful and enduring force in human history.20
Here are three things we can do.
First and most important: Cleanse the inner vessel for the hard work that lies ahead. Unimpeachable integrity is like the armor that protects the soul in times of danger. No personal commitment (and especially no commandment) is too small that it can be skirted, ignored, or broken. No matter how seemingly justifiable at first, the small indiscretion will inevitably become the strategic opening for the “fiery darts of the adversary.” Fix it. Heal it. Strengthen against it. This hard work of cleansing ourselves unleashes the enabling power of the Atonement of Jesus Christ that fortifies our hearts and minds to accomplish His work.
Secondly: Get educated. Know the story. Know your religion. Know your neighbor’s religion. Understand the battle lines and the friction points. Understand the other perspectives and contours of the conflict. This is not easy work, and it takes real, devoted, study. Education is not just an academic exercise that we finished when we received a high school diploma. Nor is it something we do only when we have a little spare time. Education could mean the difference between keeping our families and losing them, quite literally, in a battle for mindspace that is already taking one in three American young adults from organized religion (including Mormonism) each year.21
Finally: Speak up. “All that is required for evil to succeed is for good men to do nothing” (Edmund Burke). At some unknown point in the not-too-distant past, the moral majority of previous decades became a silent majority, content to focus on the peaceful life of scripture and local congregations. More and more Christians opted out of public life. As one Christian lawyer and author put it: “They were disgusted with the raucousness, crudity, and often emotionally and spiritually upsetting struggles for worldly influence. In truth, they feared the combat and the casualties. And many of them feared falling in love with the glories and triumphs of the world, and losing touch with Christ as a result.”22 Understandably, it is easier to choose the quiet and peaceful life of keeping our religious convictions private, but it is not necessarily better. If we do not speak up for our convictions in public, others will undoubtedly do it for us, and they will often characterize our convictions as unenlightened and not worthy of voicing. Ultimately, we may find ourselves in a world we have only read about in history books or seen on TV—where we are permitted to think our conscience—so long as we do not practice it.
A story is only as good as its ending. The good news about the human story is that for all its painful and devastating clamor, it is a happy story, because it has a happy ending, including lots of happy chapters throughout. Thanks to Him whose birth we celebrate with the turn of another year, we know the end of this story from the beginning: “In the world ye shall have tribulation: but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world.”23
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[1] Engel v. Vitale, 370 U.S. 421 (1962). The prayer in question was led at the beginning of each school day, and read, “Almighty God, we acknowledge our dependence upon Thee, and we beg Thy blessings upon us, our parents, our teachers and our country. Amen.”
2 See Wallace v. Jaffrey, Great American Court Cases. Ed. Mark Mikula and L. Mpho Mabunda. Vol. 1: Individual Liberties. Detroit: Gale, 1999. Gale Opposing Viewpoints In Context. Web. 7 Sep. 2011.
3 “Parental Responsibility,” Relief Society Magazine, December 1962, 878.
4 Oaks, Dallin H. Life’s Lessons Learned, 2011, Chapter 16 “Assigning Reasons to Revelation.”
5 Dreisbach, Daniel L., “The Mythical ‘Wall of Separation’: How a Misused Metaphor Changed Church-State Law, Policy, and Discourse http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2006/06/the-mythical-wall-of-separation-how-a-misused-metaphor-changed-church-state-law-policy-and-discourse
6 Abington School District v. Schempp, 374 U.S. 203 (1963) prohibited school sponsored Bible reading. Next came Lemon v. Kurtzman (1971), in which the Supreme Court prohibited states from reimbursing teachers at religious schools for teaching secular subjects, and in which the Court devised the three-part “Lemon test” for ensuring that all practices in public schools (1) have a secular purpose, (2) that neither advance nor inhibit religion, and (3) that must not result in excessive entanglement between government and religion. Next, in Wallace v. Jaffrey (1984), the Court prohibited a moment of silence for the intended purpose of a state-sponsored devotional activity. More recently, in Lee v. Weisman (1992) and Santa Fe Independent School Dist. v. Doe(2000), the Court prohibited public prayers at graduation ceremonies and those conducted via public address system prior to high school games.
7 “President McKay Comments on Ruling,” Church News, June 22, 1963, 2.
8 Oaks, Dallin H. Life’s Lesson Learned, Id. at Chapter 16. Professor Oaks writes in his memoirs that he even submitted his article to the Improvement Era, where it appeared in December 1963, approved for publication by President McKay himself.
9 Lemon v. Kurtzman (1971)
10 Wallace v. Jaffrey (1984)
11 Lee v. Weisman (1992)
12 Santa Fe Independent School District v. Doe (2000)
13 Oaks, Dallin H. Life’s Lesson Learned, Id. at Chapter 16
14 Consider how differently courts began ruling on personal privacy cases in supporting the federal government’s national security initiatives in the wake of attacks by terrorists on September 11, 2001.
15 R. R. Reno, Religion and Public Life in America, reprinted in Imprimis, April 2013, p. 1
16 See the Pew Research Religion & Public Life Project “Nones on the Rise” (October 2012) stating that “The number of Americans who do not identify with any religion continues to grow at a rapid pace. One-fifth of the U.S. public – and a third of adults under 30 – are religiously unaffiliated today, the highest percentages ever in Pew Research Center polling. In the last five years alone, the unaffiliated have increased from just over 15% to just under 20% of all U.S. adults. Their ranks now include more than 13 million self-described atheists and agnostics (nearly 6% of the U.S. public), as well as nearly 33 million people who say they have no particular religious affiliation (14%). http://www.pewforum.org/2012/10/09/nones-on-the-rise/
17 “Carry On” LDS Hymn #255
18 Hall, Mark D. PhD, Did America Have a Christian Founding? Heritage Foundation, Lecture #1186 on Political Thought, June 7, 2011 http://www.heritage.org/research/lecture/2011/06/did-america-have-a-christian-founding
19 Declaration of Independence, July 4, 1776.
20 See id. Reno, Imprimis, April 2013 at p. 8
21 See Pew Research, supra note 16.
22 Hewitt, Hugh In But Not Of: A Guide to Christian Ambition and the Desire to Influence the World, 2012, p. 27
23 John 16:33
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