Church and State

Religion in Public Education.
by V. T. Thayer.
New York, Viking Press, 1947. 212 pp. $2.75.

The Church As Educator.
by Conrad H. Moehlman.
New York; Hinds Hayden and Eldredge, 1947. 184 pp. $2.00.

Render Unto the People.
by Umphrey Lee.
New York and Nashville, Abingdon-Cokesbury Press, 1947. 164 pp. $1.50.

The First Freedom: Considerations on Church and State in the United States.
by Wilfrid Parsons.
New York, Declan X. McMullen Company, 1948. 178 pp. $2.25.

Three of these four authors are in agreement that in the United States church and state must remain separate. All Americans, except Catholics and some Protestants (perhaps chiefly Lutherans affiliated with the Missouri Synod), avow belief in the principle of separation. The differences in opinion come to the fore when questions are asked as to its meaning, scope, and limits. Dr. Umphrey Lee, president of the Southern Methodist University, takes the familiar position that while the Constitution prohibits the establishment of a church, it does not prohibit friendly assistance to religious bodies. This position might be called the “separate but equal aid” doctrine—separate church and state, but state aid to all churches equally. Following the argument of William Clayton Bower (Church and State in Education), Dr. Lee believes that while sectarianism must be excluded from the public schools, courses in non-sectarian religion could be offered without offense to the religious scruples of children and parents and with profit to the morals and souls of all concerned. Although the reviewer is opposed to these conclusions, he was favorably impressed with the book’s moderate tone, scholarship, and quiet sincerity.

Father Parsons’ book presents the Catholic position, bears the imprimatur of the Archbishop of Washington, and has a foreword by the Archbishop of Baltimore. The author is opposed to the principle of separation; in its place he would substitute “distinction and cooperation”—state and church, while distinct, should cooperate freely. The state should pay for the secular, as distinct from the religious, education afforded by parochial schools. The Justices of the United States Supreme Court (except Mr. Justice Reed), in speaking of a “high and impregnable . . . wall of separation between church and state,” have departed from firm constitutional principles and wise policy. Father Parsons appeals to non-Catholic citizens to join the fight against the doc trine of separation. Father Parsons states the Catholic case without euphemism, circumlocution, or evasion. While the reviewer has serious questions concerning the historical, constitutional, and policy arguments offered by Father Parsons, he recommends the book as the best-balanced Catholic brief against separation that he has read.

The other two authors maintain that the principle of separation means an absolute prohibition upon state assistance, direct or indirect, financial or moral, to religious bodies. Dr. Thayer, for many years associated prominently with the Ethical Culture movement, has consistently fought against church influence or infiltration in the public schools. His book is a useful statement. Professor Moehlman’s stand is on the same ground. His School and Church: the American Way, published in 1944, should be read together with his new book, The Church as Educator, for a fairly complete historical statement of the principle of separation and an effective argument against attempts to dilute the principle so that it will mean friendly assistance by federal and state governments to all religious bodies, especially to the religious education programs of sectarian groups.

Books such as these by Moehlman and Thayer ought to be widely read, for clerical interests are hungry for funds and are pushing their campaign for state aid to religious education on all fronts. Proposed federal aid to equalize state expenditures for education serves as the center of the campaign to secure public funds for sectarian schools. The 10,000 Catholic parochial schools, with an enrollment of 2,400,000 pupils, constitute an onerous financial burden. No Catholic principle stands in the way of accepting relief from the public treasury for all or a part of the cost. The released time plan in operation in 1800 communities in 47 states has an enrollment of 1,500,000 children. Transportation of parochial pupils at public expense has been authorized in some states. Church hospitals and orphanages are generally supported by public funds. In some communities the pupils in parochial schools receive textbooks purchased out of public funds. On all fronts churchmen are aggressively carrying the fight to win public financial support for the church schools, classes, and other activities. Those who, like Thayer and Moehlman, see the threat and danger in this militant campaign by clerics and their political friends, deserve very great credit for their efforts. To support the doctrine of absolute and unqualified separation means to lay oneself open to the charge that one is fighting against religion, morals, the home, etc.—it is so much easier when one can claim to have both God and the Constitution on one’s side.

Since the books by Thayer and Moehlman deal chiefly with the place of religion in public education, they are especially significant today, because it is on the public school front that the lines of battle are being drawn. That their efforts, and those of others like Professors H. M. Kallen and Sidney Hook, have borne some fruit, is evident in the fact that organizations representing at least eighty per cent of American Jewry found it desirable and possible to join in a brief submitted to the United States Supreme Court attacking the constitutionality of the action of the school authorities in Champaign County, Illinois, in permitting the use of school buildings for sectarian education. The Synagogue Council of America, consulting its collective conscience, joined in this brief, supporting the position of an avowedly atheistical taxpayer. Such a step becomes possible only under a Constitution that leaves religion entirely to the conscience—and purse—of the individual citizen—believer, agnostic, or atheist; Jew or Christian; Catholic or Protestant. The principle of the privacy of the religious conscience can be eclipsed by government interference with or aid to churches or religious schools. To deny public aid to religious groups means, to this writer’s mind, the protection of their independence and integrity, of the privacy of the individual’s religious conscience, and of our free institutions from clerical domination.

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