Between Church and State: Religion and Public Education in a Multicultural America

Today, the ongoing battle between religion and public education is once again a burning issue in the United States. Prayer in the classroom, the teaching of creationism, the representation of sexuality in the classroom, and the teaching of morals are just a few of the subjects over which these institutions are skirmishing. James Fraser shows that though these battles have been going on for as long as there have been public schools, there has never been any consensus about the proper relationship between religion and public education. Looking at the most difficult question of how private issues of faith can be reconciled with the very public nature of schooling, Fraser paints a picture of our multicultural society that takes our relationship with God into account.

Between Church and State clarifies the historical context of some of America's most controversial educational issues, including classroom prayer, school vouchers, creationism and evolution, sex education, and the teaching of values. James W. Fraser rejects both the liberal idea that "the Christian right is engaged in a campaign to impose God on public schools whose purposes have always been secular" and the conservative idea that, when the Supreme Court banned prayer and Bible reading in the classroom in the '60s, "God was kicked out of the public schools." Countering these high-pitched recriminations, Fraser carefully examines the way that public education in early America "was pressed into service as a new kind of national church, commissioned to carry the common culture and morality of the nation" after the Constitution definitively separated church and state. He describes the fierce debates that arose when public education was called upon to honor the worldviews of Catholic immigrants, freed African Americans, and other ethnic and cultural groups who won battles over their right to respect and inclusion in the nation's common life. And he begins to answer the central question raised by his book--"How should a diverse and democratic society deal with issues of religion in public schools?"--in two important ways. First, his sobering survey of the controversies that have reigned since the earliest days of public education clears the air of "nostalgia for a simpler past that never was." Second, he asserts that "if the United States is to survive and thrive in the twenty-first century, the nation's schools must be places for embracing and building tolerance and a love of diversity." Multiculturalism is more than a buzzword for Fraser; it's a historical and contemporary fact. His book brings it alive--and awakens thoughtful empathy in the reader, the political consequences of which can only be good. --Michael Joseph Gross