Does a religion or antireligion called secular humanism pervade America's public schools? If so, is that domination constitutional? If so, is that domination baneful? And if so, what can be done about it?
Those questions have been raised in many people's minds by the decision of Judge W. Brevard Hand, chief judge of the federal district court at Mobile, Alabama, early in March. Hand, in an opinion of 111 typewritten pages plus appendices of 61 pages, found that Alabama's state board of education, in prescribing certain textbooks for use in public schools, was maintaining an establishment of religion. That religion was secular humanism. Complying with decisions of the U.S. Supreme Court, Hand ruled that this establishment of religion was unconstitutional. Therefore he granted relief to the plaintiffs in the case - a group of Mobile parents who contended that, in the teaching of home economics and social science particularly, their children were being indoctrinated in the creed of secular humanism by the textbooks they were required to study.
By way of relief, Hand enjoined the Alabama state board of education to discontinue the use of specified textbooks. From the American Civil Liberties Union, People for the American Way, and other organizations professing their devotion to the total separation of church and state came shrieks of protest. From many of the journalists of the mass media came shouts of "book burning". The 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has stayed Hand's order temporarily, intending to take up the case at length.
The general public does not understand what this case is all about - which is not surprising. With very few exceptions, the television and press people who reported on the lengthy trial at Mobile either did not understand constitutional law or else deliberately misrepresented the whole character of the proceedings to accord with their private prejudices. I was at the trial - not as a journalist but as witness for the court (not for either plaintiffs or defendants). In recent years, I have been an expert witness at such church-state trials in several states. I offer in this article an analysis, in fairly simple and abbreviated terms, of the course and significance of the Mobile "textbook trial."
Roots of the case
The Mobile case has roots extending back to 1982, when Ishmael Jaffree, a Mobile resident, brought suit against Mobile County's school commissioners to require cessation of prayer or other religious services in the public schools. (An Alabama statute mandated school prayer.) Hand did not desire to have his federal court intervene at all this matter, for he held that jurisdiction in such concerns lies with state governments - that is, the first clause of the First Amendment to the Constitution is not binding on state governments. (This is a constitutional point long in dispute, although the present majority on the U.S. Supreme Court holds a contrary opinion.)
So Hand ruled against Jaffree, but his decision was soon reversed by the U.S. Supreme Court. Meanwhile, more than 600 Mobile parents had intervened in the case, alleging that their children in Mobile schools labored under an unconstitutional establishment of "secular humanism" in Alabama schools. (Jaffree was opposed to school religious observances; the "fundamentalist parents, on the contrary, objected to the omission or denial of
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