Teaching Religion in America

              American culture and its perception of the legality or appropriateness of discussing religion in schools has formed a cultural disjoint between understanding the context of innumerable current world events and world history.  The religious pretext of conflicts that the United States are currently involved in are undeniable.  The entire premise of the war on terrorism is to defeat the Islamic fundamentalists that would harm the United States citizens.  American politics have overtly involved a heated debate about abortion for over half a century in which conservative Christian groups are strongly associate themselves with the “pro-life” cause.  Regardless of the blatant involvement of religion in these and innumerable other contexts in American culture, Americans remain astoundingly uninformed about religions. 

            The lack of textual religious information in American culture has drastic repercussions.  Rev. Joan Brown Campbell stated, “We’re impoverished by our ignorance… You can’t draw on the resource of faith if you only have an emotional understanding not a sense of the texts and teachings”(Grossman).   This emotional knowledge can lead to the same errors that lack of textual information given in any field.  Cathy Lynn Grossman, writing for USA Today, cites an example of this the highly circulated story that the Quran foretold that U.S. invasion of the Middle East. This claim is false, but with out knowledge of the text of the Quran citizens were unable to combat the inaccuracies of the claim. 

            The reason for the lack of knowledge about religion in the United States is the cultural understanding of the first amendment.    The First amendment of the Constitution states, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.”  The 1963 decision of the Supreme Court that disallowed religious instruction in school is widely believed to state that United States law prohibits discussion of religion in school.  However this is not the case, and the Supreme Court’s decision even makes it clear that a knowledge of religious texts is important for education, but the formation of the cultural Understanding that religion must not be a part of school.  Regardless the cultural understand of this case , not the legal understanding, is that religions shall not be mentioned in government funded schools.

 

Works Cited

Grossman, Cathy L. "Americans get an 'F' in religion." Americans get an 'F' in religion - USATODAY.com. 14 Mar. 2007. USA Today. 4 Dec. 2008 http://www.usatoday.com/news/religion/2007-03-07-teaching-religion-cover_n.htm.