Untitled article by Howard Crosby

Pacific Press Publishing Company · New York · September 18, 1890

FromThe American Sentinel, Vol. 5, No. 37

Religion and the Schools.

By Howard Crosby

The United States became a Nation on the fundamental principle of religious liberty. Other nations had reached the point of religious toleration, but none had adopted a system of religious liberty. Toleration implies a State religion. Liberty implies no State religion. Religion is left to the individual and his conscience. Accordingly no special form of religion can be in any way fostered by governmental aid. The least patronage of a religious sect is a violation of religious liberty. Religions must grow from their own vitality and not from State culture. This is not only the sole condition of religious liberty, but it is the most favorable condition of religion itself. State interference must always mar religion, however much it may give it the appearance of prosperity. State interference brings in the discordant element of politics, detrimental to all religion.

It is from these premises we insist that religion must never be taught in our public schools. Any form of religious teaching must have a sectarian character as against other forms; and, to that degree, such teaching in our public schools would be a violation of our national principle of religious liberty.

Because a devout Christian would like to have all American children instructed in the evangelical doctrine, he has no more right to have it taught in the public schools than a devout Jew, in his ardent desire to have all American children instructed in Judaism, has to have the Talmud taught in the public schools. In either case, religious liberty is violated. The piety that would force such instruction is of the same sort that burned Giordano Bruno.

The school should have as its one object

the preparation of the child to form an intelligent member of the State. For this he must know how to read and write and compute numbers, and must become acquainted with the history and institutions of his country. There the public school has exhausted its function.

Religion should be taught at home and in the church. There it can be rendered specific and detailed. The important doctrines may there be carefully inculcated, and a strong religion imparted, when the public school at best could furnish only a very weak religion.

The cry of irreligious schools under this American system is just as senseless as would be the cry of irreligious reading-rooms or irreligious eating-houses, because no religion was apparent in them. The growth of religion in our country is due to its religious liberty. Injure that religious liberty, and you check that growth. And not only do you check the growth of religion, but you engender controversies that infiltrate our politics and prepare the way for the overthrow of all liberties. Religious contests form the fertile soil of tyrannies, and it is for us Americans to avoid carefully the beginnings of a false system that would intensify religious hatreds and strife. While the Government is neutral, all religions can grow according to their own vitality, and the truth will eventually triumph peacefully and satisfactorily to all. —Howard Crosby, D.D., LL.D., in Independent.