SECTARIANISM IN THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS.
By John D. Bradley
THE writer of this has sent two or three communications to the Washington Post with reference to the demand for definite religious teaching in the public schools of the District of Columbia, but, for some reason, none of them have been published. The following is from one of these communications: It is claimed and argued by these churchmen that there is no sectarianism in this matter; that the religious teaching proposed is not sectarian, because the great majority of the people believe that way. Do these gentlemen not know that, if every person in this country save one believed alike in religion, and there was but the one person believing differently, in the view of the state, and upon the principle of religious and civil equality which the state must maintain, the religious belief of that overwhelming majority would be just as much sectarianism as the religious belief of the one man? Do these gentlemen not know that, so long as there is a single dissenter from any religious belief, principle, or teaching, that such belief, principle, or teaching is sectarian? and that there is no religious belief, principle, or teaching so universal that it can be other than sectarian to the American state? Do these gentlemen imagine that the inculcation in the public schools of the idea that the Ten Commandments are the "divine" and "revealed law of God," received by man directly and miraculously from the hand of the Almighty, is not sectarian teaching? If they do, they would better go to the intellectual centers of their own religious bodies, and find out if this is an idea that is universally accepted there, and from which there is no dissent. In the present state of opinion on this matter, the assumption that the teaching of the Ten Commandments upon a supernatural basis, and with the idea that they were written or spoken by the Almighty, is not sectarian teaching, is preposterous. It is not the principle of non-sectarianism upon which these Washington churchmen are proceeding, but the principle that the sectarianism of the majority can properly be taught by the state. Upon their principles and logic, the most narrow sectarian teaching would be perfectly proper in the public schools, if the people who believe in it were in the majority. If Methodists were in the majority, it would be all right to teach Methodism in the schools; and if Roman Catholics were in the majority, it would be all right to teach Catholicism in the schools. The principle is not whether the religious teaching is sectarian or not, but whether it is accepted and believed by a sufficient number of the people to secure for it the endorsement which it necessarily must have in order to come into the schools of a democratic community. It is a principle that will not do in this country nor in any country, where the principles of modern civilization are dominant. JOHN D. BRADLEY.