Tennessee’s state legislature recently passed a bill that aims to prevent religious indoctrination in schools. And religious people were the primary supporters of the bill.
At heart, the issue was about Islam. Parents complained about the way Islam was portrayed in a seventh-grade social studies unit. Now that the state legislature has gotten involved, school boards across the state will begin revising the curriculum in matters related to religion.
The Question of Islam and Religious “Indoctrination”
The heart of the parents’ complaint was that the textbook portrayed Islam in too positive a light. The bill, which prohibits “religious indoctrination,” raises the thorny question of how to portray a world religion, and the answers don’t come easily.
What do you say about Islam when you teach on world religions? How do you present the precepts of a religious faith? How do you assess Islam’s place in history?
Who determines the objective take on Islam? Muslims themselves? Secular elites who claim no religion at all? Who can give us a fair and unvarnished view of a world religion, particularly one in the midst of a massive internal battle over its own teachings and place in the world?
These are big questions, and the parents and the sponsors of this bill are putting their finger on an issue that is not going away any time soon. “I’m not opposed to teaching religion,” said one of the bill’s sponsors. “I am opposed to indoctrination and proselytization.” The goal is to have religious content presented in a neutral manner, with input and openness to local concerns.
Now, I haven’t seen the textbooks that started this conversation, but I do think we need to step back and widen our view as to what constitutes “indoctrination.” Indoctrination is happening in Tennessee schools every day. The only question is “what kind of indoctrination?”
Secular Indoctrination
A century ago, leaders such as John Dewey sought to make the public schools a place where secular assumptions would reign supreme. In his book, A Common Faith, Dewey wrote of secular humanism:
“Here are all the elements for a religious faith that shall not be confined to sect, class, or race. Such a faith has always been the common faith of mankind. It remains for us to make it explicit and militant.”
Dewey’s vision has been remarkably successful. That’s why textbooks present what different religions believe, but try to do so “objectively” or under the guise of “neutrality.” A secular textbook implies that a religion deals with values and beliefs while the author just presents “the facts.”
These are statements that articulate a secular view of society and the place of religion. The assumption is that religion must be relegated to matters of “faith” and that only secularists can give an objective, neutral take on a religion. Furthermore, secular textbooks, in trying to be “objective,” give the impression that all religions are of equal value, so that you can’t really judge between their claims.
That is indoctrination into Secular Religion 101. These are dogmas of the secular faith, but because they are simply assumed and not stated, these dogmas fly under the radar of a secular society.
The Proselytizing Public School
Now, don’t misunderstand me. I do not believe public schools should be proselytizing for any religion, including my own. It’s the Church’s job to evangelize, not the school’s.
But I hope that Christian parents who are concerned about textbooks will recognize that the public school, by trying to be neutral, is still pushing a point of view – the “common faith” of Dewey and other secular humanists. Public schools proselytize for secularism and for religious pluralism whenever books or teachers imply that religious faiths are equally valid and can be treated “objectively” from a neutral vantage point.
That’s why the question of religion in public schools will not go away any time soon. Whether we send our kids to a public school or not, we as parents have the responsibility to teach our children how to see through the myths in every textbook that comes from a secular worldview.
If we are unable to show the difference between Christianity and secularism, we will suffer under the illusion that legislative bills preventing “religious indoctrination” mean there is no indoctrination going on. Nothing could be further from the truth.
