EthicsWalk addresses spiritual care as an ethical enterprise. It explores why relationships between spiritual care providers and those they serve need protection, and examines what that protection entails. PlainViews invites our readers to share their responses to each EthicsWalk column, which will be published in the following issue.

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Responses to Anne Underwood's column

Thanks for the informative article. I look forward to the continuation. In note 12 you write, "For example, unlike compulsory secularization of public schools in France, the U.S. Court has upheld the rights of Muslim women to cover their heads and Jewish men to wear the yarmulke in government work and education forums." While I am not a lawyer, I don't believe that this statement is accurate as it applies to educational settings. (The Supreme Court case with a yarmulke involved a military officer, not a public school.) At least as of the mid-1990s, I know that Pennsylvania law (from the late 19th century) forbade public school teachers from wearing religious garb. An Orthodox Jewish teacher was threatened with dismissal for wearing a yarmulke. The organized Jewish community was divided over the free-exercise issue versus the risks of allowing more explicit (usually Christian) symbols in a public classroom and after behind the scenes discussions, there was not unity for seeking repeal of the law (originally an anti-Catholic law). As far as I know, this law still stands and there has not been any state or federal decision overruling it. My sense is that there are legal reasons why more restrictions can survive on public schools (age of the students, compulsory attendance) that might not apply in an adult workplace, for example.

Rabbi Robert Tabak, PhD
Staff chaplain
Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania

 

I am neither a scientific or a religious expert. I have an undergraduate degree in biology, a B.S. in nursing, and just graduated with an MDiv from Andover-Newton Theological School. I have worked as a naturalist, a community nurse, and a science teacher. I realize that people both consider evolution to be a fact and/or a theory. I tend to the former. I see nothing that is more mysterious, more magnificent than the story of life beginning as proteins emerging from the ocean and developing into Homo sapiens. The evolutionary story ties us firmly to the web of life. This understanding can lead to mindful behavior and sensitivity to all life. Thomas Berry, a Catholic priest, and Brian Swimme, physicist, have written "The "Universe Story." This book is a religious presentation of the story of evolution. James Berry, director of The Center for Reflection on the Second Law, has written, "But if it is not the perfect replacement for the old story, it will certainly do until a better one comes along. The need for it cannot be overstated. We have to rescue the Earth and we must start with a right story. This book (The Universe Story) will provide us with the energy and the will to launch into the Ecological Age. . . The new story which emerges here is the essential thing. It opens up a world of awe and joy and wonder in what lies before us." [1]

This quote does not mention the importance of the two creation stories in Genesis. These stories are important in peoples' religious lives. They provide inspiration. They do not, however, tell the scientific explanation that is so important in teaching humanity its place on this planet and how our arrogance can has been destroying our home.

[1] from website, http://trumpeter.athabascau.ca/contentv10.2/berry.html

Eleanor (ellie) Manire-Gatti
4th Unit Chaplain Intern
Amherst, Massachusetts

 

Theology, Science, and The First Amendment
Intelligent Design, Darwin, And Religious Freedom
Part 1: Constitutional Issues

Spiritual care providers witness events both rationally inexplicable and awesomely concrete. This may equip them to mediate the confused furor over the December 20 decision in Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District prohibiting teaching Intelligent Design (ID) in public school science classes.[1]

Kitzmiller does not question the existence of God or the theological validity of ID. Kitzmiller does not prohibit discussing God or ID in public schools, nor does it denigrate family values and the importance of passing onto children a family’s religious beliefs. Kitzmiller does not hold that Darwin’s theory of evolution is perfect nor does it “controvert that ID should continue to be studied, debated, and discussed.”[2]

Kitzmiller does hold, based on six weeks of testimony by scientists for both Plaintiffs and Defendants, that ID is not a science and “that ID cannot uncouple itself from its creationist, and thus religious, antecedents” and concludes “that it is unconstitutional to teach ID as an alternative to evolution in a public school science classroom.”[3]

Understanding the constitutional underpinnings of Kitzmiller is requisite to discussing the heartfelt positions held by religious people on all sides of this controversy.

The First Amendment guarantees freedom of religious belief according to personal conscience without interference or influence by governmental entities.[4] Such entities cannot include or exclude anyone based on religious belief.[5] The nation’s founders, themselves people of faith, did not seek to remove God from public discourse but to “preclude government from conveying or attempting to convey a message that religion or a particular religious belief is favored or preferred.”[6]

The most challenging forum for balancing First Amendment establishment concerns and free exercise rights[7] is public schools. Students are captive audiences vulnerable to the authority of teachers’ words.

Two tests for constitutional permissibility are applied when a policy which could implicate religion is proposed for a governmental entity. In the “endorsement” test, a hypothetical reasonable observer[8] looks at the evidence “to ascertain whether the policy ‘in fact conveys a message of endorsement or disapproval’ of religion, irrespective of what the government might have intended by it.”[9]

The Lemon test asks of such policy: (1) does it reflect a clearly secular legislative purpose; (2) have a primary effect that neither advances nor inhibits religion; (3) avoid excessive entanglements with religion.[10]

Establishment and endorsement tests promote justice and hospitality – virtues in the three Biblical religions. As the Supreme Court observed:

School sponsorship of a religious message is impermissible because it sends the ancillary message to members of the audience who are nonadherents ‘that they are outsiders, not full members of the political community, and an accompanying message to adherents that they are insiders, favored members of the political community.[11]

Families and faith communities have the absolute right to include or exclude anyone from their gatherings for any reason. Individuals and faith communities have the absolute right themselves to be included, and feel included in any government entity without prejudice because of religious belief (or disbelief).[12] This does not permit, however, the governmental entity to provide a forum for expression of particular religious convictions.

Next month’s column enumerates findings specific to Kitzmiller. The following month suggests discussion points by analogy with other religious doctrines which defy but coexist with secular and scientific theories.

I welcome any comments you might want to submit in response to these articles.

 

[1] Tammy Kitzmiller, et al. v. Dover Area School District, et al., U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Pennsylvania, Case No. 04cv2688, Judge John E. Jones III, December 20, 2005.
[2] Id. 137
[3] Id.
[4] Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; Amendment I, U.S. Constitution (1791). The Fourteenth Amendment applies the Constitution to the States and hence to public schools which are arms of state government.
[5] Belief is absolutely protected; practice is not in all circumstances.
[6] County of Allegheny v. ACLU, 492 U.S. 573 (1989)
[7] One of the first such cases anticipates Kitzmiller: the 1925 challenge to teaching evolution in public schools, the so called Scopes “monkey trail.”
[8] Someone who knows the history of the disputed policy/action, the history of the community and the broader social and historical context in which the policy/action arose.
[9] Lynch v. Donnelly, 465 U.S. 668, 690 (1984) quoted in Kitzmiller at 17. The endorsement test has been applied in cases addressing school prayer, vouchers, religious student clubs meeting on school property, government aid to parochial schools, university funding of religious newspapers, etc.
[10] Lemon v. Kurtzman, 403 U.S. 602 (1971), court struck down R.I. plan to use state funds to pay parochial-school teachers only teaching secular subjects and meeting state license requirements.
[11] Id., 688 quoted in Kitzmiller at 11.
[12] For example, unlike compulsory secularization of public schools in France, the U.S. Court has upheld the rights of Muslim women to cover their heads and Jewish men to wear the yarmulke in government work and education forums.

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Anne Underwood has an undergraduate degree in religious studies, a master’s degree in rural sociology and a mid-life law degree obtained after working over a decade as a college administrator. She has mediated for the Maine family courts since 1983. Currently she serves as an advisor to the ethics commissions of ACPE, APC, the CCAR (Central Conference of American Rabbis), and NAJC, and consults with a variety of Protestant faith communities on issues of power, fair process, and congregational conflict management. Her articles on mediation and restorative justice have appeared in the ACPE News, The APC News and on the ACPE web site. Articles on clergy accountability and judicatory processes are published by the Alban Institute and The Journal on Religion and Abuse. A chapter, “Clergy Sexual Misconduct: A Justice Issue,” appears in Body and Soul: Rethinking Sexuality as Justice-Love, Marvin Ellison and Sylvia Thorson-Smith, editors, The Pilgrim Press, 2003.