The Bible, the School and the Constitution: The Clash that Shaped Modern Church-State Doctrine

From 1863 to 1876, education reformers, religious leaders, ordinary people, and legal experts grappled with “the School Question”: whether Bible reading belonged in public education, and if religious schools could receive public funds. Green, a professor of law and history at Willamette University, has provided an extremely dense but rigorous assessment of this tumultuous period that witnessed the Civil War, the emergence of a public system of education, and an influx of immigration. Catholics accused the ostensibly secular public schools of promoting Protestantism because some influential education reformers equated Republicanism with Protestantism. While it was inconceivable to some that students could learn moral virtue without reading the Bible, other states like Ohio banned unmediated reading of the Bible in public schools during “the Cincinnati Bible War.” Meanwhile, anti-Catholic animus suffused the debate over public funding of parochial schools, with prominent ministers like Lyman Beecher stoking nativist fears that Catholics would dominate the Midwest. Deftly guiding the reader through this cacophony, Green reveals how a factious American public engaged with constitutional principles that still resonate in today’s controversies over school prayer and creationism. (Feb.)