Secular Humanism in the Dock
Are U.S. Public Schools Teaching a False Religion?
Preparing an Exorcism? Judge HandTo Christian fundamentalists, secular humanism is as deadly and difficult to unmask as the Devil himself. Like Satan, the secular humanist assumes many disguises: he controls the government, the media and worst of all, public education. But in a federal district courtroom in Mobile, Ala., Judge W. Brevard Hand has at last trapped this protean evil spirit. Before him is a case, arranged by the judge himself, in which 600 parents and teachers are challenging four dozen textbooks used in Alabama public schools on the ground that they promote secular humanism at the expense of traditional religious faiths. Both sides have summoned an impressive array of religious and educational experts to debate the basic issues: Is secular humanism itself a religion? And is it being taught in Alabama's public schools?
Now in its third week, the case has attracted national attention as a kind of courtroom exorcism. If secular humanism is indeed a religion, as the plaintiffs contend, then it has no more constitutional right to be taught in public schools than the Protestant, Roman Catholic or Jewish faiths. A victory for the parents would allow an apparently eager Judge Hand - or any other judge - to purge public classrooms of offending humanist texts. The defendants, state and local school boards, argue that the fundamentalists are using the issue of secular humanism as a cover to force their own sectarian values on the public schools.
Ignoring God: In the first two weeks of the non-jury trial, witnesses for the plaintiffs offered various definitions of secular humanism and testified to its pervasiveness as a functional equivalent of religion. Essentially, they argued that secular humanism is a philosophy of life that ignores or repudiates God and makes human reason the source of all values. Historically, European humanism included a belief in Biblical revelation. But as conservative Catholic scholar James Hitchcock of St. Louis University testified, secular humanism - as an "ism" - evolved out of 18th-century rejection of revealed religion and the Enlightenment's faith in reason alone. "Often," Hitchcock said, "in academic and intellectual circles, humanism is indeed a religion."
Witnesses for the plaintiffs seemed unable to demonstrate that secular humanism has the coherence that is characteristic of a religion. Under cross-examination, University of Virginia sociologist, James Hunter conceded that almost any secular enthusiasm - including feminism, vegetarianism and socialism - could be defined as the equivalent of a religion. To defence witness Paul Kurtz, a professor of philosophy at the State University of New York at Buffalo, and the only acknowledged secular humanist to take the stand, the term "refers to humanistic development and is non-religious... It uses science, reason and evidence to test theory." In short, secular humanism seems to be the faith some people get when they don't get religion.
Far more telling was the testimony on how public-school textbooks studiously avoid religion. Prof. Timothy L. Smith, a distinguished historian of American religion at Johns Hopkins, said he was "profoundly shocked" by the almost total lack of religious references in the state's 11th-grade history texts. There was little mention, he said, of religion's role in the development of American pluralism or of the "absolutely central role" of Christians in the abolition of slavery. Psychologist Paul Vitz of New York University reported a "total absence of any references to American religious life of any kind, Protestant, Catholic or Jewish" in a series of primary school books he studied for the National Institute of Education. Hefound no mention of God in any of the materials for five out of the eight grade levels. In one book, the Pilgrims' first Thanksgiving was mentioned, but not the God to whom they prayed. And even a story by Isaac Bashevis Singer for sixth graders was amended so that "Thank God" was converted into "Thank goodness."
Similarly, public schools were criticised for substituting psychology for hard moral reasoning. Among other examples, Dr. William Coulson, a professor of psychology at the United States International University in San Diego, cited a course on decision making in family life in which, he testified, never once "is it suggested that (what is morally) right can be known."
This week, witnesses for the defence will include Harvard psychiatrist Robert Coles, whose testimony is likely to surprise both sides. Coles thinks that the parents are confusing culture with religion in their attack on secular humanism. In his view, secular humanism is a kind of odourless gas that permeates the entire society. Nonetheless, Coles believes, the parents have good reason to complain about what their children are being taught in school. "What you find in these texts is the exaltation of looking at the world through psychological theories, especially of the self and its needs," he observes. "There's no reference to the self as subject to something else."
Distorting history: Although the plaintiffs are Alabama fundamentalists, the issues they have raised transcend the Bible belt. At the very least, evidence introduced in this and earlier school book cases indicates that American teachers and textbook publishers are so wary of discussing religion in the classroom that they are willing to distort history - and literature - in order to avoid the subject. Moreover, it appears that when questions of morality arise in public school classes, they are routinely processed like cheese into the individualistic jargon of humanistic psychology. Thus, pupils are encouraged to discover their own "identities," to learn how to express their true "selves" and to "clarify" their values.
"Are students really better off with the theories of psychologists," asks Harvard's Coles, "than with the hard thoughts of Jeremiah and Jesus?" Indeed, the U.S. Supreme Court has allowed educators to find ways to teach about religion, so long as they do not proselytise. One way would be to include key books from the Bible along with the fables and fairy tales that now clog the curricula. That approach may not satisfy fundamentalists, who want it taught only as sacred Scripture. But it would introduce pupils to what, by any standard, are essential documents in the tradition of Western culture, which is built on religious humanism. Secular humanism may not be a religion, but Judaism and Christianity are most certainly humanistic.
by Kenneth L. Woodward with
Katherine Taylor in Mobile
Source: 'Newsweek', October 27, 1986
Deutsch