Expect battles as Oklahoma lowers church-state wall
By Noah Feldman / Bloomberg Opinion
Oklahoma has approved a public Catholic charter school, which would be the first overtly religious school in the U.S. to be fully funded by government. The arrangement violates the establishment clause of the Constitution as it has been interpreted from its adoption in 1791 until today. Nevertheless, it is possible that the Supreme Court could allow it as part of its ongoing revolutionary transformation of the law of church and state.
That would put us in a brave new world where states come under legal pressure to fund all religious education equally; an outcome that seems sure to increase strife over government-funded religious beliefs, not to mention public education.
The school in question is to be an online institution called St. Isidore of Seville Catholic Virtual School. The name alone is astonishing. I first encountered Archbishop Isidore (560-636) in a history class at my private Jewish high school, where we learned how he proposed the law that took Jewish children away from their parents to ensure they got a Catholic upbringing. He also successfully proposed the law that banned Jews (including those who had converted to Catholicism) from holding public office and wrote an anti-Semitic classic, “De fide catholica contra Iudaeos” (“Of the Catholic faith against the Jews”).
You would think anyone seeking a test case for state funding of religious teaching would have preferred to name the school after a more ecumenical saint. But who knows? Maybe the school’s founders wanted to suggest that the state should fund even the most divisive religious education.
https://www.heraldnet.com/opinion/comment-expect-battles-as-oklahoma-lowers-church-state-wall/
= new reply since forum marked as read
