Many public charter schools in the state of Hawaii are explicitly religious. For more than two decades, students at Hawaiian-focused schools have offered chants and prayers to the pantheon of gods who rule over skies, seas, and earth, including to the volcanic god, Pelehonuamea ("she who shapes the sacred land"), popularly known as Madam…

Sport and religion have been linked in many societies and are still a part of many traditions today. In recent years, the topic of prayer in interscholastic sport has received public attention due to many high-profile court cases. "Santa Fe Independent School District v. Doe" (2000) was the landmark case that prohibited school officials,…

Much of the discussion regarding religion and schooling in the US has been limited to ideological clashes surrounding the role of the courts and, ostensibly, the much litigated issue of prayer in schools. This comes at the expense of an examination of deeper curricular issues rooted in language and school mechanisms borne of historical…

Theological education typically includes classroom worship, a practice of great pedagogical power and curricular import. As pedagogy, classroom worship does four things. It focuses teaching and learning on God, and fosters theological dispositions necessary for sustaining that attention. Second, it rightly positions the entire class in dialogical…

This paper addresses the sensitive issue of the teaching of religions and beliefs in schools by analysing two recent decisions of the European Court of Human Rights. In these cases, the Court asserts that students should be exempted from compulsory courses on religion or from courses that are not conveyed in an objective, critical and pluralist…

The Establishment Clause of the First Amendment to the U. S. Constitution sets forth the separation of church and state required in public schools. That clause has been interpreted in a lengthy history of U. S. Supreme Court decisions. Nevertheless, accommodating one person's right of religious expression while not infringing on another person's…

Employing the Advocacy Coalition Framework to ground the analysis, this article begins with an historical overview of the US Protestant Right and its involvement with the politics of public schooling. It then moves to a discussion of a few current legal and policy issues (intelligent design, evolution, the Kansas state board of education, school…

This book offers an examination of the related topics of school prayer and character education in the United States, advocating for their return to public schools. In 1962 and 1963, the U.S. Supreme Court made rulings that removed prayer and Bible reading from public schools. But in the aftermath of the rulings, the nation endured one of the worst…

Religion plays an important role in social studies content and is difficult to ignore, especially because of current world events. In our global society, it is more important than ever to know about and understand the religious beliefs of others. The social studies curriculum is infused with religion, but teachers circumvent the issue, mistakenly…

A letter from Rod Paige, United States Secretary of Education, introduces a booklet which provides guidance to state educational agencies (SEAs), local educational agencies (LEAs), and the public on constitutionally protected prayer in U.S. public elementary and secondary schools. The guidance also sets forth and explains the responsibilities of…

In this article, the author reports that under the No Child Left Behind Act, schools must submit a written statement to the state department of education by October 1 each year saying that they won't prevent students from saying constitutionally allowed prayers. The author also reports on rampant student absences faced by some district schools…

Suggests that the Supreme Court's Santa Fe v. Doe decision (involving voluntary, student-led prayer at high school football games) was erroneous. Concludes that the Supreme Court's jurisprudence in this area has effectively expunged religion from the public square, particularly public schools, by writing into the Constitution a strict wall between…

Examines various key positions that have been put forth in the dispute concerning religion and public schools, discussing several important rulings concerning religion and public schools, noting that religious differences pose a special challenge to the conduct of a pluralist public life, and calling for a closer examination of other perspectives…

Uses responses to the 1987 "Phi Delta Kappan/Gallup Poll of the Public's Attitudes toward the Public Schools" to point out the possibility that proponents of school prayer may not be interested in religious devotion, but may be seeking the establishment of sectarian religion in public schools. (LS)

The presidency of George W. Bush has polarized the church-state debate as never before. The Far Right has been emboldened to use religion to govern, while the Far Left has redoubled its efforts to evict religion from public life entirely. Fewer people on the Right seem to respect the church-state separation, and fewer people on the Left seem to…