Should Religious Values be Taught in Public Schools?

Peter Deutsch, founder - Ben Gamla Jewish Charter School Foundation (JTA)

There is a culture war going on in this country. Unless one has been living under a rock for the past sixty years, that fact should be obvious. At its core, this war centers on a fundamental question: what should our national ethos be?

Should it be one of total personal freedom - to do as one pleases so long as it does not directly harm someone else? Or should that ethos reflect values beyond the pursuit of personal gratification. Values believed to be rooted in a Power greater than ourselves?

The latter position is generally referred to as religious values. In most cases, that includes rules governing intimate human behavior. In the former formulation, there are no values beyond human understanding and consent. As long as two adults agree, anything goes. There are no sexual rules beyond respecting personal boundaries. Morality, in this view, is entirely subjective and relative.

In the religious formulation, however, there are rules that guide behavior far beyond that limitation. Rules believed to have been issued by a Higher Power. These rules may not always be fully understood, but they are honored nonetheless because they are seen as absolute standards rather than relative ones.

If one believes that these higher standards were recorded in a document handed down to humanity, then that document becomes the benchmark by which one lives. Anything less is considered immoral. If, on the other hand, one rejects absolute morality altogether, then such standards are viewed as an infringement on personal freedom.

That, in short, is what the culture war is all about. And it is not theoretical. It determines what kinds of laws we pass, how our children are educated, and ultimately whether the society we live in can sustain itself.

One clear example is the issue of gay sex. If morality is relative to human experience, then gay sex is no less worthy of celebration than heterosexual sex. Any distinction between the two is seen as bigotry, and moral disapproval is considered an attack on personal freedom. And therefore immoral in itself.

Religious people see this differently. For them, gay sex violates a moral code dictated by a Higher Power and is therefore immoral. This does not mean being cruel or hateful toward gay people - God forbid. That would itself be immoral. It simply means acknowledging that certain behaviors are viewed as impermissible within a religious moral framework.

It is fair to say that the country is deeply divided on this issue. While the cultural momentum currently favors tolerance, tolerance increasingly seems to demand the abandonment of religious principles altogether. Popular culture, in particular, is aggressively amoral. In virtually every form of entertainment, gay characters are routinely portrayed as the most moral and ethical figures on screen. A portrayal that powerfully shapes public opinion.

This raises a critical question in a country that values both personal freedom and freedom of religion: should parents have the right to expect their values to be reflected in the public school system? Or does the First Amendment’s separation of church and state prohibit that entirely...

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