The Bible in American Law and Politics. John R. Vile
and other devotional exercises in the public schools.
In the years leading up to this decision, public schools had opened the school day with readings from the King James Bible (KJV). They considered such teaching important to socializing immigrant children, especially those from Roman Catholic countries. Although it exempted students whose parents objected to the KJV, they did not permit them to bring the Catholic Douay Bible because it contained commentary that school officials believed was sectarian in nature. Most Protestants considered the KJV to be nonsectarian because it was acceptable to most Protestant denominations. Catholics generally opposed it because they did not think it was a good translation, because it left out some books that Catholics accepted, and because they thought it should be accompanied by Catholic commentary.
Cincinnati Catholics led by Archbishop John B. Purcell (1800–1883) had developed their own school system but at one point offered to merge the two systems if the Bible were removed from both. Although this plan fell through, in part because Catholics did not think that education should be divorced from religious training, the school board adopted two resolutions:
Resolved, That religious instruction and the reading of religious books, including the Holy Bible, are prohibited in the common schools of Cincinnati, it being the true object and intent of this rule to allow the children of the parents of all sects and opinions, in matters of faith and worship, to enjoy alike the benefits of the common-school fund.
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Resolved, That so much of the regulations on the course of study and the text-books in the intermediate and district schools as reads as follows, “The opening exercises in every department shall commence by reading a portion of the Bible by or under the direction of the teacher, and appropriate singing by the pupils,” be repealed. (Board of Education of Cincinnati v. Minor 1872, 211)
This stirred considerable anger, especially among members of the Protestant clergy, who viewed America as a Christian nation and continued to view any Catholic efforts to defend their own view points as being directed by the pope. Opponents to the resolutions were able to win a two-to-one victory in the Hamilton County Superior Court.
When the case reached the Ohio Supreme Court, future U.S. Supreme Court justice Thomas Stanley Matthews, a Presbyterian elder, was among those who argued for reversing its decision, which is what that court did. Although much of the argument centered on whether curricular decisions were best vested in the school board or in the court, the decision hinged in large part on a provision of the Ohio Constitution, similar to that in the Northwest Ordinance of 1787, that, after providing that “all men have a natural and indefeasible right to worship Almighty God according to the dictates of their own conscience,” went on to provide that “religion, morality, and knowledge, however, being essential to good government, it shall be the duty of the general assembly to pass suitable laws to protect every religious denomination in the peaceable enjoyment of its own mode of public worship, and to encourage schools and the means of instruction” (Board v. Minor 1872, 241). Supporters of religious exercises believed this provision was a positive injunction requiring the teaching of the Bible.
Justice John Welch, who wrote the decision on behalf of the Ohio Supreme Court, disagreed. Recognizing the state’s mandate to promote “religion, morality, and knowledge,” he pointed out, “There is no direction given as to what system of general knowledge, or of religion or morals, shall be taught; nor as to what particular branches of such system or systems shall be introduced into the ‘schools’; nor is any direction given as to what other ‘means of instruction’ shall be employed” (Board v. Minor 1872, 244). Whether consciously or unconsciously echoing Pilate’s rhetorical question to Jesus as recorded in John 18:38, Welch continued, “To enjoy ‘instructions’ in ‘knowledge,’ the knowledge of truth in all its branches—religious, moral, or otherwise—is one thing; and to declare what is truth—truth in any one, or in all departments of human knowledge—and to enjoin the teaching of that, as truth, is quite another thing” (Board v. Minor 1872, 244).
Welch was quite cognizant that it was difficult to separate religious prejudices and convictions from public policies. He observed, however, that it was possible to distinguish the constitution’s regard for the value of religion in general from that of the Christian religion in particular. Pointing to both state and national constitutions, he observed that “neither the word ‘Christianity,’ ‘Christian,’ nor ‘Bible,’ is to be found in either. When they speak of ‘religion,’ they must mean the religion of man, and not the religion of any class of men. When they speak of ‘all men’ having certain rights, they cannot mean merely ‘all Christian men.’ 101Some of the very men who helped to frame these constitutions were themselves not Christian men” (Board v. Minor 1872, 246).
Countering the argument that the constitution must mean Christianity because it is part of the common law, Welch observed, “If Christianity is a law of the state, like every other law, it much have a sanction” (247). Because the nation consists of a largely Christian people, however, it is especially offensive to try to enforce Christianity on others. Paraphrasing Jesus’s words as recorded in Matthew 26:52, Welch observed, “True Christianity asks no aid from the sword of civil authority. It began without the sword, and wherever it has taken the sword it has perished by the sword” (247). Almost as though he were summarizing a long-standing Protestant critique of Catholicism, Welch observed that “legal Christianity is a solecism, a contradiction of terms” (248). In his view, “Religion is the parent, and not the offspring, of good government”; likely paraphrasing Jesus’s words in Matthew 6:33, Welch added, “Its Kingdom is to be first sought, and good government is one of those things which will be added thereto” (249). If the public schools were to teach Christianity as the true religion, all teachers would have to be Christians, and the very act of teaching their own religion would be to violate the Golden Rule of treating others with respect.
Countering arguments that omitting the teaching of the Bible would give control of the schools to “infidel sects,” Welch observed, “The only fair and impartial method, where serious objection is made, is to let each sect give its own instructions, elsewhere than in the state schools, where of necessity all are to meet; and to put disputed doctrines of religion among other subjects of instruction, for there are many others, which can more conveniently, satisfactorily, and safely be taught elsewhere” (253). He further cited James Madison as one of the founders who supported this position.
Controversy continued even after this decision when the city attempted to tax the property of parochial schools, only to be overturned by a court decision in Purcell v. Gerke (1874).
See also Abington v. Schempp; King James Bible; Philadelphia Bible Wars
For Reference and Further Reading
Board of Education of Cincinnati v. Minor, 23 Ohio St. 211 (1872).
DePalma, Margaret. 2003. “Religion in the Classroom: The Great Bible Wars in Nineteenth Century Cincinnati.” Ohio Valley History 3 (Fall): 17–36.
Mach, Andrew. 2015. “‘The Name of Freeman Is Better than Jesuit’: Anti-Catholicism, Republican Ideology, and Cincinnati Political Culture, 1853–1854.” Ohio Valley History 15 (Winter): 3–21.
Moore, R. Laurence. 2000. “Bible Reading and Nonsectarian Schooling: The Failure of Religious Instruction in Nineteenth-Century Public Education.” Journal of American History 86 (March): 1581–99.
Newsome, Michael Dehaven. 2002. “Common School Religion: Judicial Narratives in a Protestant Empire.” Southern California Interdisciplinary Law Journal 11: 219–337.
Purcell v. Gerke, 25 Ohio St. 229 (1874).
Throckmorton, Warren. 2011. “The Cincinnati Bible Wars: When the KJV Was Removed from Public Schools.” The Christian Post. May 4. https://www.christianpost.com/news/the-cincinnati-bible-wars-when-the-kjv-was-removed-from-public-schools.html.
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