The Bible in American Law and Politics. John R. Vile
James Version of the Bible from which the commandments were taken, had encouraged Wall to resist. Over the course of half an hour, Cooke had intermittently hit Wall’s hand with a rattan stick, approximately three feet in length and three-eighths of an inch think, until he finally compiled. Although his hands had swelled, a doctor believed the injury would not last beyond a day’s time.
Written at a time prior to the application of the Bill of Rights to state actions, the judge focused instead on the state laws and on its constitution. He noted that schools were established under authority of state laws, which prohibited the appropriation of state money “to any religious sect, for the maintenance, exclusively, of its own schools” (1859, 420). He further observed that state laws enjoined schools “to exert their best endeavors to impress on the minds of children and youth, committed to their care and instruction, the principles of piety, justice, and a sacred regard to truth, love to their country, humanity and universal benevolence, sobriety, industry, and frugality, chastity, moderation, and temperance, and those other virtues which are the ornaments of human society, and the basis upon which a republican constitution is founded” (420–21). A state law also provided that “the School Committee of each town and city in the Commonwealth, shall require the daily reading of some portion of the Bible in the common English version, and shall direct what other books shall be used in the public schools” (421).
The Boston school committee had specifically required that “the morning exercises of all the schools shall commence with reading a portion of the Scripture in each room by the teachers, and the Board recommend that the reading be followed with the Lord’s Prayer repeated by the teacher alone, or chanted by the teacher and the children in concert, and that afternoon session close with appropriate singing, and also that the pupils learn the Ten Commandments, and repeat them once a week” (421). These laws needed to be measured against the provision in the state constitution that provided:
That it is the right as well as the duty of all men in society publicly and at stated seasons to worship the Supreme Being, the great Creator and Preserver of the universe. And no subject shall be hurt, molested, or restrained in his person, liberty, or estate, for worshipping God in the manner and seasons most agreeably to the dictates of his own conscience, or for his religious professions or sentiments, 122provided he doth not disturb the public peace, or obstruct others in their religious worship. (1859, 421)
Noting that “our schools are the granite foundation on which our republican form of government rests” (1859, 421), the court observed that, if children were to insist only upon reading a particular version of the Bible, this would be to take the decision over the choice of books “from the State government” and place it “in the hands of a few children” (422). If Roman Catholic children could make such a claim, so could Universalists, those who favor sprinkling instead of baptism by immersion, and even those who might think that the Bible points to three gods rather than one. Classifying such deference as “narrow and sectarian,” the judge concluded that the state constitution was designed “for the protection of all religions” (422) and “intended to prevent persecution by punishing religious opinions” (423).
Apparently regarding the King James Version of the Bible as nonsectarian (the very point that the student was contesting), the court observed, “The Bible has long been in our common schools. It was placed there by our fathers, not for the purpose of teaching sectarian religion, but a knowledge of God and of his will, whose practice is religion” (423). Pointing out that the law did not require students “to believe it,” or “to receive it as the only true version of the laws of God,” the court further observed, “The teacher enters into no argument to prove its correctness, and gives no instructions in theology from it. To read the Bible in school for these and like purposes, or to require it to be read without sectarian explanations, is no interference with religious liberty” (423). Moreover, to accept a plea of conscience against reading a particular translation of the Bible would be to open the schools to Jewish requests to read the Bible from scrolls or the original Hebrew. It would be the equivalent to having courts allow oaths “by swearing the Protestant by the uplifted hand, the Roman Catholic upon the Evangelists, the Jew upon the Pentateuch, while facing the East, with his head covered, and refusing to admit the Infidel as a witness at all!” (423).
Answering the argument that the boy was following his father’s instructions, the court cited the biblical proverb that a house divided against itself cannot stand (Mark 3:25), to say that the teacher must govern the school just as a father governs the family (424). Were the school to allow students like Wall to use the Douay (Roman Catholic) version of the Bible, it would in fact be to violate the constitutional provision prohibiting tax money to be used for sectarian schools. Over time, an accumulation of such exemptions, like tiny threads woven into large cables to uphold a suspension bridge, would bind church and state together forever (425).
As to punishment, it is limited both at home and at school, but in this case Wall could have ended the punishment sooner by complying, and the punishment did not exceed the bounds “of sound discretion” (426).
The most fascinating aspect of the case is the way that the judge accepted the King James Version of the Bible as nonsectarian because it was used by multiple Protestant denominations, even though it was not accepted by the Catholic Church. It also seems odd that the court did not consider the possibility that Wall might simply have been permitted to remain silent or absent himself during the recitation of the Ten Commandments, which, while presenting its own 123problems, appears to have been the practice of some schools prior to the decision in Abington v. Schempp.
See also Abington v. Schempp (1963); King James Version of the Bible; Roman Catholics; Ten Commandments
For Reference and Further Reading
Cushman, Robert Fairchild. 1955. “Holy Bible and the Public Schools.” Cornell Law Review 40 (Spring): 475–99.
“In the Police Court of Boston, Massachusetts. April, 1859. Commonwealth, on Complaint of Wall vs. M’laurin F. Cooke.” American Law Register 7 (May): 417–26. Cited as Commonwealth v. Cooke, 7 Am. L. Reg. 417 (Police Court of Boston, MA, 1859).
Communism and Anti-Communism
One of America’s most widespread fears throughout the twentieth century was the fear of communism. Largely the brainchild of Karl Marx (1818–1893) and Frederick Engels (1820–1895), who authored The Communist Manifesto in 1848, communism advocates public, rather than private, ownership of the major means of production as in capitalist, or free enterprise, systems. Believing that economic matters were paramount, they believed that religion was simply a tool used by the ruling class to stifle dissent.
As an ideology, communism urged members of the working class (the proletariat) to revolt against those who owned property and create a dictatorship of the proletariat that would last until, in a kind of secular utopia, the state withered away. In practice, nations that have attempted to implement communism have concentrated power in a single leader or leaders often at a great cost to human life, liberty, and private property, most notably in the former Soviet Union and its one-time East European puppets, in the People’s Republic of China, in North Korea, and in other nations.
Communists seized power in Russia in 1917, causing a concomitant “Red Scare” in the United States during which civil liberties were repressed. On June 25, 1950, North Korea invaded South Korea, and the United States entered conflict under the auspices of the United Nations in a bloody war that eventually included China. That same decade, Senator Joseph McCarthy of Wisconsin led a series of congressional hearings in which he falsely accused many Americans of being communists. Richard Nixon won a Senate election on a strong anti-communist platform and led Senate investigations to uncover communists in government. One reason that Congress added the words “under God” to the pledge to the U.S. flag in 1954 was to highlight the differences between the United States and atheistic communist nations. The United States committed itself to contain communism, which led in part to its long participation in the war in Vietnam. With the fall of the so-called Iron Curtain separating the communist and non-communist European nations in 1989, fears of communism have somewhat abated, and yet North Korea and China still maintain