Texas Insider

Tara Ross & Joseph C. Smith, Jr.

To equal parts celebration & condemnation, the Texas State Board of Education (SBOE) overhauled the state’s social-studies curriculum late last month.  Such an action would not normally make headlines outside the state, but in this case, it was almost inevitable.  

Textbook producers often cater to large states such as Texas. Thus, the Board’s decision could impact curricula around the country.

Even before the new standards were approved, the ACLU of Texas was quick to condemn them.

“The Board continues to skew the curriculum,” it stated, “by throwing out parts of history that recognize the separation of church and state, the freedom of religion in the United States, and the struggle of minorities and women for civil rights.”

The new standards, the ACLU concluded, are a “departure from the historical record.”

Meanwhile, the conservative Liberty Institute lauded the new standards, arguing that the alternatives supported by liberals would teach children “misguided versions of history.”

The new Texas curriculum is doubtless imperfect, but in at least one area, it is clearly a step in the right direction.

Among its other changes, the SBOE enacted a provision that requires students to compare and to contrast the language of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution with the phrase “separation of church and state” – i.e., the phrase most courts routinely use to characterize what the First Amendment says with respect to government and religion.

Requiring students to compare the constitutional text to the judicial interpretation seems innocuous enough, yet the requirement has raised howls of protest from those who advocate for complete church-state separation in America. 

At the Washington Post, for instance, one blogger complained that the new Texas curriculum will “improperly explain the meaning and importance to the country’s development of the phrase ‘separation of church and state.’”

The trouble for those who favor “separation of church and state,” of course, is that there is scant support for the doctrine in the Constitution itself.  While that fact alone does not make “separation of church and state” either a good idea or a bad idea, students deserve to learn that fact.

It was the third President of the United States, Thomas Jefferson, who first used the phrase “separation of church and state” to characterize the religion clauses of the First Amendment. He did so in a letter to the Danbury Baptist Association, more than a decade after the First Amendment was ratified.

His advocacy for separation was not well received by his fellow countrymen, which Jefferson himself seems to have realized. Two days after sending his letter, he began attending church services in the U.S. Capitol, a habit that he maintained throughout his presidency. 

In the meantime, his letter about the “separation of church and state” gathered dust.

It was not until 75 years later that the United States Supreme Court plucked Jefferson’s letter from obscurity. In 1879, the Court briefly referenced the letter in Reynolds v. United States, a case regarding a Mormon who had been convicted of bigamy.

The Court issued its decision in partial reliance on Jefferson’s letter. The justices did not attempt to justify their use of the letter or explain why Jefferson’s “separation” was suddenly relevant to the issue of church/state relations. The letter was then largely ignored, again, until the 1947 case of Everson v. Board of Education.

At this late date, the Court firmly and finally seized Jefferson’s “separation” phrase, pronouncing it to be the authoritative interpretation of the First Amendment’s guarantees of religious freedom.

In short, a letter written only after the First Amendment was ratified, and that had been dismissed by the founding generation who wrote and ratified the First Amendment, became the cornerstone of First Amendment jurisprudence only 150 years later and then only by way of judicial fiat.

This history is undisputed, yet it has been ignored in most classrooms for decades.

The Texas Board is acting reasonably when it requires schoolchildren to compare and to contrast the Constitution’s text with the words of Jefferson’s letter.

The furor that has ensued over the matter shows how difficult it can be to drive politically correct versions of history out of classrooms once they have been allowed to creep in.

Tara Ross & Joseph C. Smith, Jr. are the authors of “Under God: George Washington and the Question of Church and State”