Losing Less Religion

First, the good news. The Groton-Dunstable Regional High School Chamber Chorus, a highly regarded Massachusetts high school group, will have the honor of singing at St. Anthony’s Basilica in Padua, Italy on Easter Sunday next month.

The bad news? The chorus almost lost this opportunity due to overzealous First Amendment lawyers who seem to have lost track of their priorities in the age of Trump.

This story begins last fall, when the chorus was slated to perform during an Easter Sunday Mass in the historic Basilica. One school board member found fault with this plan, arguing that having the kids actually participate in the Mass constituted a violation of the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause. She brought in the big guns: the legal advocacy group Americans United for the Separation of Church and State.

Americans United wrote the school district a letter on November 16, demanding that the Easter performance be cancelled. The school district, fearing a legal fight, obliged. After general outcry from parents, the school was able to reach a compromise: The chorus would perform between the Basilica’s Easter services, but not during them. (Full disclosure: My mother was interviewed in her capacity as a constitutional law professor in one of the initial news stories about the cancellation of the performance. I am also a choral singer.)

Two caveats deserve mention before delving into this strange episode. First, the exchange between the school and Americans United does not represent one of the great social justice issues of our time. Groton and Dunstable are affluent communities, and parents of the singers were more than capable of advocating on behalf of their views.

Second, Americans United is usually a reasonable organization that does good work. In 2005, for example, it was part of a lawsuit that successfully challenged the teaching of intelligent design as science in a Pennsylvania school district.

Given the group’s strong record, however, its priorities in the Groton-Dunstable case are puzzling. The technical, legal questions at stake require expert analysis than cannot be provided here, but this incident raises more fundamental issues. First, eight days after the election of Donald J. Trump to the presidency, one would expect a group committed to the separation of church and state to have more pressing concerns than a high school chorus trip.

More broadly, that Americans United even entertained the school board member’s complaint points to problems with how our education system addresses religion and the humanities.

When we approach learning about a cultural tradition, its artistic productions deserve special attention. This idea is fairly uncontroversial. Further, great art—from the Renaissance polyphony the Groton-Dunstable chamber chorus will likely perform in Padua to the mosaics of the Great Mosque of Damascus to the masquerade dances of the Yoruba—has historically been created for specific contexts. Often, that context is explicitly religious, as in the case of many significant works of Western choral music.

Denying these religious origins of much of humanity’s cultural heritage does little educational good. In the case of the Groton-Dunstable chorus, the students were already singing religiously inspired music. Experiencing these works in the context for which they were made—in this instance, a church service—fits comfortably with the educational goal of learning about a cultural and artistic tradition.

When groups like Americans United interpret the First Amendment to prevent students from learning about religion as a cultural and historical phenomenon—as distinct from learning about a specific religion as representing some metaphysical or scientifically provable truth—they risk further decreasing our already-poor understanding of the global world in which we live. Would the Trump campaign’s rhetoric of religious divisiveness have been so successful had learning about different religious traditions and humanist philosophies, and visiting places of worship, been a more formal part of public school curriculums? Given the misconceptions that abound about so many religious traditions, including Christianity and Judaism, limiting the ability of our educational system to address religion fully seems a poor direction for public policy.

Indeed, attending a religious service for the sake of improving understanding of the human experience need not clash with the principles of the Constitution and a secular education. The philosopher of history R.G. Collingwood defined the task of history as “the re-enactment of past thought in the historian’s own mind.” This idea of re-enactment can perhaps be applied beyond history to most humanistic endeavors that call upon us to consider works, including artistic ones, made by historical actors. Collingwood’s concept of “re-enactment” gains particular importance in the context of modern democracy, where considering how our fellow citizens live their traditions is part of developing civic consciousness. Experiencing religion in action helps broaden our understanding of how cultures in our communities have viewed and continue to view life—an essential goal of a humanities education.

The Constitution guarantees that our schools do not impose religious beliefs on students. It ought not prevent them from learning about the great cultural productions of human history to the fullest extent possible. While the facts of specific cases matter, the Groton-Dunstable performance certainly did not rise to the level of a crisis of secular education. Maintaining the wall of separation between church and state remains vital. But when it comes to understanding our history and our present moment, perhaps we could all use a little more education in religion.

Nelson L. Barrette ’17, a former Crimson editorial chair, is a History concentrator living in Winthrop House. His column appears on alternate Mondays.