Between Church and State: Religion and Public Education in a Multicultural America

By James W. Fraser and W. Fraser James

Book Overview

A fully updated second edition of this essential look at the continuing tensions between religion and American public schools.

Today, the ongoing controversy about the place--or lack of place--of religion in public schools is a burning issue in the United States. Prayer at football games, creationism in the classroom, the teaching of religion and morals, and public funding for private religious schools are just a few of the subjects over which people are skirmishing. In Between Church and State, historian and pastor James W. Fraser shows that these battles have been going on for as long as there have been public schools and argues there has never been any consensus about what the "separation of church and state" means for American society or about the proper relationship between religion and public education.

Looking at the difficult question of how private issues of faith can be reconciled with the very public nature of schooling, Fraser's classic book paints a complex picture of how a multicultural society struggles to take the deep commitments of people of faith into account--including people of many different faiths and no faith. In this fully updated second edition, Fraser tackles the culture wars, adding fresh material on current battles over public funding for private religious schools. He also addresses the development of the long-simmering evolution-creationism debate and explores the tensions surrounding a discussion of religion and the accommodation of an increasingly religiously diverse American student body.

Between Church and State includes new scholarship on the role of Roger Williams and William Penn in developing early American conceptions of religious liberty. It traces the modern expansion of Catholic parochial schools and closely examines the passage of the First Amendment, changes in American Indian tribal education, the place of religion in Booker T. Washington and W. E. B. Du Bois's debates about African American schooling, and the rapid growth of Jewish day schools among a community previously known for its deep commitment to secular public education.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1421420589
• ISBN13: 9781421420585
• Release Date: September 2016
• Publisher: Johns Hopkins University Press
• Length: 296 Pages
• Weight: 0.90 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 6.0" x 9.0"
• Grade Range: Postsecondary

Customer Reviews

Excellent Resource!

Fraser has done a thoughtful job of researching and writing this excellent text on the history of religion and education in America. The whole "church and state" debate is not all the media cracks it up to be, and here Fraser looks simply at the historical facts: a great read for any educator, home-schooler or anyone interested in "church and state" issues in our nation's history.

Easing Toward A Middle Ground

James W. Fraser, now Dean of the School of Education at Northeastern University in Boston, details for the reader a fascinating history of the issue of church and state in public education in the United States, all the way back to our country's origins, and how the issue has come to be polarized with those who want absolutely no influence of religion whatsoever in both education and the public square at one end of the spectrum and those who would seemingly like to see Christianity, conservative Christianity with all its secular and nationalistic aspects, as the dominating, or only religious influence, at the other end.Fraser makes the case for a middle ground, the allowing of religious expression through its students, regardless of their individual religion, and an equal respect for all by all participants. Respect for all would be expected from the educators as well.The history of the issue will come as much of a surprise to those at either end of the spectrum as the resulting simplicity and validity of the suggested solution. Since Fraser as a clergyman or former clergyman probably stands to the Liberal end of the theological spectrum, and thus would be historically placed at one end of the argument, and your reviewer as a clergyman stands to the so-called evangelical right, or other end, I would like to heartily reccomend both his book and his conclusions.The book deserves wide reading by those on both sides of the issue. Especially those with the loudest rhetoric. Then maybe we can find the middle ground Fraser suggests, and with the respect that all deserve.