Religion Can Heal and Divide
Religion can heal and divide
By Ellen Goodman, 9/30/2001
The other night I went to a meeting of educators, 30 or more, who had
come to comfort one another and to think together about teaching students
in the aftermath of Sept. 11. A Muslim who lives nearby spoke soberly
about his sorrows and worries, about the distorted images of Islam.
When it was over, a young teacher came up to this man, reaching out to
shake his hand in gratitude. But he looked at her and said, ''My religion
doesn't allow me to shake a woman's hand.''
Now I know as well as anyone that Islam comes in every shade, from
feminist to fundamentalist. I know that it could have been a man from
another religious tradition, an ultra-Orthodox Jew, for example, refusing
to touch a woman. I know moreover that every custom is not an insult and
that the stricture against touching a member of the opposite sex is
explained away by some as modesty, not sexism.
Nevertheless, it felt as if this young teacher had her extended hand
slapped. I was shaken by this disconnection, a refusal so at odds with the
spirit of the gathering.
I left that evening grappling with a hard reality at the heart of this
multicultural country. We have the absolute guarantee of freedom of
religion - even for religions that do not share core civic values.
In the past weeks, we've talked more about religion than ever in my
memory. Americans have sought and found comfort in cathedrals and
synagogues and mosques. We've also found confusion and dismay in the hard
reality that religious fanaticism - an ancient evil - has reached our own
shores.
On the morning after this encounter, I opened my newspaper. A letter to
the editor under a headline ''Let us pray'' was one sarcastic sentence
long: ''Is it OK to pray in the schools now?''
On Page 2, around the news about terrorism, there was word that the
Supreme Court is going to hear a case about school vouchers. The justices
are going to decide whether Ohio - and by extension, any state - can give
money to parents who want to send their children to private schools, which
are almost all religious schools.
Over the past decade, many Americans have come to think of parochial
schools of various faiths as nothing more than orderly, uniformed and
often high-standard alternatives to decaying public schools, especially in
the cities.
The operative phrase is ''school choice.'' The favorite notion is that
parochial schools provide ''competition'' for the ''monopoly'' of public
schools.
But now we are back to basics, as they like to say in school. And the
basic here is not funding or ''choice,'' but the old constitutional
bedrock: separation of church and state.
The generation that wrestled over the creation of this country knew all
about religious diversity and national unity. These founders established
the freedom of religion, the freedom of any American to worship as he or
she wishes. On the other hand, they established a set of civil values that
make us Americans.
We wrestle with this duality. People can believe that the world was
created in seven days. They can believe their own race is supreme, that
gays are sinners, that men are tainted by the touch of a menstruating
woman. They can believe that their religion offers the only way to heaven,
and every nonbeliever is damned to hell.
A church has the absolute right to uphold its own beliefs and teach
them to children. Without that, it would have no center. But are Americans
of different religions to fund those teachings?
Proponents of ''school choice'' have used the language of
discrimination to claim that the government is biased against religion. In
a Supreme Court ruling over a year ago, Justice Clarence Thomas wrote that
rules excluding religious schools from government programs were ''born of
bigotry.''
But we are getting a refresher course in the power of religion to
divide as well as heal. We are being reminded that secular is not a dirty
word. Our shared civic values need shoring up - as do the public schools,
the places where children are molded into citizens.
There are old questions being asked these days. How does a country
respect multiculturalism and uphold a shared set of civic beliefs? Should
we be tolerant, even of intolerance? Is this a strength of democracy or a
weakness?
In these arguments, the commitment to a separation of church and state
is not a cliche. It's a core and constitutional value. We have to shake on
it.
Ellen Goodman's
e-mail address is
This story ran on page D7 of the Boston Globe on
9/30/2001.
© Copyright 2001
Globe Newspaper Company.
Page Top