Approach to Mutual Respect: The Christian Schools Controversy, An

Abstract

FIRST PARAGRAPH(S)|The tension between church and state is most glaringly highlighted in the issues surrounding education. The question of prayer in the public schools, while resolved in the Supreme Court of the United States over twenty years ago, created a constitutional itch for more than a hundred years and is, once again, front and center in the national consciousness. The issue of state aid to parochial education has endured from at least the time of the Northwest Ordinance as persistently nettlesome. Whether they take on the shadings of a tuition tax credit or other form of aid, transportation for parochial students in publicly-owned vehicles, special education programs, or use, on the mirror side of the problem, of public school facilities for proselytizing, church-state educational issues are the stuff of political polemics" and legislative and judicial maneuvering. |On the one side of the debate stand the establishment clause interpretations. On the other side stand the free exercise clause decisions. That the Supreme Court of the United States has developed doctrines for applying these principles cannot honestly be disputed. That the doctrines are...