The next time you experience a lull in some casual conversation, try posing this question to your companions. (It has the advantage of mixing money, religion, and politics.) "If a student attends a private, church-related college, majoring in theological studies and preparing for ordination as a minister, should that student be eligible to receive federal financial aid?"
Some answers have already been given. "No," said a federal judge in the state of Washington, telling Joshua Davey, a student at a college affiliated with the Assemblies of God, that the government was not required to fund religious instruction in his pastoral theology track. "Yes," said the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, ruling that to deny Mr. Davey's funding was to discriminate against him on the basis of religion.
The highest court in the land will break the tie. The Supreme Court agreed this week to hear arguments in the case next fall.
What the Court should do is clear. It should recognize that the Bill of Rights remains in the Constitution. It should assert that, as long as federal funds are available to assist undergraduate education, any act that excludes aid for the study of religion would violate the Constitutional provision against prohibiting the free exercise of religion.
The case is becoming the newest battlefield in the great national war over the separation of church and state. Upon the simple constitutional principle that Congress shall not make laws either respecting the establishment of religion or prohibiting its free exercise, we Americans have developed arsenals of arguments to aim at each other. We become especially trigger-happy when the topic is education.
Last fall, incoming first-year students at the University of North Carolina were given a required reading list to complete before they began their studies. Included was a book about Islam. Some North Carolinians who had never seemed to mind mixing church and state when it involved their own faith became enraged at the thought of mixing education about another religion with the state.
The truth is that government dollars flow through religious institutions all the time. Many necessary social services that are funded by the government are actually provided through agencies established by religious organizations. Government dollars help pay for care delivered by hospitals affiliated with faith communities. Nursing homes, established and operated by religious bodies, serve the needs of their patients while receiving both Medicare and Medicaid funds. Faith-based drug treatment programs, homeless shelters, and food pantries receive government aid. Those are all socially beneficial services that would not be available if narrow exclusions were instituted as a way of separating church from state.
Education is where we seem to draw the battle lines. A president who takes his oath of office while resting his hand on a Bible would probably violate the law if he walked into an elementary school classroom, opened that Bible, and read from it. A Muslim military chaplain, compensated by the government, may lead prayers to Allah in a government-owned tent for personnel wearing government-issued uniforms. But that same chaplain would have a hard time engaging in the same actions at a public high school.
In the very narrow terms of the Davey case, it is possible that only students who have declared their intention to pursue careers as clergy while majoring in religious or theological studies will be affected. But larger issues are at stake.
First, all students enrolled in private, religiously affiliated colleges and universities are potentially vulnerable. These students already have much higher out-of-pocket costs than their counterparts in state-subsidized public institutions.
Second, students enrolled in private, religiously affiliated or public colleges and universities may find it necessary to avoid announcing their vocational plans for ministry. They might have to adopt a new version of "don't ask, don't tell" in order not to jeopardize financial aid.
Will the Supreme Court decide that a student who majors in religion, intending to enter the ministry, is not eligible to receive federal aid, but a student who majors in sociology, quietly intending to enter the ministry, is eligible? Will the court decide that a student who takes one course in Christian theology, one in Nietzschean philosophy, one in Celtic myths, and one in Shinto poetry is eligible for full federal aid, or only for partial federal aid, or for no federal aid? Would a school's financial aid officer have to petition the court for an answer to such questions before awarding aid?
The reality is that we Americans do not want the federal government in the judicial, executive, or legislative branches intruding that directly into our personal lives, our intellectual choices, or our religious preferences. Society as a whole benefits from the education of the people, as education enriches our mutual understanding of one another and enables certain necessary social services to be delivered without discrimination. And that remains true, regardless of the career path one follows.
Nevertheless, it appears that the high court will not stay out of our affairs. What's worse, the court will likely make its ruling in the summer of 2004, just as the major political parties are preparing for national conventions to nominate their presidential candidates. Whatever the court's ruling, it could entice political leaders to demagoguery on matters of religion.
After all, unlike faith, Electoral College votes are finite. And political calculations can cause people to compromise many things including great, simple, constitutional principles.