Vouchers Are Constitutional;
Will We Pause and Think?
Nathan J. Diament
Vouchers Are Constitutional;
Will We Pause and Think?
Nathan J. Diament
The day the Supreme Court issued its ruling that school voucher plans are constitutional, a colleague at another Jewish organization, one which champions the strict separation of religion and state and opposes school vouchers, told me that they had expected this result and drafted their press release decrying the ruling and committing the organization to battling voucher initiatives several days in advance. While time-efficient, this approach suggests a dogmatic resistance to reconsideration and analysis of changed circumstances that is deeply troubling.
The organized Jewish community’s embrace and advocacy of a “high wall of separation” between religion and state in this country was born in the 1950s – an era in which Jews were openly discriminated against in employment, housing, educational and other arenas. Dissolving the link between America’s public square and the unofficial national religion, Christianity (of the mainline Protestant variety in particular), was a wise strategy for breaking down the barriers faced by Jews. The strategy worked and over the course of the 1960s and early 1970s the Supreme Court often adopted the strict-separationist view in its decisions.
But then, as is often the case, the pendulum swung too far. Despite Jews’ successful integration into American society and the abolition of institutional discrimination against them, the “defense organizations” and others continued the press for separationism, even as this philosophy was fostering an American public ethos that was not neutral toward religion, but hostile toward it and hostile toward the values and interests of the Jewish community.
Thus, in the recent past a number of leading Jewish organizations have not only opposed school voucher programs, but have opposed the right of religious after-school groups to utilize public school facilities (after hours) on an equal basis with secular groups; opposed programs that would increase social welfare program spending because faith-based providers would be eligible to participate; and, most recently, stated that the decision striking down the Pledge of Allegiance due to its reference to God was troubling only because “it makes the idea of church-state separation look bad.”
The Supreme Court’s decision upholding vouchers should provide our community with an opportunity for honest reassessment of long-held positions, not merely for knee-jerk reactions. This is because at the core of the Supreme Court’s reasoning are principles that the Jewish community should not only welcome, but champion – that the Constitution demands neutrality, not hostility, toward religion; that parents are the best arbiters of how their children ought to be educated; and that states are free to adopt policies ameliorate socio-economic inequities.
The latter point -- one which links to our community’s commitment to social justice – which should give the community the most pause and cause for reassessment of its approach. After all, our community generally supports voucher-implemented “choice” programs for impoverished Americans in housing, health care, transportation and dining options; they are generally known as public housing, medicaid, SSI and food stamps. We, of all communities, should recognize good education -- like good housing, health care and food – is a fundamental necessity for a productive life and government should support such for those with modest means. If we are prepared to block any attempt to let low-income parents redeem vouchers at the school they have chosen for their children, we’d better fight the redemption of food stamps at synagogue sponsored food-pantries.
Moreover, American Jews, of all stripes, should embrace the principle of government neutrality toward religion that lies at the heart of the Court’s voucher decision, and a line of decades-old precedents. Our community rightly railed against a system that preferred Protestantism and thus foisted a sense of “outsider” upon anyone of another faith – whether Catholic or Jew, not to mention Muslim. But establishing secularism as society’s public philosophy and banishing religion from the public arena is to make all people of faith into outsiders.
The Framers of the Constitution wisely proscribed the “establishment of religion” and championed its “free exercise” so that this society could grow to one which is religiously diverse and tolerant, not sanitized into secularism. In the main, we have achieved this goal and thus stand as a model for the many nations around the world which remain torn by religiously-fueled strife or repressed under theocratic-totalitarian regimes; as essential element in our post-9/11 world.
As a community that strives to have our faith’s moral teachings infuse our public as well as private lives, we should seize this moment for reflection and, yes, debate. We should think openly and consider carefully what policies and programs serve our values and our interests, not jerk our knees one more time.
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Nathan J. Diament is the director for the Institute for Public Affairs – Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations of America
This article was published in the New Jersey Jewish News on July 4, 2002
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