Today’s youngsters can gain much from learning about cultures, ideas and practices that differ from their own. Social processes and pressures with respect to religion make for particularly interesting study, whether they occur in history or in the present day.

What is it to be immersed within a population of people that generally holds to other understandings and practices?  How is it to "think differently" amidst a society that presses for acceptance of its prevailing worldview?

Students can study about people whose belief systems and traditions set them apart from the mainstream. And, they can consider the situations of people whose contemplation and independent reasoning have resulted in their reaching conclusions or holding to perspectives far out of line with prevalent belief concerning important matters. The religion realm, including irreligion, offers students some of the best examples of interplay between conforming and nonconforming thought in humankind.

Throughout history there have been those who have held to ideas and worldviews far different from, or directly confronting, the strongly held religious beliefs of their neighbors. Holding to an idea that challenges tradition or authority has seldom been easy. In authoritarian nations, it can be dangerous. Even today’s democratic societies can make things pretty tough for the different thinking citizen.

We are exceedingly fortunate that the United States accords to all its citizens liberty of conscience. Constitutional protections enable the entire population of our pluralistic society to live amicably and believe, or not, as they wish. Institutionalizing state-church separation into our laws (by way of the Establishment clause of the U.S. Constitution) was an enlightened and unconventional idea in western history. We pride ourselves on being a pluralistic society that accepts all kinds of believers, even tiny minority religions.

Even so, in our own nation—one that loudly proclaims individual rights and freedoms for all citizens—certain “different notions” are not readily tolerated. Society presses toward a conformity—to recognize and acknowledge at least some sort of deity or force (a religious worldview). For an individual to do otherwise (hold or declare a nonreligious worldview) is proscribed. As any nonbeliever can attest, society takes note of independent thinking that leads too far from mainstream notions.

On the whole, though, present-day American society and law grants us all considerable liberty to think and to believe, or not believe. That is the civic promise of religious liberty the Constitution offers all citizens. The ideal of neutrality helps ensure that liberty within the nation’s public schools.

Even though religions will vary in general cultural legitimacy, public schools, being government institutions, aren’t to privilege one religion over another; nor are they to privilege religion generally over nonreligion. With respect to the diversity of possible personal worldviews, they stay neutral. In keeping with this concept, this web site aims to help teachers:

A classroom teacher imparts an image to students of how America really looks upon its citizens’ religious freedom. The best possible position for teachers is that they foster pluralism.

Pluralism goes beyond diversity. Whether a youngster’s type of worldview is majority or minority, dominant in society or marginalized, familiar or unfamiliar, popular or taboo, the child in public school is a citizen of the school, deserving of a civil classroom in which all belong and all learn to work together. In such a place, all will be practiced in respectful acknowledgment and due regard for each person’s liberty of conscience.

We feel this is necessary if our schools are to build citizens who will continue to preserve one of America’s most precious freedoms. Everyone is to have liberty of conscience on matters of ultimate human concern. Religious liberty is something we want to keep.

Mynga Futrell, Ph.D.
Paul Geisert, Ph.D.