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I am opposed to the government funding the practice of religion on the basis of separation of church and state. This seems to obviously violate that. Am I missing anything here?
You're missing that this has been continuously violated for decades. The state will gladly fund and evangelize for belief systems based on essentially religious principles ("equity," "egalitarianism," "blank slate," etc) as long as the belief system can disguise itself as "secular" and "basic human decency." This isn't punish violation of "separation of church and state," it's punishing heresy. An extracurricular about LGBT identity (theology/catechesis) or civil rights history (church history) would face no such scrutiny.
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The government's not funding any of this. It was allowing outside groups to offer electives and chose to ban a bible class from the list.
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Seperation of church and state was never about protecting the state from religion, but protecting religion from the state. The former is a contemporary reimagining of the meaning of the seperation to suit political ends. Similarly, it was freedom of religion, not freedom from religion as has entered the popular lexicon.
As if the state ever needs protecting in this manner! Even if the state (or the people managing the state) does implicitly profess a religion, even a secular one, the principle of seperation of church and state means that the state couldn't impose its views on the genuine and legitimate free expression of religion on the people. Which is arguably is exactly what's happening in this situation.
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The free exercise of religion is thwarted when the state mandates that you cannot exercise religion in public school, because the exercise of religion necessitates regular practice and study, and this necessity conflicts with the time schedule and obligations of secular education. 8am to 3pm every day of the workweek, with extra-curriculars extending that to 5pm, effectively abolishes religion if religion is not included in the classroom. A good solution is to allow the taxes of religious people to go towards their own religious education which is to take place in public or private school. The “separation of church and state” is a succinct phrase which helps explain why the free exercise of religion can’t be prohibited, but it shouldn’t be misunderstood to mean that the state prohibits religious activity in state facilities — if anything it means that it must allow all kinds of religious activity in state facilities. This includes religious activity in schools.
This argument would be stronger if school was monopolizing students time. From my understanding, the school is not. Plenty of kids have enough free time to learn an instrument, play a sport, get really good in some video game, become an expert of some nerdy lore like warhammer, baseball or LotR, etc. I am sure that there are religions who mandate that their followers study their scripture for at least five hours a day, but if you feel you need to accommodate these in public schools, then the next thing you will be someone saying that their religion requires them to loudly yell 'Blessed be His Noodly Appendages' every five minutes.
Do you generally propose a system where the general taxes of people in some special interest groups are used for the goals of these groups? So the religious taxpayers get to fund religious education, while the taxes paid by of fans of adult entertainment go to fund state-run strip clubs?
Ideally, taxes are there for universal expenses. Almost all citizens use roads. Almost all citizens benefit from not being invaded. I will grant you that a lot of the sinks modern states pour taxes into are not that clear-cut public goods: public education, aircraft carriers (for the US) and welfare, preservation of the environment, cultural events and a zillion other things can be debated at length.
But the key point is that taxes go to what society has decided are collective needs. If you are proposing taxing religious people more so that their extra taxes can fund religious education (and the same for the admirers of scantly clad females and strip clubs), then I am ok with it. Of course, the easier system would be that the state does not collect these voluntary taxes, and people get to spend their money after taxes however they want.
What you’ve listed are leisure activities. Video games, fantasies, sports, and playing an instrument are for leisure. (Unless a student is exceptional, they have just one hour a week of a violin teacher or something which may constitute non-leisure education, I suppose). The fact that students do not typically learn from books/teachers in an organized setting away from their school system strongly indicates that school has a monopoly on non-leisure learning. What we can call “book learning”. But book learning is an essential part of religious indoctrination, which means it is an essential part of the exercise of religion. A human is simply not able to absorb “book learning” after ~6 hours of secular education with 1-2 hours of at-home work. To me this means that we have thwarted the free exercise of religion. We have overburdened the right.
One hour is more reasonable, but adding an hour of book-learning on top of the modern school curriculum is an unreasonable burden. I think up to two hours is acceptable.
Category error. Religion is not mere special interest or mere hobby. Religion is a special protected activity for a reason: it encompasses urgent, existential and totalizing moral concerns. It’s its own category of human activity. And the believer necessarily believes that the education in his religion is urgent and essential.
Your theory of taxation is not an enshrined right. But freedom of religion is such a right. It’s both more logical and more just for the tax revenue from a religious group to go toward that group’s religious education — not with extra money, because that overburdens their right to religious exercise. If they are paying for 18 “credits” of high school, then allow them to substitute 8 of these credits for up to “8” religious credits. This way the school is not funding religious education except with the funds of those who desire to practice their right to pursue religious education.
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That's an interesting and complex question.
The big problem is that as the government funding -- and other government capabilities -- take over larger and larger portions of the economy, that line becomes more and more complicated to hold. It's long been policy that "separation of church and state" (technically, the establishment clause: socas is just Jefferson's take) doesn't prohibit the government from paving a road or cleaning up a sidewalk just because a church might use it. Otherwise, you're discriminating against religious organizations as compared to everyone else. When government-granted services and opportunities were not omnipresent, that was not especially hard to handle, because no one (... except... ) cares about a road being paved.
In the modern era, everything from roof repairs to STEM programs to YMCAs to battered women's shelters to horses-for-healing to opera houses to, yes, schools, get cash money. And that's just the Ohio One Time Strategic Community Investment Fund! In the whole-scale situation, the government gets involved everywhere from permitting to insurance to background checks and so on.
To say these things can't draw on government funds is not to avoid government entanglement; it's to provide massive additional constraints specific only to religious projects.
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all well and good, as long as we recognize the official state religion as such and express the same degree of concern wrt it, as OP suggests
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I am in principle, but if we’re funding and teaching leftist civic religion then my religion ought to at least get to be a privately funded alternative.
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