Keep Religious Diversity in Public Education

This brief is part of “Election 2024: Policy Playbook,” a series by Rice University and the Baker Institute that offers critical context, analysis, and recommendations to inform policymaking in the United States and Texas.

The Big Picture

• The United States and its public schools are more religiously diverse than ever before.
• Conservative Christian activists and officials in several states have implemented laws and policies that weaken church-state separation and promote Christianity and the Bible in public schools. 
• These education policies impair the ability of public schools to serve a religiously diverse population — including students, teachers, and staff.
• Education policy must address the need for students to access accurate and balanced information about various major religious traditions that they will encounter in an increasingly diverse society.

Summarizing the Debate

Today, the U.S. is more religiously diverse than ever before. According to the Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI), Christianity is still the majority religion (67%), but its share of the population has been declining. The Christian population is itself quite diverse, consisting of myriad denominations and nondenominational communities — none of which claims a majority of Christians — who disagree among themselves over theology, morality, politics, and other issues. As Figure 1 shows, around one-third of Americans are now either non-Christians (5%) or religiously unaffiliated (26%).

Figure 1 – The Religious Affiliation of Americans, 2013 and 2023

Increasing religious diversity in the general U.S. population translates to increasing religious diversity in public schools — including students, teachers, and staff. Providing a quality education to so varied a student population is itself a formidable challenge. Yet, arguably, the constitutional principle of separation of church and state assists public education in meeting this challenge. While its definition is contested, the principle is generally understood, based on the First Amendment, as prohibiting the government from the following:

• Endorsing any particular religion. 
• Interfering with the free exercise of religion.

In the public school context, a succession of U.S. Supreme Court decisions since the late 1940s has, despite shifts in the court’s interpretation of church-state issues, generally held that public schools may not endorse any particular religion and must not favor one religion over others. This approach establishes a level playing field for all religious communities, which is especially important for a public school population composed of many religious groups.

Yet even as the nation and its public school population have become more religiously diverse, conservative Christian activists, politicians, and officials at the state level are working to weaken church-state separation in public education and to promote policies that arguably favor Christianity and the Bible in public schools. Here are some notable recent examples:

• Louisiana: A new law established in 2024, H.B. 71, requires that all public school classrooms display a specific version of the Ten Commandments, a text derived from the Bible. Similar legislation has been proposed in Texas and Oklahoma. 
• Oklahoma: In June 2024, State Superintendent of Public Instruction Ryan Walters, who has promised “to put God back in schools,” directed his state’s public schools to “incorporate the Bible” into the curriculum for grades 5 through 12. 
• Texas: A 2023 law, S.B. 763, permits public school districts to hire religious chaplains to assist with student counseling and other related duties, with no certification requirements and without any prohibition on proselytizing.
• Texas: Texas Education Agency’s (TEA) proposed K-5 Reading and Language Arts curriculum has been criticized by several observers, including this author, for overemphasizing Christianity at the expense of other religions and for incorporating biblical texts in ways that are both unnecessary and unwarranted.

Advocates justify these and similar measures on various grounds. Some argue — with justification — that students must be familiar with the Bible in order to understand and appreciate references in Western literature and culture. Others argue — on dubious historical grounds — that the Bible and Christian teachings underpin the U.S. Constitution and legal system. Still others contend that students need an injection of morality or “faith,” or that official prayer in schools is essential to the formation of American self-identity.

Expert Analysis

In considering the practical impact of policies that undermine church-state separation in public education, the late Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor — a Republican appointed by President Ronald Reagan — wrote in a 1984 decision that government endorsement of religion “sends a message to nonadherents that they are outsiders, not full members of the political community, and an accompanying message to adherents that they are insiders, favored members of the political community.”

Indeed, the legislation and policies cited above risk turning non-Christians into outsiders in their own public school classrooms by overemphasizing the Bible and other Christian-related texts in public classrooms. For instance, Louisiana’s requirement that public school classrooms prominently display a biblical text, the Ten Commandments, risks alienating Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, and nonreligious students, parents, and teachers — just as many Christian students and parents would surely feel alienated if classrooms were required to post only the Muslim shahada or the Buddhist Three Refuges. 

State policies that weaken church-state separation or promote a particular religious tradition, such as biblical Christianity, over other traditions will likely have the following results:

• They damage the ability of public education to create an equitable learning environment for all students, regardless of religious affiliation or lack thereof.
• They force taxpayers to fund and educators to promote the teaching of religious views they may not share.
• They prevent students from gaining the skills they need to flourish in an increasingly diverse society.
• They potentially embroil public schools and school districts in messy debates over theology and biblical interpretation that divide Christians today.

Efforts to undermine church-state separation in public education, and especially to promote Christianity over other religions, work against the ability of public schools to offer equal educational opportunity to a religiously diverse population.

Policy Actions

At first glance, the solution might be to exclude religion entirely from the public school curriculum. However, that extreme option is neither necessary nor desirable. Students stand to benefit from a basic familiarity with the religions they are likely to encounter in an increasingly diverse society.

Policymakers can support students’ education by advocating the following:  

• Support public school instruction that is balanced and accurate and neither overemphasizes nor favors one religion over others, so as to respect all members of the public school population and to prevent the insider-outsider problem.
• Recognize ways the study of diverse religions prepares students to be citizens who “engage with people of diverse religious identities and belief systems with civility and respect.” Such study should “amplify diverse voices, combat intolerance, and create opportunities for community building,” as expressed by the National Council of Social Studies. 
• Model several states’ already established curriculum standards that promote balanced coverage of religion in high school world history, as I noted in a 2021 study.
• Approach balanced instruction about religion as a way to improve student comprehension of Western literature and culture by becoming familiar with the Bible and Christianity alongside other religious traditions that comprise U.S. society today.

The Bottom Line

Education policy must take into consideration the increasing religious diversity of the public school population — students, teachers, and staff — and ensure equal educational opportunity for all students regardless of creed by promoting curricula that include balanced and accurate instruction about major religions and do not seek to weaken church-state separation or promote one religion over others. 

This material may be quoted or reproduced without prior permission, provided appropriate credit is given to the author and Rice University’s Baker Institute for Public Policy. The views expressed herein are those of the individual author(s), and do not necessarily represent the views of Rice University’s Baker Institute for Public Policy.