Date of Award
1-7-2013
Document Type
Dissertation
Degree Name
Educational Leadership, Ed.D.
First Advisor
George Foldesy
Committee Members
Ahlam Lee; Brady Banta; Deborah Owens; Thilla Sivakumaran
Call Number
LD 251 .A566d 2012 B32
Abstract
The struggle to accommodate one person's right of religious expression while not infringing upon another person's right to be free from religious coercion has existed since our Founding Fathers first drafted the Bill of Rights more than 200 years ago. The genesis of the controversy lies in the First Amendment to the United States Constitution, which provides in pertinent part that, &ldquo Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.&rdquo Despite the language of the Religious Liberty clauses and of the subsequent decisions interpreting them by the U.S. Supreme Court, the arena of religious freedom has been fertile ground for litigation over the last half-century. In no arena has that battle raged more intensely than in our nation's public schools. Issues of daily prayer, scripture readings, moments for silent meditation, and invocations at extracurricular school activities, graduation ceremonies, and before school board meetings have been so troubling as to necessitate intervention by the United States Supreme Court. The purpose of this study was to examine the religious orientation of public school districts in a geographic region of the United States known as the Bible Belt. The original hypothesis for this study was that public schools located in that region would have a sacred religious orientation. If that were so, those public schools would allow religion so long as it was the preferred religion in their surrounding community. A review of the literature was done to examine foundational concepts necessary to understand the root causes of the debate over the proper place of religion in public education. Landmark and current case law was explored to analyze key Supreme Court and federal court decisions on issues impacting the Establishment Clause and the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment. Existing federal guidelines and statements of principles regarding issues of religion in public schools were reviewed, along with recent incidents in public schools that implicated the Religious Liberty clauses of the First Amendment. Published internet policies from a sample of 64 school districts randomly chosen from eight southern states &mdash Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Tennessee, and Texas &mdash were analyzed to discover commonalities and differences. Superintendents from 22 of the original 64 districts were interviewed to explore practices in those districts, the congruence between policy and practice, the views of superintendents on the role of religion in public education, and the impact of the local community on the religious policies and practices of those districts.
Rights Management
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Recommended Citation
Bennett, Tom A., "A Study of the Religious Orientation of Public School Districts Located in the Bible Belt of the United States" (2013). Student Theses and Dissertations. 831.
https://arch.astate.edu/all-etd/831
