JACKSON, Tennessee (LifeSiteNews) — The Jackson-Madison County School Board in Tennessee has voted unanimously to approve an application to establish what would be the first full-blown religious charter school in the United States.
The Christian Post reports that the proposal is to establish Union Academy as a “faith-based Christian college preparatory” school that begins with 206 kindergarten-through-fifth-grade students and gradually growing to 386 students all the way through high school. Jackson-Madison County School System Superintendent Marlon King proposed the idea to Union University, a Baptist school in Jackson.
Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) has vocally supported the development as a landmark for religious freedom and instruction.
“Tennessee parents and children are better off with more educational choices, not fewer. The Jackson-Madison County School System Board was right to approve Union Academy’s request to operate as a charter school and should be commended for refusing to engage in unconstitutional discrimination based upon the school’s religious character,” said ADF Senior Counsel Mark Lippelmann. “Alliance Defending Freedom wholeheartedly supports Union Academy in its endeavor to become the nation’s first religious charter school, opening up educational options and freedom for more Tennessee families.”
While several states allow religious schools to participate in their voucher programs, which allow public funds to be used to send a child to a private school of the parents’ choice, previous attempts to establish religious charter schools – schools that are publicly funded yet operate with much more autonomy than public schools – have been stymied by the judiciary.
Last year, the U.S. Supreme Court deadlocked 4-4 on a proposal to establish a virtual Catholic charter school in Oklahoma, leaving in place an Oklahoma Supreme Court ruling against the school. However, that case tied because Justice Amy Coney Barrett had recused herself. While no public reason was given, it may have been to avoid a perceived conflict of interest due to the school being represented by a close friend and colleague of Barrett’s from her days at Notre Dame Law School.
With no such conflict at issue in Tennessee, the nation’s highest court could very well reach a different conclusion should the case reach it.
Critics of intertwining religion with public education frame it as an impermissible effort by state agencies to “establish” religion. But religion has always been a part of public education dating back to the Founding era of the United States. The Northwest Ordinance of 1787, which established the governance of the Northwest Territories and set standards for the expansion of the country in its early days, called for the establishment of schools specifically because “[r]eligion, morality, and knowledge” are “necessary to good government and the happiness of mankind.”
Supporters say that such religious content is especially integral to civics given the role of faith in America’s formation and prosperity dating back to the nation’s founding and does not constitute an impermissible “establishment of religion.”
The phrase “separation of church and state,” frequently invoked in opposition to religious content on public grounds, is not an official legal clause anywhere in the Declaration of Independence or U.S. Constitution but comes from a letter that Thomas Jefferson wrote to the Danbury Baptist Association on January 1, 1802, reassuring the group of his belief that “religion is a matter which lies solely between Man & his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legitimate powers of government reach actions only & not opinions.”
“I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should ‘make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,’ thus building a wall of separation between Church & State,” Jefferson said in the correspondence.
When taken literally, “‘separation of church and state” is accurate shorthand for one of the practical effects of the First Amendment: recognizing that churches and the state are two distinct entities and neither may control the affairs of the other. Today, however, left-wing activists claim that it means religious ideas and values cannot in any way inform, influence, or be recognized by government and that any expression of faith on government time, on government land, or with government resources is illegal, no matter how benign or voluntary. That interpretation is without basis in the words or actions of America’s Founding Fathers, who viewed religion as vital to America’s success.