“Our Christian values”

Last week, the United States Supreme Court upheld a decision by the Oklahoma Supreme Court that prohibits religious schools from participating in the state’s charter school program. The decision was 4-4, with Justice Amy Coney Barrett recusing herself (a split decision leaves the lower court’s ruling intact).

The case centered around the attempt by the Oklahoma State Charter School Board to sponsor St. Isidore of Seville Virtual Charter School, a Roman Catholic online school. The presenting legal questions in the case revolved around whether the school was a “state actor,” and how to interpret and apply both the Oklahoma Constitution and the Establishment and Free Exercise clauses of the First Amendment. But aside from the specifics, the case revealed some deeper issues in Christian approaches to and rhetoric about religious liberty.

Consider the response to the decision by Oklahoma’s Republican Attorney General Gentner Drummond, the man who initially brought the suit against the Charter School Board. Following the announcement, Drummond took to X.com to post, “The Supreme Court has ruled in favor of my position that we should not allow taxpayer funding of radical Islamic schools here in Oklahoma. I am proud to have fought against this potential cancer in our state, and I will continue upholding the law, protecting our Christian values and defending religious liberty.”

Notice that Drummond describes the sponsorship of religious charter schools as a “potential cancer,” which he has resisted in order to protect our Christian values and defend religious liberty. But rather than refer to taxpayer funding of a Roman Catholic school, Drummond mentions the potential funding of “radical Islamic schools.” This odd rhetorical move demonstrates some of the difficulties in contemporary approaches to religious liberty. To wit, here we have a government official publicly and proudly “protecting our Christian values” (who exactly is included in “our”?) by prohibiting Christian families from accessing taxpayer funds in support of a Christian charter school, and justifying his actions in terms of resisting the spread of radical Islamic schools in Oklahoma.

In this case, Drummond is drawing on the Oklahoma State Constitution, which says “No public money or property shall ever be appropriated, applied, donated, or used, directly or indirectly, for the use, benefit, or support of any sect, church, denomination, or system of religion, or for the use, benefit, or support of any priest, preacher, minister, or other religious teacher or dignitary, or sectarian institution as such.” Such a provision effectively guarantees secularism, or public atheism. In other words, atheism and agnosticism are taken to be the default operating system for society, whereas formal religions like Christianity and Islam are both regarded as “sectarian.”

This means that public funds may be used to benefit and support atheism, agnosticism, gender ideology, and so forth, but may not be used to fund Christian institutions in any way. To put it another way, it effectively demands that the state catechize children into secularism and public atheism, since that is the only type of public education permitted.

In essence, the secularists have baptized their public atheism as “our Christian values,” and are currently relying on Christian officials like Drummond to defend it. Drummond’s statement indicates that he is rejecting one false religion (Islam) but tacitly embracing another (secularism) under the banner of “protecting Christian values” and “defending religious liberty.”

What many American Christians struggle to grasp is that it is possible to have a society built on “our Christian values” that tolerates (but does not privilege) those who don’t share our religious profession. We had one for over 150 years, and vestiges of it remain (Drummond’s statement seems to acknowledge as much). Such a society, however, not only allowed public expressions of Christianity (like Drummond’s), but was willing to privilege Christian institutions in a variety of ways without any compulsion to extend all of such privileges to every non-Christian religion. In other words, it is possible to resist the spread of radical Islamic schools, or Islamic cities in Texas, or 90-foot Hindu statues, without embracing public atheism.

The truth is that there is no such thing as neutrality in ultimate questions. Either American society is built on “our Christian values,” or it isn’t. And if it is, then we ought to be able to devote public funds to inculcating those Christian values into our children. In fact, that would be an interesting question for Attorney General Drummond: Whatever he includes in “our Christian values,” presumably it has something to do with Christianity. If a school in Oklahoma adopted those Christian values as the core of their religious and moral formation, could they seek sponsorship with the Oklahoma Statewide Charter School Board?

Thanks to the efforts of Drummond and the deadlock at the Supreme Court, the answer at the moment appears to be No.