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Discussion

             As the preceding analysis illustrates, a conscious evaluation of these assumptions may reveal some of the larger issues at stake for all who have engaged in the battle over civic neutrality. Behind the manifest Constitutional questions (and interwoven with them) exist less visible concerns about social equity and power, about the proper and actual functions of the schools and courts, and about the status of accepted versus "differing," or dissenting, views in American culture. These disclosed issues may thereby play a more significant role in the ultimate disposition of the conflict than the specific arguments they have engendered. Without such direct acknowledgment and discussion, root sources of conflict are likely to remain hidden, and hence to elude resolution.

             It is precisely this process of identification and reconsideration that a liberal, democratic education must engender. Yet in a culture at times deeply conflicted over the very issue of ideological diversity--at those times, particularly, when dissent takes its most fundamental form, calling into question entrenched economic, philosophic, and/or political orthodoxies--this critical educative function remains a volatile, and hence substantively neglected, one.

             It is a function that becomes especially problematic when it involves beliefs that are deeply embedded and fundamentally aligned with the ways in which many people have constructed their understanding of the world and their identity within it. The more closely held the belief system, the more difficult it becomes to find common ground for critical reexamination or for equitable renegotiation. As Marsden comments, "[t]he Catch-22 of Christianity and public policy in a society that is ethnically and religiously diverse is that if Christianity is to have a voice in shaping public philosophy, it seems that equity demands that it do so in a way that gives its voice no special weight"[59]--a primacy central to the beliefs of many Christians.

             Such collisions between perspectives present themselves on every side of the religious-practice dispute. On the one hand, in assuming its own neutrality, the Court--while substantively taking into account a number of marginalized religious views, unlike the lower courts whose decisions it reversed and, perhaps, the preponderance of American courts historically--has not squarely faced the paradox of how to accommodate minority views without ignoring the legitimate concerns of critics in the mainstream or, likewise, the extent to which indoctrination might rightly be seen as a shared concern. Even the more extreme views of the ultra-fundamentalists, Provenzo notes, "have raised important questions concerning the role that the public schools play in promoting specific political and social ideologies; the rights of parents to determine what their children will learn; and whether or not the schools should teach values"[60]--or what/whose values should be taught. A less evident but more essential difficulty may lie in the Court's use of conventional social categories to define a protected group--the same categories that previously meant the exclusion of some individuals, so defined (or confined), from the American "norm" or mainstream. For Minow, this is the heart of the difference dilemma:

The stigma of difference may be recreated both by ignoring it and by focusing on it. Decisions about education, employment, benefits, and other opportunities in society should not turn on an individual's race, ethnicity, disability, race, gender, religion, or membership in any other group about which some have deprecating or hostile attitudes. Yet refusing to acknowledge these differences may make them continue to matter in a world constructed with some groups, but not others, in mind. The problems of inequality may be exacerbated both by treating members of minority groups the same as members of the majority and by treating the two groups differently....
The dilemma for decision-makers--courts, states, employers--is how to overcome past hostilities and degradation of people on the basis of group differences without employing and, in that sense, legitimating those very differences.[61]

             Advocates of religious exercises in the public schools, by contrast, often have refused to concede even the heterogeneous nature of spirituality, the degree to which the practices they endorse represent just one of many perspectives--and, consequently, the degree to which imposing those practices on those who disagree with them represents an infringement of others' fundamental rights and personal sovereignty. Even when these practices are broadly framed--e.g., prayers that address an Almighty power, which many in the majority regard as a "safe" generality--some are inevitably excluded, with consequences potentially more severe than a transitory slight (a connotation that the commonly used term "offended" might mistakenly suggest). As Shapiro explains,

[t]he theology may entail as little as a belief in a Supreme Being, but so long as the will of the majority officially supports persons and organizations holding such a belief--while withholding identical support from non-believing or 'other-believing' persons and organizations--the freedom of society as a whole has been diminished. The non-believer is punished by receiving unequal treatment.... [O]nce we start selecting beneficiaries and determining the status of a particular religion, we have launched ourselves on the course of repression, for unless we allow every group of two or more to decide for itself whether it is a religion, we must set qualifications. If our standard is a belief in God or a Supreme Being, we will exclude Buddhists, Humanists, Ethical Culturalists, and others....[62]

             These are the realities that many critics of civic neutrality have yet to admit. While the public discourse must hear and engage with religiously motivated voices (as both Carter and Neuhaus correctly assert), to claim meaningful ethical legitimacy a democratic State cannot disfranchise, marginalize, or effectually silence its religious, areligious, or nonreligious minorities by favoring predominant beliefs--or believers. The government's ratification of particular, even if prevalent, religious views (even its endorsement of a metaphysical reality, which is a particularistic view) would constitute a fundamental violation of differing convictions, and thus of the State's aspirations toward the sort of legitimate ethical grounding Neuhaus and other conservative commentators believe they have espoused. By enshrining some versions of reality while marginalizing others, moreover, this endorsement would drastically restrict the possibilities for diversity and dissent within classrooms and, to a commensurate degree, beyond them. Still, as Neuhaus reminds us, "[t]he possibility of a new and more civil exchange about our differences requires an understanding that the 'imposition question' cuts both [all] ways."[63] 

             The problem of balancing competing--and often radically conflicting--perspectives becomes more acute when the tenets of a particular belief system disallow the possibility that other beliefs may be valid. According to Provenzo, these exclusionary views (advanced both by ultra-fundamentalists and their opponents) may ironically result in the exclusion of those who hold them from the more pluralistic mainstream, for which discourse is a functional necessity:

By arguing that there is a single road to salvation and that there is only one way to worship the deity [or by defending similarly singular views], tolerance of other religious groups, as well as other philosophies of life and politics, becomes impossible for ultra-fundamentalists [and others].…
As a pluralistic culture of many nations, many people, many beliefs, we must respect the differences inherent in our plurality. In secular institutions such as the schools, specific religious beliefs cannot play a role, not because they are not important in our private lives, but because our diversity and commitment to personal freedom as a democratic culture makes their inclusion impossible.[64]

Implicit in this argument is the recognition that mere "tolerance" of other views may be insufficient. As Carter contends,

[t]olerance without respect means little; if I tolerate you but I do not respect you, the message of my tolerance, day after day, is that it is my forbearance, not your right, and certainly not the nation's commitment to equality, that frees you to practice your religion. You do it by my sufferance, but not with my approval. And since I merely tolerate, but neither respect nor approve, I might at any time kick away the props, and bring the puny structure of your freedom down around your ears [emphasis in original].[65]

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