Controversy Over ‘Christian-Only’ Rule for Preschool Teachers

Times coverage (Metro, May 28, June 4, 5) has captured the essence of the sad story of Jewish teachers and all of their Christian colleagues and director resigning in protest over the edict of the First Presbyterian Church of Sherman Oaks that starting next year all church nursery school teachers must “profess a belief in Jesus.” A school with a good reputation and liberal philosophy “teaching” diversity to children through the diversity of its staff (and enrollment) has been disrupted and will be reorganized as an independent community school.

Although the consequences of this church edict are sad for the teachers and many of the families involved and good Christian-Jewish relations have been ruptured and inflamed, we must be careful to avoid finding anti-Semitism behind this. Some church members’ apparent resentment of the large percentage of Jewish children and teachers there is not (necessarily) driven by anti-Semitism (although there have been such allegations by Jewish teachers). The bottom line in this sad dispute remains. It is a church-sponsored school.

As we struggle to promote interreligious and interracial cooperation, we must defend the choice of governing bodies of religious institutions whether to allow or even promote the infusion of religious values and beliefs in their schools. Do we have the right to deny those institutions their right to promote the values and beliefs that they exist to promote? The Jewish nursery school my wife directs and my daughter attends is sponsored by our synagogue. Jewish values are taught there. Can Christian teachers teach those values as effectively?

The Supreme Court has consistently upheld rulings that allow religious institutions the option of requiring conforming values and beliefs in its employees. It was wrong to allow them to require certain beliefs in custodians and secretaries. They are justified, however, in requiring them in teachers.

If parents want to enroll their children in nonsectarian “community schools” to provide for them a diversified and pluralistic environment, that’s their right. But it’s the right of religious institutions to have their schools promote the principles and beliefs the institutions promote.

Let’s not confuse or jeopardize that right in promoting interreligious understanding and diversity--or by labeling as “prejudice” a church’s effort (clumsy though it may have been) to have its school foster its religious beliefs.

Diversity and respect for different races and beliefs can and must be taught in those schools, too--not just in (some) nonsectarian schools.

There is more than enough prejudice and ethnocentrism developing in our children as they pick up the prejudices we have. As our society becomes much more diverse and overcrowded inner-city schools necessitate 30,000 immigrant children being bussed daily to suburban schools, we can’t fight that prejudice if we, as adults, can’t understand what prejudice is.

JERRY FREEDMAN HABUSH

Associate Executive Director

National Conference of

Christians and Jews

Los Angeles