Participate, Yes; Proselytize, No

As Times reporters Douglas Frantz and Elizabeth Shogren showed in a two-part article Dec. 10 and 11, a religious war of sorts is under way in this country. The battlefield is the public school system, and the military tactic of choice is the election to school boards of partisans of, on one side, Christian conservatives and, on the other side, everybody else.

Organizations like the Christian Coalition actively have sought to elect like-minded school board candidates all over the country. Robert Simonds of Citizens for Excellence in Education has written a pamphlet, “How to Elect Christians to Public Office,” that has become a war manual for a movement that has 1,550 chapters actively seeking electoral victory.

In a democracy, no more legitimate activity exists than organizing the like-minded to elect the like-minded. However, once elected to office, any American candidate, whatever his or her religion, must abide by the Constitution of the United States, whose First Amendment states: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” It is therefore a cause of considerable concern that in Vista, Calif., a school board with a conservative Christian majority has introduced creationism, a religious doctrine, into the curriculum.

The Constitution forbids not only state practices that “aid one religion . . . or prefer one religion over another” but also those practices that “aid all religions” and thus endorse or prefer religion over no religion (Everson vs. Board of Education of Ewing, 1947). The United States, especially in its public schools, does not discriminate against those who do not believe in God.

School superintendents who observe the law may find themselves accused of opposing rather than upholding American values; but lately they have been provided a useful resource. The American Civil Liberties Union is distributing to superintendents nationwide a legal fact sheet, a videocassette and a bulletin, “The Establishment Clause and Public Schools,” that without polemics, merely by reviewing laws long on the books, make it clear who in these disputes holds the genuinely traditional values and who does not. The attacks will doubtless continue, but we applaud the ACLU for providing the attacked with the means for a measured and reasonable counterattack.