The Enduring Question of Purpose

WITHOUT A PRAYER: RELIGION AND RACE IN NEW YORK CITY PUBLIC SCHOOLS. By Leslie Beth Ribovich. New York: New York University Press, 2024. Pp. vii + 241. Paperback, $30.00. In Without a Prayer, Leslie Ribovich tells an important story about how religion and race shaped American public education during the mid-twentieth century. The Engel v. Vitale and Abington v. Schempp cases, which outlawed compulsory prayer and devotional Bible reading in public schools, effectively removed religion from the public schools. Or so the story goes. While we might be tempted to foreground the landmark Supreme Court decisions that defined this era, namely those regarding segregation, school prayer, and devotional bible reading, Ribovich's deep archival work, rooted in New York City's public schools, provides a richer and more nuanced account. For example, her research reveals how religion continued to shape New York City public schools' programs and priorities during this era, like the moral and spiritual values curricula, juvenile delinquency prevention, and racial integration advocacy (1). Importantly, as Ribovich reflected on her archival findings, she explained: “where there was religion, there was race; where there was race, there was religion” (9). As such, Without a Prayer illuminates how race and religion were deeply intertwined. Without a Prayer is divided into three parts. Part I highlights the role of race in what were ostensibly religious and moral questions, while Part II focuses on the role of religion in what were ostensibly questions about race. Part III builds on these and explores how religion and race intersect in debates over the purpose of education. While Ribovich most explicitly addresses debates about public education's purpose through the cases in Part III, as I read Without a Prayer, the entire book illuminates how “constituents from varied backgrounds debated public education's purpose—and by implication, understandings of citizenship, belonging, and peoplehood—using religious and racial reasoning” (7). As I read the history of the common school system's development and the various reform efforts that followed, these contestations reflect disagreements about how to prioritize and define the purpose(s) of public education. I tend to think of these purposes as moral/religious, civic, nationalist, and economic. By economic I mean those efforts that seek to increase human capital and equip individuals for labor; by nationalist efforts to constitute and reinforce a people through narrative, ritual, myth, and the like, as well as those that promote national superiority on a global scale; by civic efforts that seek to cultivate democratic values, habits, and social relations; and by moral and religious efforts to cultivate moral virtues (religiously informed or not) and instruct in religious doctrine. Of course, these purposes often intersect and reinforce one another, but the distinction can be analytically useful when considering a particular reform effort. By focusing on a single school district during a major reform period, Without a Prayer contributes to our understanding of how complex these debates have been. To highlight these contributions, this review focuses on Part I of the book, pairing its rich history with a brief look at some of the early reforms that shaped New York City's common school system. Early reformers understood religion and morality to be deeply linked, but their efforts also supported civic, economic, and nationalist aims. Without a Prayer shows how some mid-century reformers tried to separate morality and religion, but also how their efforts remained deeply connected to other civic and nationalist aims. Part I focuses on the debates surrounding the moral and spiritual values curriculum, amid the secularizing trends we associate with Engel and Schempp, illustrating in detail how difficult it was to disentangle religion and morality. A close look at Part I, coupled with some broader history, shows the strengths of Ribovich's archival work in revealing both the continuity and transformation of values that shaped the founding of New York City's public school system. Chapter 1 of Without a Prayer explores debates in New York surrounding the Regents' Prayer, which preceded the ultimate Engel ruling by about a decade. Ribovich shows that the prayer was one element of a larger effort to promote moral and spiritual values in New York State's public schools. Her archival work reveals several drafts of “The Regents' Statement on Moral and Spiritual Training in the Schools,” illustrating how the Regents wrestled with how to define moral and spiritual values. In the end, they described these values as a heritage that included “Liberty under God, Respect for the Dignity and Rights of Each Individual, [and] Devotion to Freedom” (22). Importantly, the archives reveal that the Regents traced this heritage through political documents and symbols like the Declaration of Independence, the NY State Constitution, and the American Seal, along with White figures like Washington, Franklin, Lincoln, Wilson, and Eisenhower. Ribovich's archival research also compellingly shows that the Regents understood this American heritage not only religiously but, more specifically, informed by a “Judeo-Christian tradition.” The archives contain numerous draft statements that the Regents wrote between 1953 and 1955, illuminating not only this tri-faith construction of American heritage, but importantly, how White, male Protestantism was the dominant interpretive frame. One draft, for example, included a section titled “Hebraic Ideals in American Democracy,” which “began with John Adams and the Pilgrims, not with Jews” (29). In other words, we not only see the Regents experimenting with how to construct this “Judeo-Christian heritage” but also how Protestant interpretations governed this constructive project. Neither Jews nor Jewish practice and theology informed the Regents' understanding of “Hebraic ideals.” This is one of the gifts of archival work, like Ribovich's. It gives readers a nuanced picture of the ideas and deliberations behind official institutional statements like the Regents' “Statement on Moral and Spiritual Training in the Schools.” In the end, the 1955 Statement used more generic religious language and was shorter than earlier drafts, with just three sections. Ribovich's archival work illustrates how ideas from the first section, titled “Brotherhood of Man under Fatherhood of God,” align with language used by Regent Roger Williams Straus Sr., also co-chair of the National Conference of Christians and Jews. In an address to the New York Academy of Public Education, Stauss said that “the brotherhood of all men under the fatherhood of God” was “a dynamic force in shaping Western Civilization (26).” With references to a nonsectarian God whose influence was central to the values guiding the “founding fathers,” this generic religious language resembles the civil religion Robert Bellah analyzed in the 1960s (Bellah 1967). Again, Ribovich's use of the archive helps readers better understand the tri-faith (and White Protestant dominated) construction underpinning the Regents' civil religion. While New York City's schools never actually adopted the Regents' Prayer prior to the Engel case, it was replaced with a morning ritual which included the Pledge of Allegiance and the 4th stanza of “America,” arguably itself a prayer. Chapter 2 shifts from debates around prayer to the wider curriculum, focusing on New York City's Board of Education statements. In this chapter, which completes Part I, Ribovich shows how moral and spiritual values remained central to the curriculum beyond the patriotic and pious ritual of the Pledge and song. Through a careful analysis of the Board's drafts on moral and spiritual values, Ribovich demonstrates how the Board wrestled with critics of the sectarian and religious language in this first draft statement. In one example, Ribovich analyzes how references to God shifted from the 1955 draft to the 1956 approved statement. Readers see how the Board increasingly referred to God within quotations, themselves relying on references to the Regents' policies, the Bible, or other American political documents as a way to include God-talk without being the authors of the God-talk. As Ribovich summarizes, “from draft to revision, God went from direct source to precedential, reappropriated source” (52). While the Board shied away from speaking about God with its own voice, it turned to religion's influence on American tradition, culture, and heritage, allowing references to God to remain part of the moral and spiritual ideals in the school's curriculum. Through what Ribovich describes as “temporal distancing,” the Board transferred moral and spiritual values training in the curriculum to studies of “Western culture and civilization” (56). As Ribovich demonstrates in chapter 2, the NYC Board of Education developed a “new theology” by transferring the source of moral and spiritual values from God to the Founding Fathers. In other words, they “deified the figureheads of White American heritage” and produced a theology of whiteness (38). This was prominent in the Social Studies curriculum, specifically history and government, which the Board believed held “richer opportunities for strengthening moral and spiritual values than others” (56). Again, Ribovich's analysis of the changes between the draft and the revised statement is illuminating. While the draft does not use the term “Founding Fathers,” the revised Social Studies section does, along with “our forefathers” and “our forebears” (57). As the Regents continued to emphasize a theology of the Brotherhood of Man under the Fatherhood of God, the NYC Board of Education's revised statement replaced God with the Founding Fathers—deified moral exemplars who hold the keys to maintaining the moral and spiritual heritage of the nation. As Ribovich deftly explains, this “Father theology now signaled God without needing to name God; instead, ideas about God emerged from examples of human moral excellence” (59). The Board avoided directly referencing God's role in fostering moral values, instead mediating them through the Founding Fathers and other “ancestors” of the American heritage. Importantly, these moral exemplars were almost universally Protestant, White, and male, and omitted any reference to their participation in injustices like slavery or Indigenous displacement. Part I of Without a Prayer skillfully presents rich archival data to help readers understand how stakeholders in New York City's public schools negotiated the shifting role of religion in education. Ribovich convincingly illustrates how Engel did not remove religion from public schools; rather, religion remained implicit within the moral and spiritual values curriculum promoted by the Board. Her analysis of the archives demonstrates the importance of attending to race alongside religion, rendering a more dynamic account of these local debates. Readers will find equally compelling analysis in Part II, which focuses on desegregation efforts and juvenile delinquency prevention. While these issues are typically regarded as being solely about race, Ribovich demonstrates how they also involve religion. Part III builds on the first two parts to address the ever-contested question: What is the purpose of public education? Here she leads readers through debates surrounding state aid to Catholic schools and community control, continuing to explore the intersection of religion and race in New York City public schools. While Ribovich identifies the question of public education's purpose most explicitly through the cases she explores in Part III, I believe Without a Prayer as a whole illustrates that this question was central to debates about the moral and spiritual values curriculum, juvenile delinquency prevention, and integration efforts. In Part I, more specifically, we can see several instances where the question of the purpose of public education is central to the debates about what role religion should play in school children's moral and spiritual formation. Ribovich's archival research found that 2 years after the 1955 Regents' recommendations on moral and spiritual values, the Commissioner of Education in New York state wrote to city, village, and district superintendents. Commissioner James E. Allen Jr. noted that the Regents' recommendations “reemphasize[d] one of education's oldest and most fundamental responsibilities,” which was to build “in youth, character deeply rooted in the moral and spiritual values underlying America's cultural heritage” (20). What's more, Ribovich's archival research found a 1952 New York State teacher's code of ethics which explained that through the teacher's pledge, “the teacher believes in . . . moral and spiritual values as fundamental to education” (24). From the state's perspective, moral and spiritual values were essential to education and remained one of its oldest and most basic responsibilities—essentially, one of the main purposes of public education. As Ribovich dug deeper into the curriculum recommendations from New York City's Board of Education, we see this question of public education's purposes emerge again. Regarding the Board's views on the Social Studies curriculum, the aim was “to instill in pupils a wholesome sentiment and idealism of our traditions” and to “kindle in them the spark of patriotism,” which supported America's forefathers (59). As Ribovich explains, the aim of history was prescriptive. Students were meant to learn American ideals from the Founding Fathers, and according to the Board, “the underlying philosophy of American Democracy is based upon the premise that the individual possesses God-given rights, which the state can neither give nor take away” (58). Taken together, the Regents and Board members articulated the multifaceted vision for the purpose of education, namely moral formation, civic nationalism, and a nonsectarian recognition of religion's role in the nation's heritage. What can a look at the historical development of common schooling in the early republic illuminate about the enduring question of education's purpose? While the demographics and political context of the early Republic were surely distinct from the mid-twentieth-century era, which is the focus of Without a Prayer, this broader history illustrates the dynamic ways in which the moral and religious aims of public education have intersected with various civic and nationalist aims. As New York City's public school system emerged, religion and morality were central to how reformers understood the primary purpose of schooling, but these aims were also related to the dominant civic and nationalist aims of the time. In urban areas like New York City, the public school system grew out of a network of charity schooling. Denominational charity schools had traditionally served poor White children in their congregations, offering religious and literacy education (Kaestle 1973). As urban social ills increased, charity schooling grew and “reached out to the churchless poor” (Kaestle and Foner 1993, 32). In New York, reformers advocated for more charity schools to counteract the “habits of idleness and mischief and wickedness” that poor children learned from their families (Kaestle 1973, 2). The New York Free School Society, established by Quakers in 1805, became the largest charity school system for the White, churchless poor (Kaestle and Foner 1993, 40). The structure and curriculum in this growing network of charity schools were influenced in two significant ways by the English pedagogue Joseph Lancaster. Lancaster, himself a Quaker, developed a highly structured, monitorial instructional method. He believed this method would provide moral training to poor children, teaching them to be obedient, hardworking, and industrious (Spring 1997, 65). After the morning scripture readings and before the recitation of the rules, teachers gave a persuasive charge: “My dear children, the intention of this school is to teach you to be good and useful while in this world, that you may be happy here and in the world to come” (Reigart 1916, 69). The Lancasterian system was popular in American cities like Philadelphia and Baltimore, and New York Governor Dewitt Clinton called it a “blessing sent down from heaven to redeem the poor” (Spring 1997, 64). Here, the moral training provided by the common school system was viewed as both temporally and eternally salvific, linking the moral and religious (confessional) aims of education. Lancaster advocated for nonsectarian Protestant religious and moral instruction. Students read the Scriptures in the morning and evening, sang hymns, and were expected to attend Sunday School or church services. Children were instructed in morality and religion through reading exercises, evidenced by titles like “Of our Blessed Lord and Savior Jesus Christ” and “Of Worship and Religion” (Reigart 1916, 71). Tuesdays were reserved for denominational catechesis, where women from the Presbyterian, Episcopal, Methodist, Baptist, Dutch Reformed, and Roman Catholic churches volunteered to instruct and examine children. By offering this nonsectarian religious and moral education, the Free School Society eventually succeeded in filtering public away from sectarian religious schools. this was a significant in how the charity school network by into New York City's public school system. While not that Commissioner Allen in 1955, was to the early we can see how the moral and religious aims of public schools were some of its oldest and most Ribovich's work shows how contestations about the between morality and religion were negotiated over a the common school reform during the early national was the of the Republic after the the role of a education. With training based on the Protestant Bible would education would equip White male children to and the (Kaestle and Foner 1993, like believed a public school system was to from being solely from the In that education men into for “the only for a useful education in a republic is to be in For religion and were linked, and religious was for civic While and civic the for cultural and for example, that common schooling was to instill in American children to their own (Kaestle and Foner 1993, By a American Bible, and a of and to a American culture in the Republic (Spring 1997, nationalist aims for schooling, in to a national “where the of all the may be it into one of (Kaestle and Foner 1993, By the of the early national period, the vision of a common schooling system was more The of the public school system in New York, was rooted in a of civic, and nationalist about a and a Ribovich's Without a Prayer helps see not only the in these contestations over the aims of a public education but also how the historical context informed these debates. For example, the central to and other in that was distinct from the and civil religion that emerged in the of the Through an analysis of how the of the “Judeo-Christian informed the school curriculum, Ribovich also how the of served as to both promote a of White Protestant while at the of them who advocated for social by the mid-twentieth the direct religious and so central to early common schooling were neither nor we see religiously moral and spiritual values remain essential to how stakeholders understood the purpose of public education. Without a Prayer effectively reveals how these various aims are together, specifically within the Social Studies curriculum. As religiously informed moral the Founding Fathers were meant to teach civic and moral the importance of religion, and a people as a through the American heritage they As such, Without a Prayer is a to our understanding of the over how history is in public schools. The in as a of in the New York to history by slavery and its at the of America's founding and the of to the of American The to include for schools. While the it emerged as a part of the broader culture with at teaching “the of the founding of the in and “a American (1). this broader cultural school are with a context within which the debates about the purpose of education, specifically the history and Social Studies curriculum, As I read The the by it is of the surrounding America's “Founding Fathers,” it a nationalist project. democratic ideals and to and their for civil and In other words, there a of moral exemplars who America's democratic ideals and a that can to a people While Without a Prayer provides a deeply nuanced picture of one in the story of America's public schools, surely these debates will As Without a Prayer we should be to look deeply at the of race, religion, and to the complex that shape debates

Civil Religion · Fundamentalism · Lived religion · Nationalism · Prayer · Sociology of religion · Supreme court · American Constitutional Law and Politics · Religion and Society Interactions · Religious Education and Schools

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