The vague 22-word prayer from the New York Board of Regents was totally nondenominational: “Almighty God, we acknowledge our dependence upon Thee, and we beg Thy blessings upon us, our parents, our teachers and our Country.”
A few parents protested, saying any kind of prayer — even voluntary — violated the rights of students from homes led by atheists, agnostics or believers from other faiths.
In other words, the pivotal 1962 Engel v. Vitale school-prayer decision was a parental rights case. Schools had to change.
Two years ago, the Montgomery County Board of Education created a policy requiring pre-K and elementary students to read texts about LGBTQ+ life. A Maryland network of Muslim, Christian and Jewish parents protested, saying this violated their parental rights by exposing their children to beliefs that clashed with beliefs in their own homes.
This spring, the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals rejected alternative activities for these students. Schools would not have to change — for now.
“In the school-prayer cases, parents wanted to defend their children from state-mandated prayers and any exposure to religious faith. It was a matter of parental rights,” noted philosopher Francis Beckwith, who also teaches church-state studies at Baylor University.
“Now the shoe is on the other foot, with the state preaching a different set of doctrines. If you pay close attention, the left is making arguments that are similar to those the right once made about prayer in public schools. … The state says it wants children to become good Americans. The question is whether parents get to play a role in that. These battles are going to continue.”
In another parental rights case that may reach the Supreme Court, California Gov. Gavin Newsom recently signed legislation banning policies that require public educators to tell parents if their children take steps, at school, to change their gender identities. The state wants to protect children who believe they are transgender from their own parents, if parents’ beliefs clash with what is taught at school.
The Liberty Justice Center immediately backed the Chino Valley Unified School District in challenging the law.
“School officials do not have the right to keep secrets from parents, but parents do have a constitutional right to know what their minor children are doing at school,” wrote Emily Rae, the group’s senior counsel, in a public statement. “Parents are the legal guardians of their children, not Governor Newsom. …”
“The tribalism in these cases is truly extraordinary,” Beckwith said. “The issues in parental rights cases are so symbolic, especially when religious beliefs are involved.”
In a Brigham Young University Law Review essay, Beckwith noted this statement by Democrat Terry McAuliffe during the 2021 Virginia gubernatorial race: “I don’t think parents should be telling schools what they should teach.”
Conservatives were appalled while progressives claimed that religious parents were threatening school safety and efforts to promote social justice.
Beckwith contrasted that case with battles over Elian Gonzalez, who, as a boy, was found floating off the Florida coast in 1999 after the death of his mother and fellow Cuban refugees trying to reach America. The boy’s father made a parental rights claim that his son should be returned to him in Cuba. Conservatives disagreed since, as one proclaimed, this would return the boy to one of the “last prison nations in the world.”
In his essay, Beckwith concluded: “The lesson is clear: absent the explicit recognition of extra-governmental authority — something like natural justice — it becomes difficult to see what precisely is wrong with a totalizing ideology, especially if its advocates are convinced that God or the United Nations (or History) is on their side.”
Terry Mattingly is senior fellow on communications and culture at Saint Constantine College in Houston. He lives in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, and writes Rational Sheep, a Substack newsletter on faith and mass media. Send comments to [email protected].
