Like my two earlier posts (here and here), this post will continue to build the case that we should re-conceptualize our educational institutions in terms of worship. But this post will extend the argument by answering the following question: is there a biblical justification for prioritizing the concept of worship and re-evaluating our institutions in terms of worship? The answer is an overwhelming yes.

A good guide to help us reach this answer is Greg Beale’s illuminating book We Become What We Worship: A Biblical Theology of Idolatry. In it, Beale argues that, what we revere we resemble, either for ruin or for restoration. Although Beale draws on numerous parts of scripture to substantiate this thesis, he primarily emphasizes Isaiah 6:9-10, and its inter-textual echo of Psalm 115:2-6. By telling Israel that it has “dull eyes” and “dim ears” in Isaiah 6, God is obviously judging Israel, but God is doing so by comparing Israel to the actual, physical idols  that really do not have physical hears or physical eyes, as described in Psalm 115. But why this comparison? Because God is judging Israel for its idolatry (a problem emphasized in Isaiah chapters 1-5, see, e.g., Isaiah 2:8). And so how does God judge Israel for idolatry? By turning Israel into the idols that they worship. Just like its idols that have no physical eyes to hear and no physical ears to see, Israel (says God in Isaiah 6) will no longer have spiritual eyes or spiritual ears to perceive God’s word![1] From examples like this, Beale biblically supports the principle that God turns us into what we revere, i.e. what we worship.[2]

Now, if this principle is true, the practical import of worship becomes much more apparent since worship determines what we become. For this reason, we desperately need to unearth the hidden forms of our worship to make sure we aren’t being transformed into idols. For example, on a micro-level, must I not now ask what am I worshiping and how is my current behavior merely reflecting the worship some idol? How am I being transformed subtly into the iPhone I spend all day on or the vacation I yearn for? And on the marco-level, must we not now ask what particular thing(s) is our society revering and how is our society revering these things? In what way(s) is our present culture the reflection of some idol it has worshiped or continues to worship?

But in asking these questions, what are really doing? We are merely perceiving ourselves and our institutions in terms of worship. We are recognizing that worship goes on all around us, that worship determines our character, our values, and our goals, and that we therefore need to think in terms of worship and evaluate things in terms of worship. And could there be any more important place to start this analysis than our educational institutions? The very institutions explicitly committed to shaping citizens’ values and minds? And could our freedoms in these educational institutions serve any more important purpose than to allow for and even model worship of the one true God? This last point is no mere ancillary one. Rather, this point explains why we should expansively protect the freedom to worship in the educational context. It explains why, for example, we should protect the right of Christian student groups to set religious qualifications for their leaders, contrary to the Supreme Court’s ruling in CLS v. Martinez. But that is the subject of my next and final post in this series on worship in the educational context.

Sometimes offending someone is the best way to communicate with them. As I wrote several weeks ago, being “nice” often means not saying what you really mean. And that’s a problem in a country with a government that is of, for, and by the people. How can we govern ourselves if we aren’t free to say what we really think, even when others don’t like it?

Just to reiterate, I’m not talking about being polite, considerate, and thoughtful. Sometimes the point you are making is something others don’t want to hear, and they will still be offended no matter how polite you are.

For example, an African-American man in Philadelphia recently spoke out against the tragedy of black on black violence. He chose to make  his point by standing on a street corner, and holding a sign observing the Ku Klux Klan killed 3,446 Blacks over an 86 year period, but in just the year of 2011 alone, over 7,000 black folks were killed by other blacks. Using the Klan to make his point is offensive enough, but Mr. King took the additional step of actually donning a Klansman hood and robe to really get people’s attention.

There’s no indication that Mr. King was ever impolite or disrespectful, but people were clearly offended. One City Councilman, Curtis Jones, Jr. said the use of Klan imagery made him angry. But he also said he couldn’t ignore Mr. King’s message and supports him anyway. In other words, Mr. King’s speech strategy appears to be working – even though it is offensive.

Back in 1949 in the Terminiello case, the Supreme Court explained why speech like Mr. King’s is so important, and guarded so closely by our Constitution:

The right to speak freely and to promote diversity of ideas and programs is therefore one of the chief distinctions that sets us apart from totalitarian regimes. Accordingly a function of free speech under our system of government is to invite dispute. It may indeed best serve its high purpose when it induces a condition of unrest, creates dissatisfaction with conditions as they are, or even stirs people to anger.

And as I indicated in my previous post, we need to be teaching our students about this important aspect of freedom of expression. But the requests for help we at Alliance Defending Freedom receive from students every week indicate that schools and universities are doing just the opposite. They not only teach kids that it’s always wrong to say something to which a classmate might take offense, but they actually punish students when they have the temerity to do so. In fact, we are working on a case now where a school bans any speech it deems “offensive.”

Mr. King’s teachers and school administrators must not have fallen into this trap. He is to be commended for speaking up even though some were offended and even stirred to anger. And I congratulate Councilman Jones for supporting him, even though he was one of those that took offense. Hopefully, our students are watching these men, and learning an important civics lesson from them. Our future depends on protecting offensive speech.

In my last blog post, I proposed conceptualizing our educational institutions in terms of worship, i.e. through a “worship paradigm.” I suggested that doing so could help us better understand the value of Christian practices in the educational context and the need to protect these practices in the educational context. In this post, I want to shine the light of this “worship paradigm” onto a concrete legal example: Bronx Household of Faith v. Board of Education of the City of New York.

Bronx involves a New York City Board of Education rule that initially prohibited “religious services or religious instruction on school premises after school” but allowed the discussion of “religious material or material which contains a religious viewpoint.”[1] Thus, the Board was trying to distinguish religious worship services (prohibited) from discussion of religious ideas (permitted).[2] When a church challenged this rule, the Second Circuit accepted the worship service/discussion distinction and upheld the Board’s policy under the Free Speech Clause of the First Amendment. Thankfully, Alliance Defending Freedom persevered on behalf of the church and later obtained an injunction against the Board’s rule, this time under the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment. The validity of this injunction is currently pending before the Second Circuit, with oral arguments held on November 16, 2012.

Now, setting aside the case’s present status, what are we to make of this worship service/discussion distinction advanced by the Board? What does our “worship paradigm” tell us about this distinction? Well, our worship paradigm deconstructs this distinction as both biased and incoherent. If humans are inherently worshiping creatures and if our educational institutions necessarily engage in worship practices (liturgies), then the Board is prohibiting churches from worshiping while it (and other groups using the schools) promote their own “worship” and engage in their own “liturgies!” To make matters worse, if humans inherently engage in worship, it makes no sense to distinguish “worship services” from “neutral,” non-worship activities. We’re always worshiping in a sense. We’re always engaged in a liturgy of sorts. The only question is how we’re worshiping, what we’re worshiping, and what kind of worship services we’re engaged in. Thus, by distinguishing “discussion” from “worship services,” the Second Circuit merely favored some kinds of worship over others and some kinds of liturgies over others. And this result obviously harms New York City churches enormously because they are the ones conducting the disfavored type of worship service — at least the type disfavored by the New York City Board of Education.

In this respect, our proposed “worship paradigm” highlights the importance of the Bronx case and reveals conceptual flaws underlying the effort to exclude New York City churches from school buildings after hours. With the Bronx decision liable to come any day now, it will be interesting to see whether the Second Circuit continues to perpetuate the worship service/discussion distinction. For those with eyes to see and ears to hear (i.e. those who adopt our proposed worship paradigm), the continued perpetuation of this false distinction strikes right at the heart of our religious freedoms.

If educational institutions are primarily about worship, what do the activities of Christians, those protected by the First Amendment, have to offer these institutions? Quite a lot. I want to spend this post and a few others thinking out how a “worship paradigm” can illuminate the value of Christian practices in the educational environment and the need to protect these activities.

Let me first begin by explaining what I mean by a “worship paradigm.” In his interesting book Desiring the Kingdom, Professor James K.A. Smith draws on Augustinian anthropology to argue that humans are inherently and primarily worshiping, desiring creatures.[1] Our institutions reflect this nature, and so they too inherently involve worship. These institutions are constantly shaping our desires and prodding us to worship different things by engaging us in certain practices (or “liturgies”).

For example, Smith points us to the mall where mannequins (Smith calls them icons of a sort) frequently appear in store windows and thus subtly bombard us with a vision of the good life: buy this, look like this, value this, desire this, and you’ll be happy. The point is that the mall is structured in such a way to promote a practice (gazing upon the displays) that appeals to and shapes our desires. The same is true, Smith argues, about educational institutions. Schools are not simply communicating ideas and knowledge. They are forming the desires of students and prompting them to worship certain values through practices that occur in the classroom, in the dining hall, and in the dorm spaces. Thus, Smith claims, our educational institutions are not primarily about conveying information but about transforming our hearts and desires.

So this is what I mean by “worship paradigm”: it’s simply the idea that we can re-conceptualize the culture and institutions around us in terms of worship, rather than think in exclusively cognitive terms or limit the worship concept to stereotypical “religious” settings (e.g., a church building). Under this paradigm, we can, like the apostle Paul, tell the members of the Athenian Areopagus (the Academy) that they are in fact “religious” in every way.

Now, if we view educational institutions under this “worship paradigm,” the activities of Christians at educational institutions become vitally important, not simply because they communicate true ideas but because they are a set of practices (liturgies) that reshape the desires of those who participate in and observe them. Thus, by distributing literature on a university campus or by gathering to study the bible or by meeting to pray, Christian student groups conduct activities that others can see and/or participate in and in turn be shaped by. Somewhat like the window display in the mall, the Christian groups are encouraging others to value, desire, and worship certain things and worship in certain ways. And this witness is quite powerful because it arises in the context of a larger worshiping community (the university itself) that is engaged in an alternative set of liturgies — a worship of an alternative set of values.

Well, great. Christian practices are valuable in the educational context partly because they shape people’s desires and counter the worship promoted elsewhere in the educational system. But how does this idea relate to the legal context? Well, does this idea not suggest that it is extremely important to protect the ability of Christian groups to engage in these worship forming practices? — practices of gathering together, choosing their leaders, praying together, etc. And does it not suggest that we need to protect these activities even if others find no cognitive value in them?  And does it not suggest that efforts to undermine the legal protection of these activities are a grave threat? Unfortunately, I will need another post to explore these ideas in the concrete legal context. But there is no better place to begin this exploration than New York City’s 18 year effort to prevent churches from “worshiping” in public school buildings after school, even though other “secular” groups can “worship” in these buildings.

ICELANDIC OFFICIALS PROHIBIT GIRLS NAME

SAYS: “TO PROTECT CHILDREN FROM EMBARRASSMENT.”

One of my biggest concerns about the current push in this country for school districts to adopt anti-bullying policies is whether there is any limit on what types of actions these policies authorize the government to take in the name of protecting students from words that make them “feel bad” or that “offend” them.  Well, an article I recently read about a young woman in Iceland fighting for the right to keep her given name provides a chilling (I could not help myself) example of just how far governments are willing to go.

The government of Iceland has prohibited a young girl named Blaer, which means “light breeze” in Icelandic, from using her name because it does not appear on the Personal Names Register, a list of government-approved male and female names.  In place of her government prohibited name, Icelandic officials refer to her as “Stulka,” which means “girl,” in all official communications.  And why does the Icelandic government wield such an iron fist over the names parents can give their children?  The article says “to protect children from embarrassment.”  In other words, the government is concerned that children will be picked on, bullied, or harassed if given the “wrong” name by their parents.  As for Blaer, the special government committee that reviews name denial appeals was concerned because “the word Blaer takes a masculine article.”

Yikes.

Now I know that the article explains that the people of Iceland are ”comfortable with a firm state role,” but this Icelandic story of injustice should give us pause in the anti-bullying debate in this country.  What is occurring in Iceland is just an extreme example of the type of egregious government actions authorized by the worldview underlying the anti-bullying policies leftist groups in this country are pushing.  These policies are motivated by our culture’s seeming ever-increasing desire to keep children from having their feelings hurt — a  laudable (albeit practically unachievable, in my view) goal, no doubt, but one nonetheless fraught with dangerous implications for our First Amendment liberties when enforced through state and local anti-bullying policies.  While Iceland has wildly overreached in an attempt to prevent children from experiencing hurt feelings and embarrassment, Blaer’s situation should remind us that we have a duty in this country to vigilantly defend against even the first experiment on our liberties, including where anti-bullying policies are being proposed in our communities.  Otherwise, we may find ourselves slipping down the Icelandic path (again, I just could not help it).

Here at Alliance Defending Freedom we have detailed our concerns with anti-bullying policies, and the dangers they pose to students’ First Amendment freedoms, in our Anti-Bullying Policy Yardstick.  I commend it, and Blaer’s story, to your review and reflection.