Michigan lawmakers are facing backlash and criticism after introducing a bill mandating that “the Christian foundations of the United States are taught” in history and civics courses offered by public schools.
Michigan House Bill (HB) 4672 stipulates that all school boards in the state ensure that those foundations are taught by schools under each board. The bill does not limit the scope of information that boards can require schools to teach but instructs the boards to require the following topics in the schools’ curriculum: the pilgrims’ intention behind immigrating to North America and their influence on the culture of the colonies, how these colonies developed a democratic spirit and governance, as well as the relationship between Christian ethics and democracy.
Introduced by State Representative Joseph Fox (R-Fremont) on May 25, the bill has nine house members as sponsors, all Republicans. Michigan’s House Committee on Education will evaluate the legislation. HB 4672 amends the 1976 Act 451, Michigan’s cornerstone bill on public instruction of elementary and secondary schools. HB 4672’s requirement for schools to teach the Christian foundations of our republic reinforces the 1976 Act 451’s requirement for all high school students in the state to pass a civics course in order to graduate.
Critics argue that HB 4672 violates the First Amendment and a separation of church and state inferred from it. Arguments appeal to the Establishment Clause as well as the Free Exercise Clause. Michigan State Senate President Pro Tempore Jeremy Moss (D-Southfield) made an argument of the latter category by tweeting that the Michigan Constitution stipulates that “[n]o person shall be compelled to attend, or, against his consent, to contribute to the erection or support of any place of religious worship.”
State Representative Noah Arbit (D-West Blomfield), who is Jewish and identifies as gay, also responded to HB 4672 by stating, “This Jewish member of the majority party says: Over my dead body.” State Representative Matt Koleszar (D-Northville) characterized HB 4672 as “religious indoctrination” and “unconstitutional.” Koleszar chairs the House Committee on Education, which will handle HB 4672 after its introduction. He issued a scathing response to the bill, stating that “the education committee is committed to advancing legislation that actually benefits Michigan students. We will not take up unconstitutional bills written by people who oppose a well-rounded education in favor of religious indoctrination.”
Democratic members aren’t the only ones who oppose HB 4672. Prof. Michael McDaniel of Western Michigan University’s Cooley Law School contends that the bill violates the U.S. and Michigan constitutions. The bill, he argues, crosses the U.S. Supreme Court ruling Tinker v. Des Moines. In Tinker, the Court ruled that a law prohibiting students from wearing armbands as a form of silent protest in school was unconstitutional under the First Amendment. McDaniel argues that the main issue with HB 4672 is coercion of students into believing a certain set of religious doctrine. If the bill was revised without mention of Christianity, McDaniel believes it may be more politically feasible to pass a Democratically-controlled legislature.
To assuage the bevy of First Amendment critiques on HB 4672, sponsors Reps. Gina Johnsen and Luke Meerman argue that the bill does not require student belief in Christianity. The bill instead seeks to provide students with a comprehensive contextual background to understand the American founding and why the pilgrims decided to immigrate to America. Bill author Rep. Fox similarly argued that “we weren’t just formed in a vacuum,” and it is imperative that students have a reference point grounded in the past to understand America’s democratic experiment.
The bill’s text does not mention Christian doctrines. Neither does it mandate schools to engage in prayer or any Christian practice. It calls for an elaboration on how the pilgrims fled from “persecution,” and how the blending of democratic governance and Christian ethics benefitted the early colonies.
School districts are not required to clarify that the pilgrims immigrated to America to escape persecution for being Christians, but merely to escape “persecution.” While these topics may fall under the umbrella of “Christian foundations,” this bill does not require schools to teach Christian faith and doctrine.
HB 4672 faces grim political prospects in the Democrat-controlled Michigan legislature; it is possible that similar legislation will be introduced in other state legislatures. On a constitutional note, this bill indeed addresses religion and requires schools to teach portions of it. Advocates argue that instruction necessarily provides students a comprehensive framework to understanding our republic’s founding, and that the bill is not endorsing slanted or biased teaching.
How the Supreme Court and lower appeals courts rule on legislation like HB 4672 will have profound implications over the status of K-12 education across a nation where tensions between Christianity and secularism are intensifying.
Comment by David on June 8, 2023 at 7:40 am
The conditions in early America were far less religious than Christian Nationalists would have us believe.
“For there are many doctrines of faith and sects in Pennsylvania which cannot all be enumerated, because many a one will not confess to what faith he belongs. Besides, there are many hundreds of adult persons who have not been and do not even wish to be baptized. There are many who think nothing of the sacraments and the Holy Bible, nor even of God and his word. Many do not even believe that there is a true God and devil, a heaven and a hell, salvation and damnation, a resurrection of the dead, a judgment and an eternal life; they believe that all one can see is natural. For in Pennsylvania every one may not only believe what he will, but he may even say it freely and openly.
Coming to speak of Pennsylvania again, that colony possesses great liberties above all other English colonies, inasmuch as all religious sects are tolerated there. We find there Lutherans, Reformed, Catholics, Quakers, Mennonists or Anabaptists, Herrnhuters or Moravian Brethren, Pietists, Seventh Day Baptists, Dunkers, Presbyterians, Newborn, Freemasons, Separatists, Freethinkers, Jews, Mohammedans, Pagans, Negroes and Indians. The Evangelicals and Reformed, however, are in the majority. But there are many hundred unbaptized souls.” Gottlieb Mittleberger, 1750
The Pilgrims came to establish a theocracy on their terms and religious freedom was not part of that. This caused a migration of the disaffected to the colonies more to the south. The 1645 charter of the town of Flushing, NY, provided for freedom of conscience “without the disturbance of any magistrate or ecclesiastical minister.” This was in a Dutch colony, but populated by British people from up north. In 1657, the residents astonishingly declared that this applied to “Jews, Turks, and Egyptians.”
The only form of government to come out of Christianity was divine right monarchy. “Fear God and honor the king” was not the motto of 1776.
The labor of 19th century America was to rid itself of official tax-supported state churches. The last to fall was that of the Pilgrims in MA in 1833. As one wit put it, “The Pilgrims celebrated Thanksgiving for being saved from the Indians, and we celebrate it for being saved from the Pilgrims.”
Comment by Dan W on June 8, 2023 at 12:12 pm
Mittleberger was trying to disuade Germans from emigrating to the American colonies. He was specifically writing about his travels in Pennsylvania, there were of course 12 other American colonies at the time.