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How to Defeat Religion in 10 Easy Steps
A Toolkit for Secular Activists
By Ryan T. Cragun Pitchstone Publishing
Copyright © 2015 Ryan T. Cragun
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-63431-014-7
CHAPTER 1
STEP 1
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Promote and Defend Secular Education
Do you know what they call a Pentecostal with a PhD?
A miracle!
One of the primary functions of education in the United States has been to educate and prepare the workforce for an economy much different from the one that existed in the preindustrial age. Prior to the rise of capitalism and subsequently the industrial revolution, education was important for some, but much less so for others. Changes in the economy have resulted in the development of broad-level, nearly universal education for young people. In 1800, just after the founding of the United States, 74 percent of Americans worked in agriculture. By 1900, that number had dropped to 40 percent. And by 2000, just 1.8 percent of Americans worked in agriculture.
Agricultural workers prior to the 1800s didn't need much if any formal education to perform their jobs, and those working in other areas often learned what they needed to know through the master-apprentice system. What most young people needed to know to survive could be learned from their parents, from relatives, or from their masters. But as the economic system shifted and the industrial revolution took place, several things happened. First, capitalism resulted in a growing group of underemployed individuals or "laborers." Second, the skills required to work in various aspects of the new economy — particularly for those overseeing the laborers but also for the laborers themselves — shifted as well. Increasingly, being able to read, write, and do basic arithmetic became important.
The development of public education was rooted in multiple desires among its early advocates. One prominent desire was to educate the workforce for the capitalists, training future employees to read, write, and do basic math. Another desire was to inculcate morality. And widespread public education would also simply give kids something to do, as the idea of "adolescence" was just being created at this time. Of course, many children of laborers also worked, until government regulation forced them out of the workplace and into the schools. This meant that, despite being motivated by a desire to improve the life chances of the less affluent, widespread public education also reinforced the class structure, which is something it still does.
There is another function of education as well. Education can be — well, who are we kidding, is — used by governments to indoctrinate citizens into believing what the government wants them to believe. It was this function of religion that was used to attempt to assimilate Native Americans into the culture of those in power — white Anglo-Saxon Protestants (aka WASPs). It is this function of education that is used to teach children in the United States about all the benefits of capitalism and none of the potential problems, turning them into relatively mindless consumers. Karl Marx realized this function of education, which is why public education controlled by the government was one of his ten steps to communism.
Public education was mandatory in every U.S. state by 1918, though that mandate did not apply equally to every group; it was largely overlooked for minority groups like blacks and Native Americans. Despite the ever-growing provision of education due to the shifting economy, public education was not universally well-received or implemented. Many minority religions were suspect of public education precisely because of its utility in indoctrinating young people. The majority religious perspective in the United States until 2013 was Protestantism; today Protestants remain the largest religious group but make up less than 50 percent of the population. Early public schooling efforts included a fair amount of Protestant indoctrination in the schools at the primary and secondary (and even the tertiary levels). This Protestant indoctrination was problematic for minority religious groups, like Catholics, Jews, and Mormons, because it resulted in the indoctrination of their children into a different religious tradition. This indoctrination was opposed at various levels and in different ways. Many Catholics, not having much success opposing the Protestant establishment, developed their own system of parochial education to parallel public schools in order to prevent their children from receiving Protestant religious indoctrination. Eventually, the growing pluralism in the United States resulted in a number of court decisions that removed specific forms of school-sponsored religious indoctrination, like Bible readings and prayers led by school faculty and staff. These legal challenges were largely championed by religious minorities and nonreligious individuals, including, famously, Engel v. Vitale (1962) and Abington School District v. Schempp (1963), in which school-led prayer and Bible readings were declared unconstitutional. While voluntary student-led Bible studies and prayers are legally still allowed in schools, the curricula of public schools have largely shifted to a secular education devoid of religious indoctrination. Discussion of religion is, in many schools, largely confined to the humanities where it is discussed as myth (well, dead religions are discussed as myth; the rest are studied from a comparative perspective). The supposed removal of official-led religious indoctrination — it often continues informally — from public schools led to an outcry of its own, by the Protestant establishment, which began to claim that schools were, instead of teaching children religion, teaching them secular humanism (not really true, but wouldn't that be awesome?!?).
My point in describing this history is that minority religious (and nonreligious) groups in the United States did not want their children indoctrinated, and now that members of the largest religious group cannot mandate the religious indoctrination of both their kids and those of the minority at the hands of school officials, they are unhappy about it (see Katherine Stewart's book, The Good News Club, for how they have tried to reverse this situation). What both groups — (non) religious minorities and Protestants — implicitly recognize is the primary point I want to make in this chapter: schools are highly effective at persuading young minds. Because of our current system of education's efficiency at conveying information, it — flaws notwithstanding — is very effective at filling those minds with information.
But with what does it fill those young minds? It fills them with what government-run school boards dictate. The power of public education and government-mandated educational standards is that they determine what kids learn. While explicit, state-sanctioned religious indoctrination — that is, Protestantism — has largely been removed from the formal curriculum of most public schools, remnants of Protestantism remain. For instance, the myths told to school children about the origins of Thanksgiving are largely rooted in Protestant and white supremacist revisionism and do not reflect the latest historical understandings of the origins of that holiday. Even so, the Bible is no longer supposed to be read before the school day starts and teachers and staff aren't supposed to subject the students to prayers. The Protestant establishment realizes that its explicit ability to indoctrinate (and implicitly evangelize) is gone, which is why it has begun to fight public schooling. An increasing number of parents are opting to homeschool their children. For 36 percent of those parents, the explicitly stated reason for homeschooling their children is to provide religious instruction. Of course, many other religious parents send their kids to private, religious schools, and an increasing number of states provide vouchers so parents can do so.
Why are religious parents and religious clergy so concerned about secular education? Because they believe it will undermine religious beliefs. While that is less likely to happen before college, there is plenty of evidence that college, in particular, does substantially reduce religious orthodoxy and religious beliefs. The effects of education on religious affiliation and on religious participation are mixed, with some studies indicating no effect and others showing a slight increase in religious participation if people make it through college with their religious identity intact. But there is no real debate over the effect of secular education on religious beliefs. This is clearly illustrated in figure 1, which contrasts highest degree attained with view of the Bible — whether it is the literal word of God, the inspired word of God, or a book of fables.
As figure 1 shows, those with less than a high school education are the most likely to be biblical literalists. Additional education results in declines in biblical literalism. Among those with a graduate degree, 36 percent see the Bible as a book of fables and myths. In short, education — particularly higher education — undermines fundamentalist religious beliefs!
Responding to this pretty clear effect of education on religious belief, many religious groups have begun to develop their own systems of higher education as well, hoping it will counter the effects of secular education on religious orthodoxy. Catholics, Protestants, Mormons, Seventh-day Adventists, Hindus, Buddhists, and Jews all have institutions of higher education in the United States, and there are numerous Islamic universities outside the United States. The explicitly stated goal of many of these institutions is to provide a "secular" education in an environment that is safe for religious students (so, not a "secular" education).
I'm not the only one to argue that education is a threat to religion. Recent research suggests that the single best national -level indicator of religious decline around the world is level of educational attainment. While there are, as I will illustrate in the other chapters in this book, many aspects of modernization that contribute to the decline of religiosity, education appears to be a particularly important one. Why?
Education undermines religion in several ways. First, it can bring people of diverse backgrounds together (though this occurs primarily in college and less so in primary and secondary schools, which often reflect broader social segregation). Social scientists have long known that contact with people who are different from you reduces prejudice toward those people, and that includes contact with people who have a different religion. Thus, something as simple as getting to know people who don't share your religious worldview has the potential to call into question your worldview. College education can be very good at bringing diverse people together.
The second way education undermines religious belief is by discussing the existence of many worldviews. The result of such instruction can be and often is a realization that one's own view is subjective, leading to a recognition of the socially constructed nature of the social world. As people come to realize that society is socially constructed, it becomes much more difficult to accept the relatively common religious teaching that there are absolute truths and, particularly, that religions hold those truths. Religion comes to be recognized as just one more socially constructed institution. This, too, undermines religious belief.
Finally, education in modern countries often includes training in science, philosophy, and critical thinking. While science does not conflict with all religion, it does conflict with fundamentalist religion. That is, in fact, exactly why fundamentalist religion came into existence. Nonfundamentalist religions (i.e., moderate and liberal religions) are less likely to advocate views that conflict with science because they have adjusted to accommodate the findings of science. As scientific knowledge has advanced, the truth claims of these religions have receded. But the same cannot be said of fundamentalists. Religious fundamentalists continue to maintain absurd claims — like a worldwide flood or an earth that is 6,000 years old — despite the overwhelming scientific evidence illustrating those ideas are ridiculous. Students who attend public schools in the United States and pretty much every other modern country around the world will be exposed to scientific thinking, which can lead them to question their religious beliefs. Teaching science as method and not as "facts" would be even more effective at accomplishing this.
Of course, religious fundamentalists are already aware of how secular education is weakening religion. In the United States, the religious are engaged in a protracted battle to undermine public education, attacking secular education from multiple angles. One well-known attack vector is the religious fundamentalist campaign to gain control of school boards, both at the local and state levels. When they are able to gain control over school boards, they gain control over curricula or what is taught in local schools. This can result in ridiculous efforts, like those in Texas to limit discussions about Thomas Jefferson's influence on early American ideas or revise understandings of slavery. Additional efforts include the systematic removal of racial, gender, and sexual minorities from U.S. history.
Another attack vector of religious fundamentalists is to lobby politicians to introduce voucher programs. While there are a number of conservative organizations that want to dismantle public schooling for a variety of reasons, a number of the partners for initiatives like National School Choice Week are faith-based. Voucher programs reduce the double-expenditure burden for private education. In states that have voucher programs, parents who send their kids to private schools receive a reduction in their taxes to offset the private school tuition they pay. Some of the most vocal lobbyists for these vouchers are advocates of religious education. The goal, of course, is to get their children out of public schools, where, despite their best efforts, the religious have been unable to explicitly reintegrate religion back into the curriculum. Many religious parents want their children educated in religious schools where they will be indoctrinated.
Another approach the religious have employed to undermine education in the United States is to increasingly lobby to cut funding for education and scientific research. In 2000, states paid, on average, 70 percent of the cost of education at four-year institutions of higher education, while student tuition covered about 30 percent. As of 2011, student tuition covered, on average, 52 percent of the cost of a student's education while states covered 48 percent. State funding for higher education has been declining in the United States, forcing universities and colleges to increase tuition costs to cover their expenses. Part of the higher costs is due to a recent flooding of administrators, turning universities into increasingly top-heavy institutions. But reduced government funding for higher education has made college more expensive for students. Likewise, government funding for scientific research is declining. In the 1960s, at the height of the Cold War, federal funding for scientific research in the United States topped 2 percent of GDP. It has been declining consistently since then and today is close to 0.75 percent of total GDP, and close to half of that is defense or military research. Higher education and scientific research have declined as priorities in the United States, precisely at a time when other countries are increasing their expenditures on scientific research and higher education.
To offset these losses, some academics are turning to other sources for funding, like conservative and religious foundations, which have a very specific agenda. A notorious instance of this can be seen in the case of sociology professor Mark Regnerus, who relied on a conservative think tank to fund his remarkably flawed study examining the influence of same-sex parenting on children. His study has been cited numerous times by the homophobes defending so-called traditional marriage, even though the American Sociological Association — the professional organization for most U.S. sociologists — has repudiated the study. Another strategy religious fundamentalists and conservatives have employed is to fund "centers" that employ religious academics. For instance, riding the wave of popularity among religious conservatives for getting his flawed study published, Regnerus recently cofounded the Austin Institute for The Study of Family and Culture. Without knowing much about the staff of the institute, one might believe that the institute was simply an impartial think tank focusing on issues related to the family. Yet the institute is composed of conservative Christians who are pushing a very specific religious agenda and are lacking in the very areas of expertise they claim, like knowledge about sexual dynamics within families.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from How to Defeat Religion in 10 Easy Steps by Ryan T. Cragun. Copyright © 2015 Ryan T. Cragun. Excerpted by permission of Pitchstone Publishing.
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