Oklahoma Supreme Court Stops State Government From Creating Catholic Public School
This article is a modified version of an episode of the podcast Stop Christian Nationalism.
This week, I have the pleasure of focusing on some good news. Earlier this year, the state of Oklahoma declared that it would use government money to create a new online public school that would be dedicated to teaching children specific, sectarian Christian religious beliefs and practices.
The school working under the name of St. Isidore of Seville Catholic Virtual School was designed in order to take government money that was supposed to be used to fund education, and instead use it to prop up failing Catholic churches across the state of Oklahoma. The administrators of the St. Isidore school explained that the school “is intended to support and reinforce both the domestic church and the local parish community.”
The St. Isidore government Christian school was so thoroughly religious that its bylaws explicitly prohibited more than two non-Catholics from occupying seats on its board of directors. This was a public school that was set up to be directed by the Catholic Archbishop of Oklahoma City and the Catholic Bishop of Tulsa, with no religious dissent allowed – not even from Protestant Christians. This was a public school, created by the government, that planned to engage in religious discrimination in its hiring and leadership appointments.
Christian ideology and rituals infiltrated the entire curriculum of the St. Isidore government Christian school, with “online prayer services, scripture study through Lectio Devina, Visio Divina, the rosary, theology classes, study of the saints”. The school even made science classes religiously themed, reframed into the nonsensical “study of God’s well-ordered universe”.
The study of gods is inherently non-scientific, because science is based on evidence. There is no evidence for the existence of gods, demons, spirits, monsters, or any other supernatural creatures. A school of dentistry might as well encourage its students to study the Tooth Fairy’s magical influence on the mandible. Agriculture students might as well be instructed to study the Easter Bunny’s methods of boosting egg production on chicken farms. Schools like St. Isidore teach children nonsense and fantasy, pretending it’s real.
This tragic confusion was nowhere more clear than in the St. Isidore school’s promise that it would teach “children to seek Truth through faith and reason”. If a person is seeking truth through faith, they are by definition not being taught how to properly apply the principles of reason. St. Isidore’s plan was to teach the children of Oklahoma to think and behave unreasonably.
The St. Isidore of Seville Catholic Virtual School did not exist before it received government funding from the state of Oklahoma, and it could not have operated without government funding. The state government of Oklahoma didn’t just give money to the Christian school. A state government organization actually worked with the Catholic church to create the St. Isidore of Seville Catholic Virtual School in the first place.
The creation and funding of the St. Isidore Christian school was a government establishment of religion, and as such, it was in violation of the First Amendment of the Constitution of the United States of America. That made the government religious school illegal.
It wasn’t just the Constitution of the USA that made the St. Isidore government religious school illegal. The school was in violation of the Constitution of the state government of Oklahoma as well.
You don’t have to take my word for it. Take the word of the Oklahoma Supreme Court, which ruled that the government creation and funding of the St. Isidore Christian school is in violation of the law. The court stated in its opinion, released today, that
“We hold that the St. Isidore Contract violates the Oklahoma Constitution, the Act, and the federal Establishment Clause… We first look to the Oklahoma Constitution. Article 2, Section 5 states: ‘No public money or property shall ever be appropriated, applied, donated, or used, directly or indirectly, for the use, benefit, or support of any sect, church, denomination, or system of religion, or for the use, benefit, or support of any priest, preacher, minister, or other religious teacher or dignitary, or sectarian institution as such.’
…The framers' intent is clear: the State is prohibited from using public money for the "use, benefit or support of a sect or system of religion." Although a public charter school, St. Isidore is an instrument of the Catholic church, operated by the Catholic church, and will further the evangelizing mission of the Catholic church in its educational programs. The expenditure of state funds for St. Isidore's operations constitutes the use of state funds for the benefit and support of the Catholic church. It also constitutes the use of state funds for "the use, benefit, or support of . . . a sectarian institution." The St. Isidore Contract violates the plain terms of Article 2, Section 5 of the Oklahoma Constitution. Enforcing the St. Isidore Contract would create a slippery slope and what the framers' warned against--the destruction of Oklahomans' freedom to practice religion without fear of governmental intervention.
…Under the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment, made binding upon the States through the Fourteenth Amendment, Oklahoma cannot pass laws ‘which aid one religion, aid all religions, or prefer one religion over another.’”
The Attorney General of Oklahoma responded to the judgment by saying, “The framers of the U.S. Constitution and those who drafted Oklahoma’s Constitution clearly understood how best to protect religious freedom: by preventing the State from sponsoring any religion at all.”
The story of the St. Isidore religious government school in Oklahoma is just one example of the way that Christian Nationalism despises the law. Christian Nationalists are working to gain power across America by purposefully violating the law.
The good news is that there are still some principled, professional judges who are dedicated to enforcing the law without bias. The Supreme Court of Oklahoma held the line and ensured that Christian Nationalists were accountable to the same standards that everybody else has to comply with.
The insane plans of the people behind the St. Isidore government religious school in Oklahoma also shows us what America will be subjected to if Christian Nationalists are able to elect Donald Trump as President of the United States. Donald Trump has promised to appoint judges who will not comply with federal and state constitutions, but will use their power to help Christian Nationalists impose their bizarre beliefs about magic and monsters, scripture and sex on all Americans.
As the case of the St. Isidore of Seville Catholic Virtual School shows, Christian Nationalism doesn’t just create a system of government that discriminates against non-Christian Americans in order to benefit Christianity. Christian Nationalism creates a system in which the government chooses which kinds of Christianity to support and which kinds of Christianity to marginalize.
The St. Isidore of Seville Catholic Virtual School was a government-established, government-run public school. Nonetheless, it was designed in order to spread Roman Catholic Christian beliefs and practices only, to the detriment of Protestant Christian families, and to provide money and infrastructure to Roman Catholic Christian churches, while denying support to Protestant Christian churches.
Christian Nationalists are not content to gain government support for Christianity in general. They demand that the government give them money and resources to support their attacks against rival forms of Christianity.
If Donald Trump is elected, and is able to impose his Christian Nationalist agenda on America with the help of his lackey Republicans in the US Congress, the 40 percent of America that is not Christian will suffer, but they won’t be alone. Before you know it, Christian churches will use their elite status in the government to attack each other in a scramble for power.
We don’t need to imagine where these Christian Nationalist power struggles will lead. For generations, the British Empire was beset by religious wars, culminating in the English Civil War. In that war alone, 4 percent of the population of England was slaughtered. 6 percent of the population of Scotland died. 41 percent of the population of Ireland was killed in the Christian versus Christian violence.
Secular democracy has been successful at preventing widespread religious violence in the United States. The record of Christian Nationalism, however, is a history of religious violence repeatedly boiling out of control.
The Christian Nationalists of Donald Trump’s Iowa Faith Leader Coalition themselves tell us that violence is what they want. They aren’t shy in talking about it.
Iowa Faith Leader Coalition member Dale Coparanis warns that when his version of Christianity gains control, “Those individuals who do not believe in the Creator will be judged for all the wrongs they have done, pay the price and then perish.”
Joseph Hall, pastor of Crossroads Church in Council Bluffs, Iowa, teaches that, “Unbelievers will be judged,”and that “they will be eternally tormented.”
Timothy Blaisure, pastor of the Living For Christ Outreach Pentecostal Church in Clinton, Iowa warns that a Christian king is coming to attack American democracy “until he humbles all his enemies beneath his feet.”
You get the idea. If Christian Nationalists gain power in the elections of 2024, peace is the last thing we should expect.
So hop to it! Thoughts and prayers don’t make a difference. Citizen action does! It’s time for Americans who still care about the survival of secular democracy in America to use the powers granted to them under the Constitution while they still can.
Voting on Election Day is just the final act of a citizen in an election. It’s time to use our freedom of speech, freedom of the press, and freedom of assembly to organize a non-violent democratic resistance to Christian Nationalism.