This is an opinion column.
Alabama has about 12,000 churches. It’s a lot. It has about 1,500 public schools. Which – gimme a second, I learned math from a football coach – comes to about eight churches for every public school.
That makes sense. People don’t have to agree on what 2-plus-2 is, or what a gerund might be, or when Charles Darwin discovered America. But folks are particular about religion. They have different ideas on whether there is a god, what he or she looks like or wants from them. If anything.
Which is why we have historically kept such personal things out of the institutions that take our tax money. Like schools. It’s part of the reason we don’t make churches pay taxes, so they are free to flourish. Which is another debate for another day.
Churches break off and divide every time somebody in some pew gets a bee in his or her bonnet. Christianity alone is split by denominations and sects and cults, not to be confused with sex cults.
Some people swear by a loving god – which might break one of the Commandments, now that I think of it. Others worship a jealous god, a hands-on god, or a creator who just put things in motion and stepped away. Heck, there’s even a god that picks winners of football games, according to the Church of the Sideline Interview.
I’ve been on the other side of that god a few times.
Alabama is consistently ranked among the nation’s leaders in per capita church attendance and religiosity. It is sometimes tied with Mississippi for No. 1, the inverse of historic education rankings.
You’d think we had this god thing covered.
But no. Six bills are currently being considered in the Alabama Legislature that would seek to embed religion in schools.
HB 231 would demand daily Judeo-Christian prayer. School districts that don’t bow down risk losing 25% of their state funding, which in Alabama’s largest district would mean a $100 million cut. The sponsor of that bill, Rep. Reed Ingram (sponsor of the heretical 2023 law making the Yellowhammer cookie the state’s official cookie) pushed several religious education bills in the past, when such things seemed more far-fetched.
HB 179 would let schools hire chaplains, or accept volunteer chaplains. Because what could go wrong? Both HB 178 and HB 179 are sponsored by Rep./Rev. Mark Gidley, the pastor of Faith Worship Center in Glencoe.
HB 342 and Senate companion SB 229 would allow schools to give elective credit for students who “attend religious instruction during the day.” Those who participate “shall be credited with time spent as if the student attended school.”
As if.
The sponsor of SB229 is Sen. Shay Shelnutt, a proud member of Palmerdale Methodist Church, which like many others split with the United Methodists over differences in doctrine.
Agreeing on religion is harder than it seems.
SB166 and HB 178 would require all public schools and colleges to display the Ten Commandments on site (as if politicians followed those), though they will get no state money to do it. Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s tax money.
The thing is, legislating religion in schools is fantastic if you happen to be an evangelical Christian, like about four in 10 Alabamians. It’s a little less fantastic if you happen to be a Christian of a different sort, or Jewish or Muslim.
And to hell with you if you have a different kind of -ism. Or if you simply don’t want your kid learning theology from some rando or zealot picked by a politician.
I mean, no offense to zealots, but I don’t want them teaching religion to my kids, any more than they want me teaching religion to theirs.
At the end of the day, religion is a divisive concept. I thought the Legislature already outlawed those.
John Archibald is a two-time Pulitzer winner for AL.com.