Each morning during homeroom in my high school long ago, a student read 10 Bible verses over the intercom, after which all 3,000 of us had to stand and recite the Lord’s Prayer.
Rather than a rural Bible Belt school, this was Abington Senior High School in suburban Philly — a middle class, elite public institution where our quarterback went to Princeton and became a noted pediatric surgeon, and the star running back matriculated at the University of Michigan and became a lawyer.
Academic excellence aside, state law required daily school day Bible reading, making some students uncomfortable. The Schempps, a family of Unitarians, eventually had enough. Bringing the Quran to school, Ellery Schempp read it during Bible time and refused to stand during the Lord’s Prayer. Unsure how to handle this act of defiance, school officials initially excused Ellery from the prayer ritual. But upon later repeating his protest, he was forced to comply.
At that point, the Schempps took their grievance to the courts. On June 17, 1963, in Abington School District vs. Schempp, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 8-1 that mandated Bible readings and prayers violated the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause.
“In the relationship between man and religion,” said Justice Tom C. Clark, writing for the majority, “the state is firmly committed to a position of neutrality. [Bible-reading practices] are religious exercises, required by the states in violation of the command of the First Amendment that the government maintain strict neutrality, neither aiding nor opposing religion.”
As a senior at Abington and classmate of one of the Schempp kids — Donna — I had an interest in the case. Twenty years later and working on a Schempp follow-up piece for the Philadelphia Inquirer, I checked in on the Schempps.
What had it been like to be a part of such an important case? Sadly but not surprisingly, I learned that Donna and her brother Roger had been harassed at school — Ellery having graduated as the case moved through the courts — and threatened with violence. Animal waste had been mailed to their home. Filthy phone calls came in the middle of the night. Busloads of school kids passed their house, yelling that it was “the Commie camp.”
Abington being a conservative, WASPy area, antisemitism and racism were not unknown. Yet what I learned about the school’s principal opened my mind to the totalitarian nature of right-wing religion.
A supporter of creationism and school prayer, the principal, incensed by the Schempps’ lawsuit, called Tufts University — where Ellery had applied — and, labeling him a “troublemaker,” demanded the college refuse his admission. Tufts nonetheless accepted Ellery, who eventually earned a Ph.D. in physics.
Twenty years later that same admissions officer was at Tufts. He remembered the phone call and the conversation that ensued. But my former high school principal lied in denying the incident ever took place.
Past and present, theocrats — Christian Nationalists —are certain their way is the only way, and don’t care how they achieve their goals. They lie about America being a “Christian nation.” They pack legislatures with like-minded persons disregardful of others’ rights, lack sympathy for America’s diversity of religious experience and dismiss people fighting for religious freedom.
My interview with Donna Schempp two decades after the 1963 case affirmed those realities. By then she had a graduate degree in social work and was a Montessori teacher on the West Coast. But she remembered her high school years as a terrible time. A scared kid who longed for friendships, she was ostracized. “Lots of kids saw me and my brother as weird, unacceptable,” she told me. During that “real traumatic” time, her tormentors cared nothing of her well-being.
Today, no laws prevent one from personally praying or reading the Bible in school, yet theocrats persist. They demand the Bible be placed in every classroom and taught as one of our nation’s founding documents, and want the Ten Commandments posted on school walls. Thankfully, a proposed constitutional amendment that would mandate prayer in public schools languishes.
The fight against Christian Nationalism is far from over — and may never end. Religious fascists, convinced of their righteousness, will never admit the U.S. was founded as a secular democracy.
Brave and defiant, the Schempp clan stood up for what is right, fought the bigots and won. If there’s such a thing as a Religious Freedom Hall of Fame, they belong in it. We must honor them by being ever vigilant in fighting theocracy.
Lewis Beale, an AU member, is a journalist who has worked for newspapers in Los Angeles, Detroit and New York. (This article does not necessarily represent the views of Americans United.)