Editor’s Note: This week, “The Wall of Separation” blog is featuring the essays and videos submitted by the winners of Americans United’s 2024 AU Student Contest, which asked high school and college students to reflect on their vision for church-state separation. Submissions do not necessarily reflect the views of Americans United.
My absolute favorite class as a child was always recess — but I seldom spent my 30 minutes of freedom at the monkey bars. Instead, I loitered in the library, burying myself in stories. My now-lifelong love of books was fostered in my elementary school library: it granted me insight into a trove of new information and perspectives I otherwise never would have encountered in my relatively homogenous, white, conservative-leaning hometown.
I feel incredibly fortunate to have grown up at the precise time that I did. Today’s youth, a mere decade younger than myself, will never be able to immerse themselves in literature like I did — at least not at school. During the 2023-24 academic year alone, over 10,000 books were banned from public schools, reports PEN America. Furthermore, PEN says, the rate at which bans are occurring is rapidly increasing: 3,362 books were banned during the 2022-23 school year, indicating a 297 percent increase in a single year. It is not only the sheer number of banned titles that is shocking, but also the content that is being suppressed: 41 percent include LGBTQ+ themes, 40 percent include protagonists or supporting characters of color, and 21 percent directly address themes of race or racism.
Christian Nationalism, which former evangelical minister Brad Onishi described to PBS as “built around the idea that Christians are called to a new [cultural] transformation or reformation of the United States,” are responsible for much of this surge in literary censorship. The American Library Association noted that the process of banning books is twofold. It begins with a challenge, in which an individual or group requests that a text is removed from a library due to objectionable content. If a school or district official approves of the request, the text is then formally banned. Christian Nationalists have had particular success in Texas and Florida, states that lean Republican and traditional in their religious beliefs, as well as Pennsylvania’s notably conservative York County, reported the Texas Tribune.
Explicit advocacy for the removal of books that do not align with the Christian Nationalist worldview is a clear attempt to silence dissenters and block alternative viewpoints; this is a clear violation of the First Amendment rights to freedom of speech, opinion and religion. Book banning is also an effort on the part of Christian Nationalists to impose their religious beliefs on others: seeking to censor any material that challenges their values and teachings by extension foists their ideologies on others. Public school officials who accept challenges from Christian Nationalist groups are thus violating the First Amendment principle of freedom of religion. Christian Nationalists seek to erode church-state separation to ensure that their own ideology has dominance over the state — and all faiths, beliefs, and perspectives other than their own.
As a white, cisgender woman, I have always enjoyed discovering new perspectives — my own were already well represented in the literature available to me. For me, the library was a place where I could stretch my intellectual and emotional capacity, and develop a sense of connection to others from disparate backgrounds. These spaces offered windows into lives far different from mine, allowing me to reflect on issues like race, gender, and identity with the nuance and complexity they deserved.
Yet, in today’s public schools, this kind of education is under threat. When extremist factions demand that certain perspectives be removed from curricula, they deprive students — particularly those from marginalized backgrounds — of the opportunity to find beauty in their own culture and experiences. “By stripping our bookshelves of stories and characters representing beliefs that differ from their own, Christian Nationalists and their allies seek to force their narrow definition of American identity on all of us,” explains Interfaith Alliance CEO Paul Raushenbush.
In the 1982 case Board of Education, Island Trees Union Free School District v. Pico, the Supreme Court ruled that public schools were permitted to ban books deemed “pervasively vulgar” or unfit for the curriculum but could not ban texts solely due to disapproval of the ideas they promoted. However, this case applied specifically to the removal of books from library shelves; more recent movements to remove texts from school curriculums do not yet have any legal precedent. The recent wave of Christian Nationalism-induced book banning is so new that it has yet to be addressed systematically.
It is crucial that efforts to do so become more organized and widespread. The battle over church-state separation and academic freedom is far from over. To protect the values that ensure a well-rounded education for all, we must actively educate others about the dangers of allowing religious extremism to dictate public policy in schools. One of the first steps is to engage in open dialogue about the importance of a secular education system. School boards and local lawmakers must be reminded that public education is not the place for religious indoctrination, but for fostering critical thinking, diversity of thought, and respect for the rights of all students.
Additionally, legal challenges remain one of the most powerful tools we have to resist the erosion of church-state separation. Advocacy organizations must continue to challenge book bans and religiously motivated curriculum changes in court, defending the principles of free speech and the First Amendment. Furthermore, communities must unite to hold lawmakers accountable, ensuring that they cannot legislate their personal religious beliefs at the expense of students’ educational rights. Public pressure, organized campaigns, and coalition-building will be key in keeping religious extremists from gaining unchecked power over the public education system.
My childhood “recesses” were a race against time. I devoured as many chapters as I could before the bell rang, signaling my return to the mundane toil of classes and routine. Today, it is the adults who are racing against a divisive movement that seeks to further entwine church and state; we are fighting to restore and preserve the vibrant, diverse literature that all students deserve, and are Constitutionally owed, the right to access. The clock is ticking — we must act before it is too late.
