I EDUCATE. YOU INDOCTRINATE. THEY BRAINWASH. If Joshua Davey had kept his scholarship, would that constitute a state establishment of Christianity?

Here, let me quote Dalia Lithwick: “The case was brought by Joshua Davey after a university scholarship he’d been given by the state of Washington was rescinded when he declared that one of his two majors would be in ‘pastoral ministries’ at a Christian college in Kirkland, Wash. Washington is one of 37 states with broader prohibitions on public spending for religious education than is required under the federal constitution. The state’s constitution bars the spending of public monies on religious instruction, and they’ve drawn a distinction between spending on religion when it’s taught in a secular manner and spending on training students for the ministry. Davey and his supporters, including the Bush administration, contend that this discriminates against the religious. Washington says it’s just policing the wall between church and state.”

It seems to me that John “Grotesque Anatomy” Jakala is arguing that Davey’s scholarship would in fact represent establishment of religion–most explicitly in his comments box, in response to a column by me (admittedly, a column that, on re-reading, I agree is less germane to the points Jakala’d initially been making than I’d thought). If I’m misunderstanding, I do apologize, though.

The belief that discrimination against religious institutions is required by the Constitution, in order to prevent establishment of religion, is a pretty common interpretation. Thus school vouchers shouldn’t be used at parochial schools or yeshivas or whatever.

I don’t know whether barring religiously-affiliated schools from public scholarships (and vouchers are just scholarships, of course) is constitutionally permitted. I don’t know whether Davey should win his case. I suspect he should, honestly; my reasoning is much like Eugene Volokh’s here.

But I am much more sure that barring religiously-affiliated schools from public scholarships is not constitutionally required. Using a voucher or other public scholarship at a religious school is not an establishment of religion, assuming that the same voucher or scholarship could just as well be used at a non-religious school or a school professing a different religion.

Maybe some examples will help. Are any of the following public-scholarship recipients participating in establishment of religion? And, if all these cases involve the same scholarship fund… what religion, exactly, is being established?

1) Suzy Catholic studies theology at Notre Dame; she thinks she might maybe want to be a nun, and so she makes sure to take courses geared toward Carmelite spirituality (good grief, I hope they have such courses at ND!), but she maybe wants to be a comparative literature professor instead.

2) Jacob Evangelical studies medieval Islam at Georgetown (a Catholic university, or so they tell me) so he can do interfaith work and possibly missions work in an Islamic country.

3) Tricia Atheist majors in religious studies at Yale, but in her sophomore year, while still on scholarship, she converts to Judaism and refocuses her studies to prepare her for the rabbinate. Is this case different if Tricia a) never converts, remaining the only atheist in the rel-stud major? (these things do happen!), or b) remains an atheist, but attends a religiously-affiliated school?

4) Marc Catholic studies theology at Georgetown in order to get a better grounding in his faith, even though what he actually plans to be is a consultant.

5) Jenna Jew double majors in psychology and philosophy at Yale (she has no social life) in hopes that these courses will help her be a better rabbi. Does it matter if one of her professors, himself a rabbi, teaches with an eye toward pastoral work?

6) Sally Catholic (Suzy’s sister), who also wants to be a nun, studies philosophy at Notre Dame, with a specialization in natural law. Three of her seven classmates (all in the same scholarship program) are Catholic; two are atheists; one is Jewish; one is a Deist, yes, a Deist.

None of these cases seem to me to be substantively, radically different from Joshua Davey’s case. More importantly, if all of them are possible outcomes of the scholarship program, I really can’t see how it’s “establishing” any religion, or asserting a preference for religion over not-religion. (Or asserting a preference for not-religion over religion.) In fact, such a scholarship program would seem to me to be shying away as carefully as possible from anything resembling establishment of any religious belief or belief about religion. If religion is being established, again… what religion is it?

And I worry that Jakala’s use of language (which I expect is the result of the quick writing one uses in comments boxes, rather than some carefully thought-through phrasing–I don’t want to imply that this is how he’d write if he were writing a blog post or an op-ed or whatever) echoes the fear that underlies many of these discussions. He writes, “I don’t care if I pay for children to be taught views I disagree with. But I do care if I pay for children to be indoctrinated in a particular religious tradition.”

This switch from “taught” to “indoctrinated” reminds me of the old line about dirty pictures: “What I like is erotica. What you like is pornography. What they like is smut.” Hence the title of this post.

Is “indoctrinating” children in a particular religious tradition different from/worse than “indoctrinating” them in a particular political or philosophical tradition (like the Afrocentrism I discussed in my column) or a particular interpretation of US history? How come? Do all religious schools “indoctrinate”? Do no non-religious schools indoctrinate? Do no public schools indoctrinate? (Am I asking “gimme” questions? 🙂 )

This stuff becomes even harder when we’re discussing colleges, since the students typically have much more choice in where they go (so “indoctrination” concerns should recede, I think) and the array of worldviews presented by the schools’ professors tends to vary more. Georgetown, Notre Dame etc. offer scores of non-Catholic professors of philosophy and theology; Yale and that cold school with the weird Puritan mascot offer several deeply religious professors of ditto. As it happens, I don’t think intra-university religious diversity should matter to this question–what should matter is whether the student could use the scholarship at schools of any religion or none–but it might matter to some people, so I mention it.

So yeah–the “myth of neutrality” that I discuss in that Jewish World Review column can’t even be talked about until we agree on the nature of religious establishment, which so far, it seems like Jakala and I don’t. I hope this has made my position at least a bit clearer.