RETURN TO THE VALLEY OF THE MADRASSA VOUCHERS! Thomas Nephew’s Newsrack replies to my Jewish World Review column defending the inclusion of religious schools in voucher programs. I think all of our points of disagreement can be summarized in a paragraph, which replaces the super-long cashing-out of that paragraph that I initially posted:

I think we’re disagreeing here because I don’t view “religion” as this weird, inscrutable, separate, and vaguely threatening sphere of life. I could ramble about the similarities between religion and philosophy, the ways in which religion enriches rather than threatening public discourse, and all that, but really I think it’s enough to say that religions are not wiggily different from secular worldviews. They’re not uniquely opaque to reason. They’re not uniquely firmly-held in the teeth of the evidence. They’re not uniquely value-laden. They’re not uniquely controversial. They’re not uniquely unaccountable. At least w/r/t schooling and vouchers, Nephew is writing as if religion is like a polar bear or a lion: awesome, beautiful, but not the sort of critter you want wandering around in public, and generally best when walled in behind glass.