The Attorney General Says the Bible Doesn't Belong in Public School
A ruling out of Olympia that Bible reading in the common schools is unconstitutional sets the state's country editors howling — and the capital's own dailies suddenly have nothing to say.
The Big Bend Empire thinks that the late opinion of Attorney General Jones, holding that Bible reading in the public schools is unconstitutional, is an absurdity, and says that if more time were devoted by the legal fraternity to the broad moral teachings of the Bible and less oil burned in inventing technical conclusions, their service to the public would permit greater recommendation. The Coulee City News thinks its banishment from our schools may not affect the morals of those who are taught at the state's expense, yet cannot but view it as retrograding rather than advancing. The Sprague Advertiser says that whenever the authorities of any state arrive at the conclusion that the mere reading of the Bible in the public schools is unlawful, they make a sharp advance toward the overthrow of the foundation upon which all civil governments are based. It thinks the Bible is good enough for any school, and any school on earth will be made better for having used it as an agency for education. The Waitsburg Times says the public school is no place for teaching Biblical studies, and that the home, the church and the Sunday school are the places for such studies.
Nearly all of the country press has been heard from on the subject of the attorney general's opinion, and the majority of the newspapers do not look upon it with favor. One or two of the leading daily newspapers have avoided all reference to it.
“Nearly all of the country press has been heard from on the subject of the attorney general's opinion, and the majority of the newspapers do not look upon it with favor.”
Thirty years before the U.S. Supreme Court applied the Establishment Clause to the states, a Washington attorney general was already reading his own constitution as a wall between the schoolhouse and the Bible. The fight is not settled: school prayer, released time and religious instruction in public buildings are still litigated in Washington and across the country, and the press still splits along the same lines the Big Bend Empire and the Waitsburg Times did here.
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