These justices and their conservative supporters might be sincere in their hope to combat “bigotry” and offer religious families real “choice” and equal treatment. They might honestly believe that they are restoring America to its original constitutional vision, guided by the wisdom of the Founding Fathers. But their decisions ignore the real history. They have taken America back into dangerous territory, in which taxpayers will be required to pay for religious ideas they consider abhorrent. Two centuries ago, Americans wisely chose to steer clear of those dilemmas.
The key at the time was Americans’ understanding of the word sectarian. Two hundred years ago, American public institutions—including public schools—included plenty of religious practice by 21st-century standards. But they avoided using public money to pay for schools that taught controversial religious ideas—what they called “sectarian” ideas. As the historian Steven K. Green has demonstrated, in the early 1800s, Americans worried—with good reason—about government intervention in intractable religious controversies.
It wasn’t a simple decision. At the time, American public opinion learned its lesson the hard way, through bitter, repeated school culture wars.
In the early 1800s, in the most famous example, Dartmouth College was racked with religious and political discord. One faction of faculty and students wanted to transform the institution into a purer sort of Christian school. An earnest student group successfully banned the long tradition of “treating” among students—in which students would get drunk to celebrate the announcement of their leading roles in commencement ceremonies.
The ban wasn’t popular. In 1809, many of the rest of the students rioted, firing guns at the headquarters of the student religious group, even blasting a cannon on campus. No one was hurt, but the disgruntled students made their point. They would not accept the leadership of one group of students who wanted to force their definition of Christianity on the whole campus.
The rioting students had the sympathy of the college president. His supporters accused the anti-alcohol students of trying to turn Dartmouth “into a sectarian school.” But the puritan faction had its faculty supporters as well. Those professors accused the rioters and their supporters—presumably including the college’s president—as “fighting versus God, trampling under foot his bleeding Son.”
The state of New Hampshire waded in, and the case eventually made its way to the U.S. Supreme Court. In 1819, the Court issued its landmark decision in Dartmouth v. Woodward. It chose not to choose at all, to build the beginnings of a wall between public funding and religious controversies. The Court refused to decide which side represented true Christianity, the one with drinking or the one without. It refused to decide which Christian leader was “fighting versus God.” Instead, the justices declared such controversies beyond the reach of government decision.