Blaine Amendment
The Blaine Amendment was proposed in 1875 by James G. Blaine, Republican Congressman from Maine and future presidential candidate. It was an amendment to the federal Constitution that would forbid the public funding of private, denominational schools while at the same time require Bible reading in the public schools.
It read:
- No State shall make any law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; and no money
raised by taxation in any State for the support of public schools, or derived from any public fund therefore, nor any public lands devoted thereto, shall ever be under the control of any religious sect, nor shall any money so raised or lands so devoted be divided between religious sects or denominations.
The Constitutional amendment passed the House by a vote of 180 yeas and only 7 nays, but failed in the Senate to obtain the required 2/3 margin for a Constitutional amendment by four votes and never became law. The Blaine amendment became pivotal in state debates on the role of religion in public education, religious establishment, and religious expression for the next thirty-five years. Read (2004) examines the role of the GOP in creating a series of state public school systems in the North and West that were strongly shaped by Protestantism. To achieve this goal, Republicans supported amendments, legislation, and regulation in both national and state governments. In the South Bourbon Democrats drafted and ratified constitutions which restricted public funding of denominational schools to keep blacks and poor whites from access to education and the polling place. By 1911, only Maine, Vermont, and Maryland did not have a Blaine amendment in their state constitutions. Read argues that the profound national changes brought about by the Civil War, the difficulties of Reconstruction, modern ideas, industrialization, and millennial religious revivalism brought about a widespread conservative reaction to the millions of immigrants who came to America in the nineteenth century.
Because the majority of these immigrants were Roman Catholic, the newcomers challenged traditional Protestant American religious, social, and republican values. Moreover, they affected the issues of religious establishment and expression in both public and parochial schools. As pietistic Protestants found their political power challenged by these newcomers, they sought to preserve their dominance through legislation promoted largely by the Republican Party to create a Protestant civil religion in America. In 1890 the GOP suffered heavy losses in part because of the issue of parochial schools. In 1896 William McKinley supported pluralism, promising all ethnic and religious groups would prosper and none would be the target of hostile federal action.
The issue came alive in the 21st century as evangelical and Catholic churches operateing their own parochial schools wanted a voucher system so that parents could get state tuition money to attend these schools. A large majority of states already provide some limited kinds of aid to religiously-affiliated private schools, but vouchers are highly controversial, primarily because they are opposed by teacher unions.
See also
Bibliography
- Deforrest, Mark Edward. "An Overview and Evaluation of State Blaine Amendments: Origins, Scope, and First Amendment Concerns." Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy. Volume: 26#2 2003. pp 551+. online version
- Green, Steven K. "The Blaine Amendment Reconsidered," The American Journal of Legal History, Vol. 36, No. 1 (Jan., 1992), pp. 38-69 in JSTOR
- Read, Margery. "The Blaine Amendment and the Legislation It Engendered: Nativism and Civil Religion in the Late Nineteenth Century." PhD dissertation U. of Maine 2004. 248 pp. DAI 2005 66(1): 314-A. DA3159835
- Viteritti, Joseph P. "Blaine's Wake: School Choice, the First Amendment, and State Constitutional Law,: Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy, Vol. 27, 2003.