Education: The Bible & Stuff

The case was prosaically listed “. . . Vashti McCollum v. Board of Education . . .” but it had some of the same features that made the Scopes “monkey trial” a sideshow of the ’20s. And, though the decision would immediately affect only the citizens of Champaign, Ill. (pop.

23,000), the case involved a basic educational issue: should religion be taught in public schools? The McCollum in the case was the slight, 32-year-old wife of an assistant professor of horticulture at the University of Illinois, Mrs. Vashti McCollum. Last year, she complained, her son Terry had been “embarrassed” and “ostracized” by his schoolmates because she refused to let him attend the school’s religious classes (Jews and Catholics usually leave school to go to classes of their own). Mrs. McCollum sued to have the religious training banned altogether. Said she: the classes waste taxpayers’ money, and discriminate against minority faiths. Further, she argued, the classes are an unconstitutional merger of church and state.

The first days in court Mrs. McCollum’s lawyer called in a Presbyterian, a Methodist, a Lutheran, a Jehovah’s Witness, a Quaker, a Fundamentalist, a Christian Scientist, to prove that Champaign’s religious teaching discriminated against their faiths; but several of the witnesses said just the opposite. The school-board lawyers then tried to show that the issue was not between sects, but between religion v. atheism. They succeeded with Mrs. McCollum’s father, Arthur G. Cromwell, who is president of the Rochester (N.Y.) Society of Free Thinkers. (Last spring he got religious training abolished in three upstate New York towns.) Mr. Cromwell would only “affirm” to tell the truth, instead of swearing by God. Then he testified to his beliefs that the story of Adam and Eve is fictitious, the Flood a scientific impossibility and the Resurrection a physical impossibility. He declared: “I am proud to say that I am [an atheist].”

Next on the stand was ten-year-old Terry McCollum, who also “affirmed” to the truth.

“Did you ever go to Sunday school?” asked a lawyer.

“Once, but not any more,” said Terry.

“Why not?”

“I’d feel kind of funny sitting there being an atheist.”

“What is an atheist?”

“Oh, a guy who doesn’t believe in God, or the Bible, or stuff.”

“Isn’t it fun being an atheist?”

“Well, in a way it is, and in a way it ain’t.”

Then came Mrs. McCollum. “I have not accepted belief in God myself,” said she, “but I have never consciously ridiculed religion.” She had gone to court, she said, because she “felt deeply” that church and state should be separate.

The three Circuit Court judges who heard the case postponed decision. Each side threatened to carry the case to the U.S. Supreme Court if it lost.