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The Fourth R: Conflicts Over Religion in America’s Public Schools (Yale University Press, 2004)

The Fourth R traces the evolution of thought on religion in American public schools from the early 1800s, when Catholic children were expelled for refusing to read the King James Bible, to current disputes over religious displays and affirmations. Using a blend of historical and legal analysis, it demonstrates how and why distinctions are made between state-sponsored prayer and the religious speech of students. In so doing, it explores almost two centuries of lawsuits, legislative battles, and grassroots controversies, all of which struggle to balance two of the most fundamental tenets of Americanism: majority rule and individual rights. The underlying theme of the book is that religious liberty, on which any hope of intellectual freedom rests, is inherent in the individual. No government grants it, and none has the legitimate authority to circumscribe it. Majorities and minorities alike are entitled to promote their religious views in public, and the more numerous the adherents of a particular belief, the more impact their collective action will have. Beyond this legitimate use of majority status, the majority’s votes may in some instances give it the power to enlist the machinery of the state to advance a religious agenda -- but nothing can give it the right to do so.

In the mid-1980s, I taught a summer course that included Romeo and Juliet. Two high school teachers who read the play in their high-school anthologies were unable to follow the class discussion because more than 400 lines had been excised. That intrigued me into exploring the censorship of literature in high-school anthologies, which led to my first book. In the course of that research, I became interested in the larger issue of academic freedom, particularly with respect to the way decisions are made about the rights of teachers and students to engage in controversial speech and instruction. Since religion has generated more debate than anything else, I wrote The Fourth R as well as forthcoming articles on “under God” in the Pledge (University of Pennsylvania Journal of Constitutional Law) and on the debate over intelligent design (Rutgers Law School Journal on Law and Religion). I’m currently writing a book that analyses the effect of funding and governance structures on the way public schools and universities deal with religion, race, politics, and sexuality. The most recent syllabus for my graduate course on intellectual freedom is at www.english.udel.edu/jdel.

For more information, see the English Department's faculty profile for Joan DelFattore.

Joan DelFattore

Professor of English and Legal Studies