The Edgerton Bible Case

Introduction

Although we have freedom of speech and religion, we face many questions about what exactly this means. For example, you can find nearly thirty clarifications just of the Wisconsin law guaranteeing the right to freedom of speech and press.1 One source of controversy involves conflicts with other constitutional guarantees, such as when freedom of speech conflicts with the prohibition on the establishment of religion. One such case arose in 1890, when the Supreme Court of Wisconsin had to make a decision about the practice in some public schools of teachers reading Bible passages as a school exercise.

Colonial America was openly hostile to Catholics, and this practice continued in various forms after the founding of our new nation and through its development during the 1800’s. In one particularly contested area, the Wisconsin Supreme Court set a national precedent2 when it banned Bible reading in public schools in State ex rel Weiss v. District Board 76 Wis. 177 (1890),3 a case more commonly referred to as the “Edgerton Bible Case.”

It was common practice in the Protestant-dominated public schools of the United States from the colonial era into in the 1800s to read from the King James translation of the Bible, in part with the intention of converting the children of Catholic immigrants to a Protestant faith.4 As more children began to attend public schools, Catholic parents around the country protested the Protestant orientation of the instruction, and despite their petitions for change, many schools continued this practice. In fact, in cities like Boston and New York, Catholic (and Jewish) students were expelled from the public schools for refusing to read the Protestant Bible. New York even adopted a system of state aid to schools run by Protestant denominations. However, when the New York City Catholic Archbishop Hughes sought aid from this fund for Catholic schools, he was denied. Subsequently, Hughes fought for and won an end to the state aid program to Protestant schools, reduced blatant anti-Catholic references in public school textbooks, and challenged the reading of the King James Bible in New York public schools.5 Yet the Protestant reaction to the Catholic objections sometimes turned violent. For example, in 1834 an angry Boston mob burned down a Catholic convent because of Catholic protests to required Protestant reading in the public schools, and in 1844 fifty people died during the Philadelphia Bible Riots.6 And many public officials and school boards around the country found support for their Protestant bias after the Maine Supreme Court ruled in Donahoe v. Richards 38 Me. 379, 61 Am. Dec. 256 (1854) that school authorities could lawfully compel students to read the King James Version of the Bible.

Since school attendance was not compulsory in Wisconsin prior to 1879, Catholics who sought schooling often established their own parochial schools to avoid exposing their children to the Protestant-dominated public school system. But when school attendance became compulsory first in 1879 and then was strengthened through the so-called “Bennett Law” of 1889, some Catholic parents in Edgerton decided they would make a legal complaint. Frederick Weiss, W.H. Morrissey, Thomas Mooney, James McBride, J.C. Burns and John Corbett filed suit in Rock County circuit court, asking for the court to force the school to discontinue its practice of daily reading selections from the King James Version of the Bible during class time.

Judge Bennett of the circuit court followed common practice and legal precedents in other states in deciding against the parents. The parents then appealed Judge Bennett’s decision to the Wisconsin Supreme Court. In the next section, I introduce the reasons presented by the parents and their lawyer, Humphrey Desmond, why the school should not be allowed to continue the Bible reading.

Notes

1 See http://folio.legis.wi.us.

2 There was an earlier related decision by the Ohio Supreme Court, Board of Education v. Minor 23 Ohio St. 211 (1872) upholding a Cincinnati School Board resolution repealing use and reading of the Bible in public schools. Justice Welch, writing for the Ohio majority, stated in dicta, “True Christianity asks no aid from the sword of civil authority. It began without the sword, and wherever it has taken the sword, it has perished by the sword. To depend on civil authority for its enforcement is to acknowledge its own weakness, which it can never afford to do. It is able to fight its own battles. Its weapons are moral and spiritual, not carnal.” Quoted in William Blakely, American State Papers Bearing on Sunday Legislation, 1891, p. 193. However, its holding, while allowing the Cincinnati school board to ban Bible reading, did not thereby require anyone to ban Bible-reading (as did the Edgerton case): “The only fair and impartial method, where serious objection is made, is to let each sect give its own instructions, elsewhere than in the State schools.” Blakely at 194-5 (my emphasis). Michael deHaven Newsom in his thorough review of legal cases involving religion in public schools notes, “Even Minor, its powerful dictum notwithstanding, may be read to accommodate common school religion, should the majority in a school district opt to provide for its exercise in the public schools.” See Newsom, “Common School Religion: Judicial Narratives in a Protestant Empire,” 11 S.Cal. Interdis. L.J. 219 (Spring, 2002), p. 326.

3 The State ex rel. Weiss and others v. The District Board of School District No. Eight of the City of Edgerton, 76 Wis. 177; 44 N.W. 967; 1890 Wisc. LEXIS 74 (1890).

4 See, e.g., Michael deHaven Newsom, “Common School Religion: Judicial Narratives in a Protestant Empire,” 11 S. Cal. Interdis. L.J. 219 (Spring, 2002), and Neil G. McCluskey, S.J., Catholic Viewpoint on Education (Garden City, N.Y.: Image Books, 1962).

5 Newsom, pp. 238-239.

6 Newsom, p. 242.