Bus-Ride to Heaven?

The full division of Church and State is not yet axiomatic in contemporary American political practice. Periodically the wisdom accumulated over 200 years of democratic experience is questioned by sincere individuals who would exaggerate free religious enterprise into a form of state-help for diverse religious activities. The latest of these experiments in extended state participation in the spiritual field, and by far the most painful to evaluate, reached its unsatisfactory climax in the Ewing Township Decision, rendered last week by the Supreme Court. Split into a five-and-four grouping, the Court nonetheless upheld a New Jersey law which grants tax rebates to families whose children must pay bus-fare in order to reach parochial schools. These tax rebates constitute repayment to families which cannot be reached by the public bus service.

The Court majority will force the governments of the states into the position of arbiters over just what in the spiritual field constitutes public service. For, under the reasoning of Justice Black, who rendered the majority opinion, there can be no denying the right of any religious group to duplicate playground, cultural or after-hours activities offered by the community, and then to demand state financial support of the same type granted the public efforts. If New Jersey taxpayers must finance the transportation of students to parochial schools, what is the logical barrier between this type of subsidy and subsidy of education itself? For if the bus-ride to private school is a public service, it must follow logically that the education offered by that private school is just as much a public concern. And here you run into the gravest type of social problems as well as the cherished American tradition of hands-off Church education.

Too often the value of parochial education has been injected into just this type of argument. There is no place in the case against the Ewing Township Decision for any conclusions about Church schooling. This form of education plays a vital role in society, but a role apart from the educational mechanism fashioned by the state for public use. Any mixing of the two structures, if only to prevent exclusion of any groups from the benefit of welfare legislation "because of their faith or lack of it," is mistaking state paternalism for true freedom. A state cannot be allowed to subsidize any intermediate group that sees fit to duplicate one of its social services.

In opposing the settlement, Justice Jackson hit at a far deeper and perhaps more menacing possibility. If the state is forced to aid church schools by diversion of tax moneys, there can be little doubt that the logical implication of state control of ideas creates a monumental danger to free worship. If a contemporary example is necessary after centuries of lessons, the picture of political interference at the University of Texas applied on a smaller scale, and inserted through the seemingly trivial entering wedge of tax rebates ought to be enough to terrify defenders of any linkage between state authority and Church schools. The Supreme Court is still to be convinced that religious convictions can be best cultivated in the untaxed confines of the individual conscience.