Religion and Public Education

Difficult Subjects: Religion and the Politics of Public Schooling in Japan and the United States

Currently under revision for the Class 200 series at University of Chicago Press

To what extent is religion a core part of national citizenship, and to what extent should religions be involved in educating juvenile citizens? Historically, this two-part question has been difficult to answer because people reasonably disagree on matters of democratic principle. But it has also been irresolvable because it hinges on an unwieldy term: religion. Adopting a supranational approach that focuses on the transpacific US-Japan Alliance, Difficult Subjects tracks the fallout of the “1947 Settlement”—a moment when new Japanese legislation and groundbreaking American jurisprudence clarified that public education should not involve confessional instruction. Although the 1947 Settlement ostensibly clarified the relationship between religion and education, the “new normal” actually elicited considerable confusion, especially as Japan and the United States both embraced religiosity as one of the distinguishing features of Cold War capitalist democracy. This book tracks how ensuing debates over patriotic ritual, moral instruction, vocational training, sex education, racial segregation, and taxation reflected uncertainties about the relationship between religion, democratic citizenship, and capitalist subjectivity. Along the way, it upends some conventional narratives about late twentieth-century secularization while also showing how the academic discipline of religious studies offers indispensable tools for understanding some of the most vexing legal and political dilemmas of our time.