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US Civilization – BBLAN 00400Home Assignment: Comprehension ExercisesLecturer: Karáth TamásDeadline: 18 May 2013

INSTRUCTIONS FOR THE COMPREHENSION EXERCISES

Follow the links below to the websites and read the articles. Answer the questions on separate sheets

of paper for each text. Do not quote from the articles. Primarily you should rely on information

available in the text, and in a second step on your background knowledge. If you use other sources,

indicate exactly the provenance of your quatations and other, non-quoted ideas. If you quote, you must

use quotation marks. Do not copy-paste from the Internet. Works with obvious plagiarism will be

graded with the fail mark. Basic instructions for the lay-out of your assignments:

- Submit typed and printed assignments.

- Do not forget to type your name in the upper right-hand corner margin.

- Give title to each assignment.

- Style: Times New Roman, font 12, 1.5 or double spacing, text justified to both margins

(“sorkizárt szerkesztés”), standard margins (1-1.5 cm) at both sides of the paper,

paragraphs indented, no gaps or extra space between the paragraphs

- Before submission check the spelling of your work for typos and grammatical mistakes.

Do not exclusively trust the Word spell check, as it may leave many errors unnoticed.

If you cannot access the websites indicated after the titles, go to the appendix of this guideline, and

read the texts there.

I. Bill Frey, “The Rising Significance of Regions”

http://urbanpolicy.berkeley.edu/pdf/census2000/frey.pdf

1. What is a census? How do the 2000 census findings change the traditional notions of

America’s major regions? (4 pts)

2. How does Bill Frey characterize the Heartland in terms of demographic changes? (4 pts)

3. What difference does the author make between the traditional concept of the Sunbelt (the

“old” Sunbelt) and the “New Sunbelt”? (4 pts)

4. Argue that the way Bill Frey uses the metaphor of the Melting Pot is different from the

original meanings and associations of this term. Explain how it is different from the

traditional idea of the “melting pot.” (6 pts)

5. “What’s missing in this new scenario is the opportunity that used to exist for day-to-day,

face-to-face interaction between people from these different social worlds.” Explain why the

author identifies this problem as the biggest potential danger of the new regional divides?

How does he illustrate the social segregation emerging from the new regional splits? (6 pts)

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http://urbanpolicy.berkeley.edu/pdf/census2000/frey.pdf


6. What is “Blue” and “Red America”? How do the political identites and voting preferences

overlap with the regional divisions Frey presents? Compare the regional distribution of

votes of the 2000 presidential elections with that of the latest (2008). Do Frey’s conclusions

still hold for the latest presidential elections? (6 pts)

II. William A. Henry, “Beyond the Melting Pot.” Time April 9, 1990

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,969770,00.html

1. Compare the trends of growth described in Paragraph 2 with more recent results (2000 and

2010 Censuses). Are the demographic predictions valid for the last decade of the 20 th

century and for the first of the 21st? (4 pts)

2. What does the author call the “browning of America”? (4 pts)

3. Do background research: what is affirmative action? What example does the article bring

to illustrate affirmative action policies? Is this example a direct or indirect way of

affirmative action? (6 pts)

4. Why do the following historical events, processes or persons have symbolical meanings in

the history of some communities in the US? For which community are they significant,

why? (8 pts)

Ellis Island

the Alamo

the Pilgrims

Selma

5. According to the article, what is the difference between a multiracial and a multicultural

society? Which stance does Thomas Bender of New York University represent in the

multiculturalist debate? (4 pts)

6. Comment on the following passage of the article: “While know-nothingism is generally

confined to more dismal corners of the American psyche, it seems all too predictable that

during the next decades many more mainstream white Americans will begin to speak

openly about the nation they feel they are losing. There are not, after all, many nonwhite

faces depicted in Norman Rockwell’s paintings.” (4 pts)

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III. Nancy Gibbs, “America’s Holy War.” Time December 9, 1991


1. What does the First Amendment of the Constitution say about the relationship of church

and state? How has this principle been interpreted by the US Supreme Court in the second

half of the 20th century? (4 pts)

2. How do the accommodationists justify their stance? (3 pts)

3. Which factors led to the strengthening of the accommodationist camp in the few decades

preceding the composition of the article? (3 pts)

4. Which cases does the author hold for cornerstone decisions of the Supreme Court in the

separationist-accommodationist debate? Who represented the separationist – and who the

accommodationist side – in these cases? Whom did the Supreme Court favor, why? (8 pts)

5. The author refers to several other minor court cases or conflicts in which the two sides

clashed. Decide who is the plaintiff and the defendant in these cases, and which side they

represent respectively:

A) “Last month the Pennsylvania supreme court threw out the sentence of a murderer [...]

on the ground that the prosecutor had unlawfully quoted the Bible to the jury in his

summation urging the death penalty.” (5 pts)

B) “Members of one Little Axe, Oklahoma, family that brought suit against morning

prayers in school in 1981 were at a football game one evening when their house was fire-

bombed and burned down.” (4 pts)

6. Do background research: the author predicts “a new era of accommodation” to be ushered

in by the Supreme Court. How actually did the separationist-accommodationist debate

continue in the 1990s and the early 21st century? Are there new landmark cases? Do the

courts, state supreme courts and the Supreme Court still seem to advocate strict

separationism, or has there been a move towards accommodationsim? (3 pts)

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APPENDIX: TEXTS OF THE ARTICLES

I. Bill Frey, “Three Americas: The rising significance of regions” (October 2002 )

Publisher: Journal of the American Planning AssociationJournal of the American Planning Association

For much of the 20th century, the terms, urban, suburban, and rural, could be used as shorthand for designating different "ways of life" in the United States, reflecting local areas' racial and demographic profiles. Moving from a city to a suburb, for example, meant escaping the dense, heterogeneous urban polyglot in favor of a more child-oriented, middle-- class lifestyle among mostly White neighbors with similar backgrounds and values. Rural populations, except in the South, were also largely White, but began to age sharply as rural youth followed jobs to the cities. Back then, well-recognized boundaries separating these very different worlds could be traversed with just a local move. Travel between them for commuting, shopping, visiting relatives, recreation, or the like could and did occur quite easily and often.

Results from the 2000 Census show a fading of these local cultural boundaries in favor of increasingly sharp regional ones. Each region is taking on its own cultural and demographic personality-a development that flies in the face of the conventional view that we are a "single melting pot" nation. These new regional divisions are being shaped by very different immigration and domestic migration flows that are creating distinctions among a suburb-like "New Sunbelt" region, an increasingly diverse "Melting Pot" region, and an aging, slow-growing "Heartland" region. Figure 1 shows the composition of these three new regions based on my analysis of data from the 2000 Census.1

The Three Regions

The New Sunbelt

This region might be characterized as "America's suburbs" because of the demographic dynamics that are creating its growth. Its 13 states, located primarily in the Southeast and West, contain about a fifth of the nation's total population and include the fastest growing states outside of the Melting Pot. Their collective population grew by 24% over the 1990s, compared to only 13% for the nation as a whole. While most of the nation's growth relies heavily on new immigrant minorities, the New Sunbelt states grew mostly by domestic migration of Whites and Blacks. Over the 1990s, domestic migrants to the New Sunbelt outpaced immigrants by a ratio of five to one; and 79% of the nation's White population gain was absorbed by these 13 states.

Contributing to these gains are today's suburbanites-young Gen-Xers, especially those forming families, and new retirees, a group whose numbers will explode in the next decade. Although Ozzie-and-Harriet-style families (White married couples with children) are declining nationally, 9 of the 10 states that gained such families in the 1990s are located in the New Sunbelt, led by Nevada where their number grew by 25%.

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At first blush, this phenomenon might seem to be an extension of the old Frost Belt-to-Sunbelt migration. However, it is important to make a distinction between these New Sunbelt states and the Old Sunbelt juggernauts, California, Texas, and Florida. The latter states contain some of the nation's largest urban immigrant gateways that now contribute significantly to their population gains. Their growth, while still substantial, has peaked. New Sunbelt states draw domestic migrants with more "suburban" characteristics, and their growth trajectories are still on the rise. Figure 2 is an analysis of data from the 2000 Census showing these changes in selected states. The congressional reapportionment based on the 2000 Census awarded seven new seats to New Sunbelt states, compared to only five for California, Texas, and Florida combined. In contrast, after the 1990 Census, 14 new seats went to the latter three states, compared with only 5 to the New Sunbelt.

It is, in fact, the New Sunbelt's suburb-like character that is attracting Whites and Blacks in large numbers. They are trading the pricey, congested, commuting towns of more urbane metropolises in California and the Northeast for what they see as the more peaceful, family-friendly communities in this region. Within the New Sunbelt, the fastest growth is occurring in outer suburban areas, exurban rural counties, and smaller metropolitan areas. Figure 3 shows that during the 1990s, White population growth was greatest in South and West nonmetropolitan areas and in smaller metro areas that were not the large immigrant ports of entry.2 In fact, the fastest growing counties in the U.S. are largely White and White-- gaining counties on the peripheries of New Sunbelt metro areas. Figure 4 illustrates this pattern for counties in the Atlanta metropolitan area. The creation of this new region is being shaped by migrants from other parts of the country. In their exodus from the largely cosmopolitan, liberal-leaning urban areas, the participants in this new suburban flight are sharpening the differences-cultural and political, as well as demographic-between the New Sunbelt and Melting Pot regions.

The Melting Pot

While it is true that America is becoming more racially and ethnically diverse, this diversity is hardly spread evenly across the country. The nine states that comprise the Melting Pot region (see Figure 1) are home to 74% of the nation's combined Hispanic and Asian populations but only 41% of its total population. These states include the six with greatest immigrant gains in the 1990s (CA, NY, TX, FL, IL, and NJ), as well as New Mexico, Hawaii, and Alaska-states with large and varied ethnic minorities. Collectively, Melting Pot states grew by 13% in the 1990s. This growth was dominated by immigrants and immigrant minorities, with Asians and Hispanics accounting for 76% of the gains and other non-White, non-Black races (including American Indians, other races, and mixed races), contributing an additional 17%. As a group, these states have lost White population over the 1990s. Individual states that gained Whites (FL, TX, NM, and AK) were nonetheless dominated by increased minorities. Population growth in the Melting Pot region is overwhelmingly attributable to immigrants (and their children), for these states collectively registered a net domestic out-migration over the 1990s.

While it is true that over the 1990s most counties in the United States gained Hispanics or Asians, these groups were heavily clustered in the Melting Pot region. These states contain 70% of the U.S. foreign-born population and 76% of all Americans who speak Spanish at home, compared with only 37% of the nation's native-- born population and only 34% percent

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of those who speak only English at home. In addition, 55% of the nation's mixed-race married couples reside in these states.

The attraction and retention of immigrant minorities in this region is caused, in part, by a national immigration policy that emphasizes family reunification and encourages migration to occur in chains, connecting co-- nationals at both origin and destination. It is also caused by the establishment in these areas of real ethnic communities replete with their own institutions, small businesses, clubs, churches, and social networks that are not easily replicated in other regions of the country. For new ethnic minorities from Latin America, Asia, or elsewhere, a move to the suburbs or another community within the Melting Pot region is likely to be more comfortable than becoming a "pioneer" in another part of the country. It is for this reason that the suburbs in the Melting Pot region are becoming almost as multi-ethnic as the cities (Frey, 2001). And it is for this reason that cities and suburbs in the Melting Pot region will increasingly have more in common with each other than with cities and suburbs in the New Sunbelt.

The remaining reason the Melting Pot region is becoming demographically more distinct lies with the out-migration of its middle-class Whites. During the 1990s, the greater Los Angeles area lost over 800,000 Whites, the greater New York City area lost over 600,000, and other immigrant gateway metropolitan areas, such as Miami, Chicago, and San Diego, experienced somewhat smaller losses. These losses are occurring in both the central cities and suburban communities and reflect a "flight from urbanism" more than a flight from diversity. However, these White migrants are from the same population groups that are moving to the New Sunbelt: young people, married couples, parents, and new retirees. This shift represents an ongoing displacement of the White, middle-class core populations of suburbs surrounding the nation's largest urban areas which, for the most part, are located in the Melting Pot states.

The good news is that cities and suburbs in the Melting Pot region are being infused with new immigrant minorities that, by virtue of their younger ages and proclivity for more traditional families, will be contributing to a new sense of community in these areas. The 2000 Census (U.S. Census Bureau, 2001) shows that the large city with the highest percentage of Ozzie-and-Harriet-- style families is Santa Ana, California, where such families comprise 42% of all households (Frey, 2002). Close behind are Anaheim and San Jose, California; and El Paso, Texas, where at least 3 out of 10 households are traditional families.

The Heartland

The Heartland region consists of the remaining 28 states and the District of Columbia that have in common relatively modest growth levels and populations that are largely White or White and African American (see Figure 1). In 2000, Heartland states contained 39% of the U.S. population. They include all northeastern and midwestern states that are not classed as Melting Pot and selected southern and western states that are lagging in population growth. The least racially diverse of the three regions, the Heartland is 81% White and 12% Black, with Blacks primarily located in the region's industrial cities. In the 1990s, only about 14% of the nation's Asian and Hispanic gains came to the Heartland, but this small infusion of minorities helped to stem losses in several of its declining cities.

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A large part of the Heartland has not attracted many migrants for decades. This is reflected in its older age structure and the fact that a high percentage of its population was born in-state (e.g., 78% in Pennsylvania, compared with only 24% in Nevada). Its suburbs are more middle aged and poised toward rapid "graying," in contrast to their counterparts in the New Sunbelt or Melting Pot regions, which have been attracting more Gen-Xers and immigrants. Therefore, Heartland states will have larger shares of "baby boomers," now spanning their mid 30s to mid 50s, who will have considerable influence on the Heartland's government decisions, consumer spending patterns, and politics. As seen in the November 2000 presidential election, several important "swing states" are located in the Heartland, and this will serve to magnify the national visibility of issues espoused by its relatively older, Whiter, and more-blue-collar population.

How Sharp the Divide?

The fact that new regional distinctions are taking precedence over the older, local ones raise the question: Can divides across these regions be bridged as easily as those across local areas? After all, the picture being painted here is of one region (the Melting Pot) possessing the youngest age structure and the most multi-ethnic population, and likely to be the most economically vibrant in the global economy; a second region (the New Sunbelt) becoming more suburban and middle class, with its residents choosing to live in safe, dispersed communities; and a third (the Heartland) having the least exposure to new immigrant minorities as it becomes older, Whiter, and demographically more stagnant.

In some respects, these distinctions overlie the distribution of votes by state in the 2000 presidential election, which has been subject to much discussion by pundits and the media (Barnes, 2002; Barone, 2001; Brooks, 2001). One prevalent thesis holds that the states that favored Gore ("Blue America") represent a more individualistic, secular, and liberal lifestyle; whereas those that favored Bush ("Red America") adhere to a more community and family-centered religious and conservative way of life. It is tempting to apply these interpretations to our three regions. In fact, the Melting Pot region coincides closely with "Blue America," since all those states except Florida, Texas, and Alaska favored Gore. As a group, the residents of these states are culturally diverse, economically heterogeneous, and would likely support a larger role for government, especially for education and programs directed to the less well off. The Melting Pot region is also more cosmopolitan and tends to attract educated-some might say culturally elite-people who tend to be more agnostic with regard to religious belief.

Yet it would be difficult to square "Red America" with our other two regions, because to an increasing degree the New Sunbelt is composed of refugees from the more urbane Melting Pot region. While they may be in quest of family-friendly neighborhoods and hold conservative views on economic issues, their roots will make them take a more moderate stance on social issues such as abortion, gun control, and affirmative action. In this respect, they will pull more traditional "Old South" and "Frontier West" attitudes toward the center of the ideological spectrum. In fact, it is the Heartland that most closely fits the stereotype of "Red America," given its Whiter, older, and more socially conservative population. Still, suburbanites in several Heartland states surprised the pundits by voting Democratic in the November 2000 presidential election, even though they were seen as belonging culturally to "Red America."

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Rather than reflecting these two "Americas," I would prefer to cast the three regions as reflecting the older local distinctions of urban, suburban, and rural. The new regional "White flight" from the Melting Pot to the New Sunbelt region is analogous to the older local "White flight" from the central city to its suburban ring. The difference today is that both residents and jobs are much more mobile; and for middle-class Americans, lifestyle as well as economics is important in selecting a destination. Hence, while the Melting Pot region provides the intensity, ethnic diversity, and close contact that used to be associated only with cities, the New Sunbelt offers a quieter setting, large lot sizes, and local control that have always attracted people to suburbs. Finally, large swaths of the Heartland region now replicate the older, more conservative rural areas of the past.

What is missing in this new scenario is the opportunity that used to exist for daily, face-to-face interactions among people from these different social worlds. Shoppers and theater-goers from the suburbs would have to interact with urbanites on a regular basis; children in growing young families would still be in close proximity to their grandparents who lived in rural areas or the city. In Bowling Alone, Robert Putnam (2000) refers to a "sprawl civic penalty" (p. 215) that contributes to our overall civic disengagement. The fact that young couples, empty-nest boomers, and retirees will increasingly populate a region where sprawl is expanding rapidly suggests that greater social isolation will result from this trend. Moreover, the census trends discussed here reflect patterns that occurred prior to the September 11 terrorist attacks. On that day, White residents living in large cities or their suburbs were substantially more concerned about an attack in their community than Whites living in small towns or rural areas, according to my analysis of a national survey (see Table 1). The results of this analysis show that 65.1% of White residents in large cities were concerned about such an attack, compared with only 18.8% of White residents in rural areas. These new concerns about security may further reinforce an already strongly held White, middle-class preference for dispersed settlements.

Within the Melting Pot states, however, there is already evidence of greater interracial and intercultural dating and marriage, residential coexistence, and the propensity for second-generation children to become proficient in English as well as in the language of their parents. "Melting" is indeed occuring within the Melting Pot regions, if not across the broader national landscape. These trends imply that an important national challenge for the present century will be to find ways to bridge these new regional divisions among communities with different demographics, lifestyles, and values but probably similar aspirations. National political parties, big corporations, and religious and civic institutions, as well as local governments and planners, will all be affected by this increasing social and geographic divide, separating us into "urban," "suburban," and "rural" regions that divide the nation into three Americas.

Frey is a demographer on the faculty of the University of Michigan Population Studies Center and a senior fellow at the Milken Institute in Santa Monica, CA. He has been monitoring 2000 Census trends in American Demographics articles, in Brookings Institution Census Surveys, and on his Web site http://www.frey-demographer.org.

Notes

Sarah McKenzie's image Aerial #21 (Niwot) shows new housing developments encroaching on farmland in Colorado. It serves as a visual example of the residential redistribution

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discussed by William Frey in this Longer View, and one of its consequences. It also highlights the rapid growth of many mountain states in the region Frey labels the New Sunbelt.

The artist is a landscape painter whose work addresses issues of land use and development. She is particularly interested in the many ways our built environment has changed over time in response to changes in our culture. She is currently an assistant professor at the Cleveland Institute of Art. She holds a BA from Yale and an MFA in painting from the University of Michigan. To view more of her work, visit www.sarahmckenzie.com or contact the Carson-Masuoka Gallery in Denver, Colorado (303) 573-8585.

The results of the 2000 Census show the increasing importance of regional differences for understanding America's racial and demographic landscape. Well-worn local labels such as urban, suburban, and rural are becoming less descriptive of lifestyles, racial profiles, and age structures than distinctions that separate sets of states into three regions: the suburb-like "New Sun belt," the racially diverse "Melting Pot," and the slow-growing, aging "Heartland." These regional divisions are rooted in the somewhat distinct redistribution patterns of immigrant minorities, who have concentrated mostly in coastal areas, and streams of largely White domestic migrants, who have gravitated to newer, economically prosperous areas in the Southeast and West.

Footnotes:

1. The New Sunbelt states are Arizona, Colorado, Delaware, Georgia, Idaho, North Carolina, Nevada, Oregon, South Carolina, Tennessee, Utah, Virginia, and Washington. The Melting Pot states are Alaska, California, Florida, Hawaii, Illinois, New Jersey, New York, New Mexico, and Texas. The Heartland states are Alabama, Arkansas, Connecticut, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, New Hampshire, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Dakota, Vermont, West Virginia, and Wyoming.2. These metropolitan areas are Chicago and New York (North); Dallas, Houston, and Miami (South); and Los Angeles, San Diego, and San Francisco (West).

References:

ABC News/Washington Post. (2001, September 11). Terrorist Attack Poll No. 1. Washington, DC: Author.

Barnes, J. A. (2002, March 15). Democrats see red. National Journal, p. 758-765.

Barone, M. (2001, June 8). 49 percent nation. National Journal, p.1710-1716.

Brooks, D. (2001, December). Are we really one country?: A report from Red and Blue America. Atlantic Monthly, pp. 53-- 65.

Frey, W. H. (2001, June). Meltingpot suburbs: A Census 2000 study of suburban diversity (Census Survey). Washington DC: Brookings Institution Center on Urban & Metropolitan Policy.

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Frey, W. H. (2002, Second Quarter). Ozzie & Harriet meet Will & Grace (Charticle). Milken Institute Review, pp. 5-7.

Putnam, R. D. (2000). Bowling alone. New York: Touchstone.

U.S. Census Bureau. (1991). Census of Population and Housing, 1990 [United States]: Public Law (P.L.) 94-171 Data. Washington, DC: Author.

U.S. Census Bureau. (2001). Census of Population and Housing, 2000 [United States]: Public Law (P.L.) 94-171 Data. Washington, DC: Author.

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II. William A. Henry, “Beyond the Melting Pot.” Time April 9, 1990

Beyond The Melting PotTIME, Monday, Apr. 09, 1990 By WILLIAM A. HENRY III

Someday soon, surely much sooner than most people who filled out their Census forms last week realize, white Americans will become a minority group. Long before that day arrives, the presumption that the "typical" U.S. citizen is someone who traces his or her descent in a direct line to Europe will be part of the past. By the time these elementary students at Brentwood Science Magnet School in Brentwood, Calif., reach mid-life, their diverse ethnic experience in the classroom will be echoed in neighborhoods and workplaces throughout the U.S.

Already 1 American in 4 defines himself or herself as Hispanic or nonwhite. If current trends in immigration and birth rates persist, the Hispanic population will have further increased an estimated 21%, the Asian presence about 22%, blacks almost 12% and whites a little more than 2% when the 20th century ends. By 2020, a date no further into the future than John F. Kennedy's election is in the past, the number of U.S. residents who are Hispanic or nonwhite will have more than doubled, to nearly 115 million, while the white population will not be increasing at all. By 2056, when someone born today will be 66 years old, the "average" U.S. resident, as defined by Census statistics, will trace his or her descent to Africa, Asia, the Hispanic world, the Pacific Islands, Arabia -- almost anywhere but white Europe.

While there may remain towns or outposts where even a black family will be something of an oddity, where English and Irish and German surnames will predominate, where a traditional (some will wistfully say "real") America will still be seen on almost every street corner, they will be only the vestiges of an earlier nation. The former majority will learn, as a normal part of everyday life, the meaning of the Latin slogan engraved on U.S. coins -- E PLURIBUS UNUM, one formed from many.

Among the younger populations that go to school and provide new entrants to the work force, the change will happen sooner. In some places an America beyond the melting pot has already arrived. In New York State some 40% of elementary- and secondary-school children belong to an ethnic minority. Within a decade, the proportion is expected to approach 50%. In California white pupils are already a minority. Hispanics (who, regardless of their complexion, generally distinguish themselves from both blacks and whites) account for 31.4% of public school enrollment, blacks add 8.9%, and Asians and others amount to 11% -- for a nonwhite total of 51.3%. This finding is not only a reflection of white flight from desegregated public schools. Whites of all + ages account for just 58% of California's

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http://www.time.com/time/topics/africa

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population. In San Jose bearers of the Vietnamese surname Nguyen outnumber the Joneses in the telephone directory 14 columns to eight.

Nor is the change confined to the coasts. Some 12,000 Hmong refugees from Laos have settled in St. Paul. At some Atlanta low-rent apartment complexes that used to be virtually all black, social workers today need to speak Spanish. At the Sesame Hut restaurant in Houston, a Korean immigrant owner trains Hispanic immigrant workers to prepare Chinese-style food for a largely black clientele. The Detroit area has 200,000 people of Middle Eastern descent; some 1,500 small grocery and convenience stores in the vicinity are owned by a whole subculture of Chaldean Christians with roots in Iraq. "Once America was a microcosm of European nationalities," says Molefi Asante, chairman of the department of African-American studies at Temple University in Philadelphia. "Today America is a microcosm of the world."History suggests that sustaining a truly multiracial society is difficult, or at least unusual. Only a handful of great powers of the distant past -- Pharaonic Egypt and Imperial Rome, most notably -- managed to maintain a distinct national identity while embracing, and being ruled by, an ethnic melange. The most ethnically diverse contemporary power, the Soviet Union, is beset with secessionist demands and near tribal conflicts. But such comparisons are flawed, because those empires were launched by conquest and maintained through an aggressive military presence. The U.S. was created, and continues to be redefined, primarily by voluntary immigration. This process has been one of the country's great strengths, infusing it with talent and energy. The "browning of America" offers tremendous opportunity for capitalizing anew on the merits of many peoples from many lands. Yet this fundamental change in the ethnic makeup of the U.S. also poses risks. The American character is resilient and thrives on change. But past periods of rapid evolution have also, alas, brought out deeper, more fearful aspects of the national soul.

POLITICS:NEW AND SHIFTING ALLIANCES

A truly multiracial society will undoubtedly prove much harder to govern. Even seemingly race-free conflicts will be increasingly complicated by an overlay of ethnic tension. For example, the expected showdown in the early 21st century between the rising number of retirees and the dwindling number of workers who must be taxed to pay for the elders' Social Security benefits will probably be compounded by the fact that a large majority of recipients will be white, whereas a majority of workers paying for them will be nonwhite.

While prior generations of immigrants believed they had to learn English quickly to survive, many Hispanics now maintain that the Spanish language is inseparable from their ethnic and cultural identity, and seek to remain bilingual, if not primarily Spanish-speaking, for life. They see legislative drives to make English the sole official language, which have prevailed in some fashion in at least 16 states, as a political backlash. Says Arturo Vargas of the Mexican

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American Legal Defense and Educational Fund: "That's what English-only has been all about -- a reaction to the growing population and influence of Hispanics. It's human nature to be uncomfortable with change. That's what the Census is all about, documenting changes and making sure the country keeps up."

Racial and ethnic conflict remains an ugly fact of American life everywhere, from working-class ghettos to college campuses, and those who do not raise their fists often raise their voices over affirmative action and other power sharing. When Florida Atlantic University, a state-funded institution under pressure to increase its low black enrollment, offered last month to give free tuition to every qualified black freshman who enrolled, the school was flooded with calls of complaint, some protesting that nothing was being done for "real" Americans. As the numbers of minorities increase, their demands for a share of the national bounty are bound to intensify, while whites are certain to feel ever more embattled. Businesses often feel whipsawed between immigration laws that punish them for hiring illegal aliens and antidiscrimination laws that penalize them for demanding excessive documentation from foreign-seeming job applicants. Even companies that consistently seek to do the right thing may be overwhelmed by the problems of diversifying a primarily white managerial corps fast enough to direct a work force that will be increasingly nonwhite and, potentially, resentful.

Nor will tensions be limited to the polar simplicity of white vs. nonwhite. For all Jesse Jackson's rallying cries about shared goals, minority groups often feel keenly competitive. Chicago's Hispanic leaders have leapfrogged between white and black factions, offering support wherever there seemed to be the most to gain for their own community. Says Dan Solis of the Hispanic- oriented United Neighborhood Organization: "If you're thinking power, you don't put your eggs in one basket."

Blacks, who feel they waited longest and endured most in the fight for equal opportunity, are uneasy about being supplanted by Hispanics or, in some areas, by Asians as the numerically largest and most influential minority -- and even more, about being outstripped in wealth and status by these newer groups. Because Hispanics are so numerous and Asians such a fast-growing group, they have become the "hot" minorities, and blacks feel their needs are getting lower priority. As affirmative action has broadened to include other groups -- and to benefit white women perhaps most of all -- blacks perceive it as having waned in value for them.

THE CLASSROOM:WHOSE HISTORY COUNTS?Political pressure has already brought about sweeping change in public school textbooks over the past couple of decades and has begun to affect the core humanities curriculum at such elite universities as Stanford. At stake at the college level is whether the traditional "canon" of Greek, Latin and West European humanities study should be expanded to reflect the cultures

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of Africa, Asia and other parts of the world. Many books treasured as classics by prior generations are now seen as tools of cultural imperialism. In the extreme form, this thinking rises to a value-deprived neutralism that views all cultures, regardless of the grandeur or paucity of their attainments, as essentially equal.

Even more troubling is a revisionist approach to history in which groups that have gained power in the present turn to remaking the past in the image of their desires. If 18th, 19th and earlier 20th century society should not have been so dominated by white Christian men of West European ancestry, they reason, then that past society should be reinvented as pluralist and democratic. Alternatively, the racism and sexism of the past are treated as inextricable from -- and therefore irremediably tainting -- traditional learning and values.

While debates over college curriculum get the most attention, professors generally can resist or subvert the most wrongheaded changes and students generally have mature enough judgment to sort out the arguments. Elementary- and secondary-school curriculums reach a far broader segment at a far more / impressionable age, and political expediency more often wins over intellectual honesty. Exchanges have been vituperative in New York, where a state task force concluded that "African-Americans, Asian-Americans, Puerto Ricans and Native Americans have all been victims of an intellectual and educational oppression . . . Negative characterizations, or the absence of positive references, have had a terribly damaging effect on the psyche of young people." In urging a revised syllabus, the task force argued, "Children from European culture will have a less arrogant perspective of being part of a group that has 'done it all.' " Many intellectuals are outraged. Political scientist Andrew Hacker of Queens College lambastes a task-force suggestion that children be taught how "Native Americans were here to welcome new settlers from Holland, Senegal, England, Indonesia, France, the Congo, Italy, China, Iberia." Asks Hacker: "Did the Indians really welcome all those groups? Were they at Ellis Island when the Italians started to arrive? This is not history but a myth intended to bolster the self-esteem of certain children and, just possibly, a platform for advocates of various ethnic interests."

VALUES:SOMETHING IN COMMON

Economic and political issues, however much emotion they arouse, are fundamentally open to practical solution. The deeper significance of America's becoming a majority nonwhite society is what it means to the national psyche, to individuals' sense of themselves and their nation -- their idea of what it is to be American. People of color have often felt that whites treated equality as a benevolence granted to minorities rather than as an inherent natural right. Surely that condescension will wither.

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Rather than accepting U.S. history and its meaning as settled, citizens will feel ever more free to debate where the nation's successes sprang from and what its unalterable beliefs are. They will clash over which myths and icons to invoke in education, in popular culture, in ceremonial speechmaking from political campaigns to the State of the Union address. Which is the more admirable heroism: the courageous holdout by a few conquest-minded whites over Hispanics at the Alamo, or the anonymous expression of hope by millions who filed through Ellis Island? Was the subduing of the West a daring feat of bravery and ingenuity, or a wretched example of white imperialism? Symbols deeply meaningful to one group can be a matter of indifference to another. ! Says University of Wisconsin chancellor Donna Shalala: "My grandparents came from Lebanon. I don't identify with the Pilgrims on a personal level." Christopher Jencks, professor of sociology at Northwestern, asks, "Is anything more basic about turkeys and Pilgrims than about Martin Luther King and Selma? To me, it's six of one and half a dozen of the other, if children understand what it's like to be a dissident minority. Because the civil rights struggle is closer chronologically, it's likelier to be taught by someone who really cares."

Traditionalists increasingly distinguish between a "multiracial" society, which they say would be fine, and a "multicultural" society, which they deplore. They argue that every society needs a universally accepted set of values and that new arrivals should therefore be pressured to conform to the mentality on which U.S. prosperity and freedom were built. Says Allan Bloom, author of the best-selling The Closing of the American Mind: "Obviously, the future of America can't be sustained if people keep only to their own ways and remain perpetual outsiders. The society has got to turn them into Americans. There are natural fears that today's immigrants may be too much of a cultural stretch for a nation based on Western values."

The counterargument, made by such scholars as historian Thomas Bender of New York University, is that if the center cannot hold, then one must redefine the center. It should be, he says, "the ever changing outcome of a continuing contest among social groups and ideas for the power to define public culture." Besides, he adds, many immigrants arrive committed to U.S. values; that is part of what attracted them. Says Julian Simon, professor of business administration at the University of Maryland: "The life and institutions here shape immigrants and not vice versa. This business about immigrants changing our institutions and our basic ways of life is hogwash. It's nativist scare talk."

CITIZENSHIP:FORGING A NEW IDENTITY

Historians note that Americans have felt before that their historical culture was being overwhelmed by immigrants, but conflicts between earlier- arriving English, Germans and Irish and later-arriving Italians and Jews did not have the obvious and enduring element of racial skin color. And there was never a time when the nonmainstream elements could claim,

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through sheer numbers, the potential to unite and exert political dominance. Says Bender: | "The real question is whether or not our notion of diversity can successfully negotiate the color line."

For whites, especially those who trace their ancestry back to the early years of the Republic, the American heritage is a source of pride. For people of color, it is more likely to evoke anger and sometimes shame. The place where hope is shared is in the future. Demographer Ben Wattenberg, formerly perceived as a resister to social change, says, "There's a nice chance that the American myth in the 1990s and beyond is going to ratchet another step toward this idea that we are the universal nation. That rings the bell of manifest destiny. We're a people with a mission and a sense of purpose, and we believe we have something to offer the world."Not every erstwhile alarmist can bring himself to such optimism. Says Norman Podhoretz, editor of Commentary: "A lot of people are trying to undermine the foundations of the American experience and are pushing toward a more Balkanized society. I think that would be a disaster, not only because it would destroy a precious social inheritance but also because it would lead to enormous unrest, even violence."

While know-nothingism is generally confined to the more dismal corners of the American psyche, it seems all too predictable that during the next decades many more mainstream white Americans will begin to speak openly about the nation they feel they are losing. There are not, after all, many nonwhite faces depicted in Norman Rockwell's paintings. White Americans are accustomed to thinking of themselves as the very picture of their nation. Inspiring as it may be to the rest of the world, significant as it may be to the U.S. role in global politics, world trade and the pursuit of peace, becoming a conspicuously multiracial society is bound to be a somewhat bumpy experience for many ordinary citizens. For older Americans, raised in a world where the numbers of whites were greater and the visibility of nonwhites was carefully restrained, the new world will seem ever stranger. But as the children at Brentwood Science Magnet School, and their counterparts in classrooms across the nation, are coming to realize, the new world is here. It is now. And it is irreversibly the America to come.

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III. Nancy Gibbs, “America’s Holy War.” Time December 9, 1991

For the past generation, the courts have fenced God out of the country's public life, but has the separation of church and state gone too far? The Supreme Court must decideBy Nancy Gibbs

Posted Monday, Dec. 09, 1991

To say that God is everywhere in American life is as much a statement of fact as of faith. His name appears on every coin, on every dollar bill and in the vast majority of state constitutions. Schoolchildren pledge allegiance to one nation, under him. The President of the United States ends his speeches with a benediction. God bless America.

In a country born of a pilgrim's dream, a country that exalts freedom of worship as a sacred right, perhaps none of that is surprising. What is surprising is that for most of the ensuing 200 years, Americans have not stopped arguing about God. In the past decade alone, the Supreme Court has decided more religion cases than ever before, and each day brings a fresh crusade.

At issue is the meaning of the basic principle enshrined in the First Amendment: that Congress, and by later extension the states, "shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof." The modern Supreme Court has taken that to mean that government cannot do anything that promotes either a particular faith or religion in general. The backlash was a long time coming, but now it is here with a vengeance.

The fight is not so much over what people ought to believe; it is over what they can say, and where, and to whom. The battleground spreads from the courtroom to the schoolroom to the town square:

-- Last month the Pennsylvania Supreme Court threw out the sentence of a murderer who killed a 70-year-old woman with an ax, on the ground that the prosecutor had unlawfully cited biblical law to the jury in his summation urging the death penalty.

-- In Decatur, Ill., a primary-school teacher discovered the word God in a phonics textbook and ordered her class of seven-year-olds to strike it out, saying that it is against the law to mention God in a public school.

-- The town of Oak Park, Ill., blocked a private Catholic hospital from erecting a cross on its own smokestack because, councilors say, some local residents would be offended.

This is not simply a struggle between believers and nonbelievers, or between liberals and conservatives. The conflict is far more subtle, a product of centuries of legal evolution. It gets to the very heart of America's identity, for it is about a clashing of rights and responsibilities: Should Christian Scientist parents be allowed, on religious grounds, to reject medical treatment for a dying child? Should Mormon parents be allowed to claim a tax deduction for the money they spend sending their children out as missionaries? Like so many other issues --

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abortion, the right to die, the right to bear arms -- the issue of religion's place in American life is at once deeply personal and yet highly public. It falls to the courts to find a way to preserve freedom of conscience while protecting individuals from the imposition of other people's beliefs.

THE TWO SIDES

In the broadest terms, there are two main camps in this holy war. On one side are the "separationists," who argue that church and state must remain clearly apart and that government should not be in the business of endorsing one faith or another. Some members of the camp make their case on practical grounds: they insist that in a country with nearly 1,200 different religious bodies, the only way to keep the peace is to keep them all out of the shared public sphere. Too many wars have been fought, too many freedoms crushed in God's name, for a democracy to try to integrate theology into its public life.

Other separationists argue on religious grounds; they want to protect their own churches and their private beliefs from exploitation by politicians or demagogues. "Religious beliefs worthy of respect are the product of free and voluntary choice by the faithful," Justice John Paul Stevens, the Supreme Court's most ardent separationist, wrote in 1985. "Government must pursue a course of complete neutrality toward religion."

In opposition are the "accommodationists," who believe that the "wall of separation" between church and state has grown too thick and costs too much. By isolating God from public life, they argue, the courts have replaced freedom of religion with freedom from religion. A nation's identity is informed by morality, and morality by faith. How can people freely debate issues like nuclear arms or the death penalty, how can children be educated, without any reference to spiritual heritage? As Justice Antonin Scalia observed in 1987, "Political activism by the religiously motivated is part of our heritage." The accommodationists deny that their agenda is to enforce conformity; all they want is for their positions to get a fair hearing.

For the past 40 years or so, because of a lengthy series of Supreme Court rulings, the tide has generally favored the separationists. In this nation of spiritual paradoxes, it is legal to hang a picture in a public exhibit of a crucifix submerged in urine, or to utter virtually any conceivable blasphemy in a public place; it is not legal, the federal courts have ruled, to mention God reverently in a classroom, on a football field or at a commencement ceremony as part of a public prayer.

The debate has now arrived at a crossroads. Last month the Supreme Court heard arguments in a case that invites it to rewrite the canons of church- state law. Lee v. Weisman involves a Rhode Island rabbi whose bland prayer at a middle-school graduation was later ruled unconstitutional. The rabbi gave thanks to God for "the legacy of America, where diversity is celebrated and the rights of minorities are protected." The district court suggested that the invocation would have been fine if the rabbi had just left out all the references to God. The school board is arguing that so long as the prayer was not coercive, it did not violate the establishment clause of the First Amendment.

Various courts around the country have already wrestled with the same issue. California earlier this year ruled against the constitutionality of graduation prayers, as have Iowa and

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Rhode Island. Virginia and Pennsylvania permit them; it falls to the Supreme Court to decide which is right.

This may turn out to be the first accommodationist court in years. "The wall of separation between church and state is a metaphor based on bad history," declared Chief Justice William Rehnquist in 1985. "It should be frankly and explicitly abandoned." The Lee case is also the first major test of Justice Clarence Thomas, who remarked in 1985, "My mother says that when they took God out of the schools, the schools went to hell. She may be right." Were Thomas and his colleagues to agree with Rehnquist, it could change dramatically the role that religion plays in America's marketplace of ideas -- and ultimately, in every citizen's private life.

If ever there was an issue cast in shades of gray, this is it. Faith is often a matter of given truths and absolute beliefs, but once it becomes entangled in law and politics, its certainties begin to blur. One of the primary fears of the separationists is that if government gets too involved with religion, the result will resemble the bloodless, lifeless state-backed churches in Europe. Many of the supporters of the church-state wall fear that politicians, bent on compromise more than conversion, would try to invent some inoffensive brand of faith -- the creche encircled by reindeer hauling Santa's sleigh. "What you are tending to see is a new secular state religion," says Lee Boothby, a Seventh-day Adventist who is general counsel with Americans United for Separation of Church and State. "It's not really religion."

Other separationists are most concerned with protecting atheists or members of minority faiths from pressure to conform. This is a far more diverse country than it was in 1892, when the Supreme Court declared, "This is a Christian nation." Millions of Americans attend worship services each week, but the locales range from Hindu temples in California to churches of snake- handling Pentecostalists in Appalachia. Baptist parents might like their child's school day to start with a Bible reading, but could a Muslim teacher choose a passage from the Koran instead? Do Satanists have the right to distribute materials at school? Would a santero football coach be allowed to sacrifice a chicken before the big game?

If only the Christian God is allowed to make public appearances, non- Christians fear they will be unprotected in many subtle ways. "The danger," notes Harvard law professor Laurence Tribe, a noted liberal constitutional expert, "is that those who are not part of the locally dominant culture will be reduced to a sort of second-class citizenship. Though they may not have to wear yellow stars on their sleeves, they will be given a message that they are outsiders."

On the other side, accommodationists make many of the same arguments with a different twist. It is religious people who have been ostracized, argues lawyer John Whitehead, founder of the Rutherford Institute, a not-for-profit religious-liberty advocacy organization backed by conservative Protestants. Whitehead entered the church-state fray in 1976 when he defended a fourth- grade girl in California whose teacher said she could not wear a cross on her necklace. "Society has been secularized, and the religious person finds he's the odd person out," Whitehead says. "In public schools, religion is something to be avoided, obsolete. I see kids expressing their beliefs as healthy."

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To accommodationists, previous Supreme Court decisions appear to be sending the message that religion is acceptable so long as it is not too public. It is a strange definition of free speech and religious liberty, they note, that prohibits mention of God. "Angela Davis, a communist, was the speaker at my son's high school graduation," says Berkeley law professor Phillip Johnson. "People have to listen to the most heavy-handed dogmatism. Then suddenly the Constitution is violated if an agnostic hears the word God. This is absurd. If we have to put up with things we don't agree with, why is only God excluded?"

The issues involved are not mere differences of philosophy; in the inner cities especially, the debate is deeply practical. Religious groups contend that moral and spiritual teaching can strengthen their efforts in prevention of teen pregnancy and drug abuse, as well as health services, tutoring and % other social services, and that such groups can perform those tasks more cheaply and humanely than government agencies.

THE LEGAL DEBATE

At the heart of the legal debate is the clashing of two constitutional principles enshrined in the First Amendment. The idea of guaranteeing "free exercise" of religion while shunning any "establishment" of religion was designed to protect liberty and keep the peace. Anyone could worship however he or she pleased, the framers said, but the government was forbidden to install a monopoly state church along the lines of the Church of England.

These were radical notions at the time, born of a commitment to moral self- improvement and an Enlightenment faith in the power of free inquiry and tolerance. The task of the Founding Fathers -- some of them quite devout, others much less so -- was to identify some vision of the common good that could be shared by citizens with very different priorities. They constructed a system of government and law in which freedom and equality were both essential, and religion was neither too close a friend nor the enemy.

During those years and beyond, churches enjoyed fairly free access to the public sphere. Before the Revolution, the Anglican church in Georgia was supported by a tax, and under the state's first constitution, only Protestants were allowed to sit in the legislature. When the Bill of Rights took effect, five of the 13 states had government-sponsored churches, and most schools were church-run. For literally centuries, until 1961, Maryland required officeholders to declare their belief in God. The problem is that as the nation's religious life grew more varied and its public life more complex, it became nearly impossible to uphold both constitutional principles -- free exercise and nonestablishment -- with equal consistency.

The modern debate over church-state separation dates back to 1947, when the Supreme Court first set strict limits on the use of state funds that benefit religious institutions or activities. Justice Hugo Black, a Baptist, wrote that neither federal nor state governments "can pass laws which aid one religion, aid all religions or prefer one religion over another." That ruling marked a sharp separationist turn in court thinking. It unleashed a torrent of litigation that continues to flood courtrooms 44 years later. And in a succession of cases, the court drew the line ever more strictly.

In the landmark 1962 case Engel v. Vitale, the high court threw out a brief nondenominational prayer composed by state officials that was recommended for use in New York State schools.

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"It is no part of the business of government," ruled the court, "to compose official prayers for any group of the American people to recite." The following year the court outlawed mandatory daily Bible readings in public schools.

But as the court became increasingly concerned about government support for religious expression, opponents began speaking up. It was one thing to outlaw state-written prayers, they said, but what about a moment of silence? Perhaps reading the Bible as part of a morning devotional was inappropriate, but what about recognition of extracurricular religious clubs? Justice Potter Stewart, writing in 1963, foreshadowed the debates of the 1980s and '90s when he warned that the court was hardly being neutral in its school-prayer decisions. A ban on noncoercive religious exercises in school placed religion "at an artificial and state-created disadvantage," he said.

The case that crystallized church-state separation doctrine, Lemon v. Kurtzman, came in 1971, when the court struck down Pennsylvania and Rhode Island laws that set subsidies for the salaries of parochial school teachers. Referring to earlier cases, the Justices proposed a threefold test to determine the permissibility of government activities that touched the religious realm. First, state action must have a secular purpose. Second, the primary effect of the action must neither advance nor inhibit religion. And finally, there should be no "excessive entanglement" between church and state.

In the 20 years since that ruling, the Lemon test has come under accommodationist fire. With the birth of the Moral Majority in 1979 and the political rise of the religious right, clashes over religious issues that had once been quiet and philosophical became loud and politically explosive. Then, as the composition of the Supreme Court became more conservative in the Reagan and Bush years, expectations began to rise that the accommodationists might get a more sympathetic hearing. Yet many major issues remain in dispute, such as whether voluntary prayer should be allowed in schools, whether government bodies can mount religious displays and whether public funding should be used for church-sponsored social programs.

The most pure and abstract battles remain to be fought over the use of religious symbols in the public arena -- an issue rife with irony in a country ! that stamps its coins with the words "In God We Trust." Later this year the Supreme Court will decide whether to hear an appeal from the city of Zion, Ill., which was ordered by a lower court to scrap the city seal, consisting of a ribbon with the words "God Reigns" and a shield containing a dove, sword, crown and Latin cross. The device was adopted in 1902. The city argues that the seal is mainly a historical artifact, recalling the founding of the city by the Christian Catholic Church.

THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS

The symbolic issues pale, however, compared with the heated debates about what can take place in the nation's public schools. This has always been the central battleground for church-state conflict in America. On the one hand, children are viewed as more impressionable and vulnerable to peer pressure than adults and so should be protected from anything resembling religious indoctrination.

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But on the other hand, many devout parents are eager to instill in their children the moral strength that they hope will deliver them from evil, whether it is sex, drugs or secular humanism. Such families also believe that faith is central to serious intellectual activity and should not be relegated to Sunday school. So the debate over what teachers can teach, what books may be used, what songs sung, even what clothes children may wear at school strikes at the heart of many families' sense of spiritual freedom.

The content of curriculum and textbooks has been closely examined on both sides. Fundamentalists are often criticized for wanting to teach creationism or for incorporating Christian "propaganda" into history and literature classes. But they respond that the intrusions and distortions can cut both ways. One 1985 government-funded study of public school textbooks found that social-studies textbooks rarely mentioned religion at all, even when discussing events in which churches were a driving force, such as the abolition of slavery. Many books omitted the deep religious motivation of Martin Luther King Jr. Others failed to say to whom the Pilgrims gave thanks on Thanksgiving.

Over time, many schools have come to avoid mentioning religion at all, fearing that the subject was too controversial and invited lawsuits. But in recent years the balance has shifted in areas where accommodationist sentiment has grown. Two years ago, North Carolina's board of education launched a revision of the state curriculum to include religious references in classes on history, social studies and culture. Other states, such as Arizona and California, have introduced similar programs, though all have been careful to distinguish between exposing students to the history and beliefs of various religions and advocating any creed.

Strict separationists have worked not only to keep religious practices out of the classroom; they also want to prevent religious activity anywhere on school grounds. Frequently under litigation is the issue of what religious materials may be distributed on those precincts. Earlier this year, a federal judge ruled that school officials in Wauconda, Ill., could stop a junior high school student, Megan Hedges, from distributing copies of an evangelical Christian newspaper, Issues and Answers. The court agreed with school administrators who did not want to appear to endorse the publication, which includes articles with headlines like SATANISM BRED IN SECULAR SCHOOL SYSTEM.

"We're probably the most suppressed newspaper in America," says Dan Rodden, whose Caleb Campaign publishes Issues and Answers. "In the schools today there is definitely a religious and philosophical bent that is anti- Christian. Little children, by the time they're in second grade, know that God is illegal." The issue of prayer in the classroom arouses even greater passions. If public schools allow teachers to lead students in prayer, it looks very much like an endorsement of religion, and it is hard to imagine that a child would not feel pressured into joining in. Particularly in deeply religious communities, atheist and agnostic families are often afraid to protest. "In many areas no one complains when the church starts creeping into public life," says Jay Jacobson, executive director of the Arkansas affiliate of the ACLU. "We get calls at the beginning of the school year against a generic prayer at football games, but no one is willing to file an official complaint. The Bill of Rights is not self-enforcing."

The fears may not be unfounded. Two Little Axe, Okla., families that brought suit against morning prayers in school in 1981 became targets of relentless harassment. The children were repeatedly asked by teachers why they didn't believe in God, and one youngster found an

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upside-down cross hung on his locker. One evening while members of one of the families were at a football game, their house was fire bombed and burned down.

But on the other hand, when fifth-grader Monette Rethford, in Norman, Okla., is told that she cannot get together with other students on school property to pray or read the Bible, it looks very much like a restriction of her freedom to worship. To publicize their own fervor, tens of thousands of students gathered around their school flagpoles to pray last Sept. 11. "I don't want a government church or a teacher opening class with prayer," says Jay Sekulow of Christian Advocates Serving Evangelism, a conservative organization specializing in church-state litigation. "But the First Amendment protects individual speech, even religious speech, and even on public property."

The popular compromise proposal of recent years is a moment of silence. Douglas Laycock, associate dean of the University of Texas School of Law, who favors strict government neutrality toward religion, finds it hard to believe that it could be unconstitutional merely to tell a classroom of kids to keep quiet for a minute. He says, however, that "it's beastly hard to implement it in a fair way. Teachers do deliver messages, and the children do have understandings."

There are still other religion cases pending before the court, and in light of its recent rulings, no one can predict which way the Justices will decide. Many accommodationists were encouraged last year when the court, by an 8-to-1 vote, approved a federal law that allows voluntary student religious clubs to meet in public schools after hours on the same basis as other noncurricular student clubs.

But one of the most important religion cases in years, Employment Division, Department of Human Resources of Oregon v. Smith, confounded partisans on all sides and for once has united the forces that usually disagree on most church- state issues. Unlike the most controversial recent cases, Smith did not involve "establishment" issues, of the government getting too involved in some religious activity. Instead it focused on the free-exercise clause, which protects the right of individuals to adhere to their private religious beliefs. The case involved Alfred Smith and Galen Black, two members of the Native American Church who chewed peyote as part of their church's religious ceremonies. They were fired from their jobs as drug counselors and were refused unemployment benefits.

The challenge to the court in Smith was to decide when the government's interest in law enforcement should take priority over someone's private religious practices. The first major ruling on that issue came in 1879, when $ Mormons were forbidden to practice polygamy. One of the leading precedents was fixed in 1963 in Sherbert v. Verner, when the Supreme Court ruled that a worker who refused to work on Saturdays because it was a day of worship was still entitled to unemployment compensation. In that opinion, the court stated that government had to demonstrate a "compelling interest" in order to justify an infringement of religious liberty.

In their Smith ruling last year, the Justices could have used many rationales against accepting the use of peyote for religious reasons -- for instance, that the government has a compelling interest in keeping the workplace free of illegal drugs. But instead, by a 5-to-4 vote, they discarded precedent and decided against Smith and Black on entirely different grounds.

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Writing for the majority, Justice Scalia declared that "the right of free exercise does not relieve an individual of the obligation to comply with a 'valid and neutral law of general applicability.' " There was no need to use the compelling-interest test in such a situation, he said, because that would permit every person "to become a law unto himself."

For all the rifts among religious and civil-libertarian groups, this decision brought a choir of outrage singing full-voice. A whole clause of the Bill of Rights had been abolished, critics charged, and the whole concept of religious freedom was now imperiled. "On the really small and odd religious groups," said the University of Texas' Laycock, "it's just open season." The court itself was deeply split. In a spirited dissent, Justice Sandra Day O'Connor said the majority's stance "is incompatible with our nation's fundamental commitment to individual religious liberty." As a result of the uproar, Congress is considering a law to restore the compelling-interest test.

THE CHALLENGE

There is no predicting which way this court will go in a case like Lee v. Weisman. The basic split is not only between those who want to accommodate religion and government and those who want to keep the two separate. There is also a split on the court between those who defer to the government and those who continue to emphasize individual liberty.

If the court's conservative majority is taking its cues from the Bush Administration, it promises to go much further to usher in a new era of accommodation. Solicitor General Kenneth Starr argued the Administration's position in the Lee case. He maintained that the government promotion of + religion through civic ceremonies does not violate the Constitution if coercion is not involved. Students who did not want to pray at graduation, Starr implied, could sit without joining in prayer or skip the exercises.

If the Supreme Court agrees with that position and decides to apply it across the board, the new test of the separation of church and state would not consider whether an action favors religion or whether it entangles church and state but rather whether it forces people to join in expressions of a religious belief. The implications of such a change are radical and would call into question hundreds of settled cases. "This will tear the country and each county apart," says Seventh-Day Adventist Boothby. "The unfortunate result would be to create more religious controversy, discontent and disharmony." Says Laycock: "All sorts of astonishing things become O.K. The Constitution then means a lot less than we've thought." Theoretically, Congress could decide, for example, that it would pay the salaries of preferred members of the clergy. Even less outrageous consequences, such as requiring that all public functions begin with a nondenominational prayer, could be highly divisive.

A country already wrestling with a new tribalism, with racial tensions and cultural clashes that set language and law on edge, cannot afford to slip further into religious contention. Some yardstick of moderation, and perhaps a measure of common sense, is necessary. What is too often missing from all the talk of religious and secular rights is any mention of mutual respect. When people claim the right to pray or not to pray, to worship or not to worship, as they choose, they must also respect the right of others to choose differently. For government to arbitrate in such intensely personal matters invites insurrection; but if the court and the

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Congress decide to distance themselves from religious disputes, they must also keep the playing field level.

For God to be kept out of the classroom or out of America's public debate by nervous school administrators or overcautious politicians serves no one's interests. That restriction prevents people from drawing on this country's rich and diverse religious heritage for guidance, and it degrades the nation's moral discourse by placing a whole realm of theological reasoning out of bounds. The price of that sort of quarantine, at a time of moral dislocation, is -- and has been -- far too high. The courts need to find a better balance between separation and accommodation -- and Americans need to respect the new religious freedom they would gain as a result.

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