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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 10 June 2011
An abstract of this essay would reveal two interests, one civil and one religious. The first has to do with a public debate over values in American elementary and secondary education and what this debate symbolizes about national life in general. Specifically, I want to suggest that the stated intentions of citizens who demand religious instruction in the public schools could only be fulfilled, logically, if this instruction included doctrines of eternal punishment—in short, the possibility of hell. This is especially true if they wish to restore moral instruction “as it used to be.” My second argument urges that such a teaching would impose on schools a doctrine that has disappeared or been drastically diminished in the preachments of most American religious groups. It is a doctrine that is hence not culturally available.
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5 The Arkansas creationist ruling reviews the situation; see the New York Times, 6 January 1982.Google Scholar
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