Book Review: Why Christians Don't Vote for Democrats by Richard Miller

As a public-school-educated, secular Jew living in an overwhelmingly religious and Christian country, I have often wondered where some fundamendalist Christians get the notion that their religion is in any way threatened here. Recently word spread of a lawsuit by Jewish families against a school district in Delaware where non-Christians were essentially run out of town.

"We have a way of doing things here, and it's not going to change to accommodate a very small minority," a local businessman told the New York Times. "If they feel singled out, they should find another school or excuse themselves from those functions. It's our way of life." A Jewish mother who complained about other students using slurs against her son was scolded at a school board meeting thus: "If you want people to stop calling him 'Jew boy', you tell him to give his heart to Jesus."

I've traveled enough to know that the United States population is not on the whole mean-spirited or even overtly racist. But I do believe that the above story illustrates an important fact: where one religion — even a very factionalized one — dominates a society, public institutions (including schools) must be governed and enabled so as to act as a firm check on the tyranny of the majority. In the US, that majority is, loosely defined, Christian. If his public school won't even try to protect him from discrimination, where can a little non-Christian boy turn?

Richard Miller's sharply-worded polemic, Why Christians Don't Vote for Democrats, presents a different perspective on the nature and value of public schools (and other secular institutions) than what I had imagined was the general view. Without mentioning vouchers per se, it helps explain why the issue has been so polarizing.

Put simply, some Christians — call them fundamentalist, evangelical, or, as Mr. Miller would have it, simply Christians — view state-run public schools as a form of taxation without representation. Just as senior citizens sometimes protest paying taxes for schools in which they have no children, Miller objects to funding schools he believes are filling Christian children's heads with anti-Christian ideas and being forced to pay again if he wants to put his kids in a private religious school.

This raises the question: if we allow parents to use their tax dollars to put their kids in non-public schools, wouldn't it be logical to also exempt the aforementioned senior citizens from school taxes? And while we're at it, shouldn't a family with six children in the public schools pay higher taxes than a family with only two? This path is strewn with dangers for a society that values egalitarianism.

Article Author: Jon Sobel

Jon Sobel is Blogcritics' Culture and Theater Editor. In addition to reviewing NYC theater, he writes a semi-regular round-up of independent music releases. By day he is a computer professional and a freelance writer and editor, and at night he's a …

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