Bibles in US Schools

Witness History

BBC

History, Personal Journals, Society & Culture

4.4 • 1.6K Ratings

🗓️ 16 August 2016

⏱️ 9 minutes

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Summary

In 1963 a third of schools in the US had to change their rules on Bible reading after a Supreme Court decision. It all began when a teenager refused to read the Bible in class. 16 year old Ellery Schempp took his school to court accusing them of violating the first amendment by forcing him to read the Bible at the start of every school day. It challenged the principle of a separation of church and state enshrined in the US Constitution. Claire Bowes has been speaking to him for Witness.

Photo: Ellery Schempp aged 16 courtesy of Ellery Schempp

Audio of Supreme Court provided courtesy of Oyez, a free law project hosted at the Legal Information Institute at Cornell University.

Transcript

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0:00.0	You're listening to the Witness Podcast from the BBC World Service.
0:03.7	I'm Claire Bowes.
0:05.4	Today we're going back to August 1958 and a legal decision that struck at the heart of American
0:12.3	political life, the separation of church and
0:15.9	state.
0:17.3	It all began when a teenage boy refused to read the Bible in class.
0:22.3	His name was Eloise Shemp, and I've been speaking to him about
0:25.6	what happened next. Well we were a perfectly normal family living in the suburbs of
0:30.0	Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and I was a perfectly normal kid. I played baseball and
0:34.2	cut the grass and helped my father run a small business in electronics.
0:38.0	One thing did set Eloisehemp apart though. His family were Unitarians, a liberal branch of Christianity.
0:45.0	Unitarians are very interested in social justice, not very interested in theology, and we didn't
0:50.2	spend any time reading the Bible, we didn't spend any time praying, but we were very
0:53.6	concerned about the overall welfare of our fellow human beings and we very much got exercised
0:59.1	over injustices.
1:00.7	At 16, Ellery became aware of an injustice in his own life at school.
1:05.0	The law in Pennsylvania said that 10 verses of the Holy Bible must be read in every school classroom at the beginning of every school day.
1:12.0	But we were doing history
1:13.9	and social studies and learning about the Constitution and we had this phrase
1:18.8	that Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion. That phrase Congress shall make no law
1:24.7	respecting an establishment of religion meant that no one religion should take
1:30.0	precedence over any other. It was part of the First Amendment which also
	...

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