People ex rel. Ring v. Bd. of Educ. of Dist. 24

• Decision Date: 29 June 1910
• Citation: 245 Ill. 334,92 N.E. 251
• Parties: PEOPLE ex rel. RING et al. v. BOARD OF EDUCATION OF DIST. 24.
• Court: Illinois Supreme Court

245 Ill. 334

92 N.E. 251

PEOPLE ex rel. RING et al.

v.BOARD OF EDUCATION OF DIST. 24.

Supreme Court of Illinois.

June 29, 1910.

Error to Circuit Court, Scott County; R. B. Shirley, Judge.

Mandamus by the People on the relation of Jeremiah Ring and others to compel the Board of Education of District 24 to discontinue certain exercises in the public schools. The petition was dismissed, and relators bring error. Reversed.

Thomas F. Ferns, for plaintiffs in error.

J. M. Riggs and J. A. Warren, for defendant in error.

DUNN, J.

The relators filed a petition for a writ of mandamus to require the defendant in error to cause to be discontinued as exercises in the public schools the reading of the Bible, the singing of hymns, and the repeating of the Lord's Prayer. This writ of error is brought to reverse a judgment dismissing the petition upon sustaining a demurrer thereto.

The petition avers that the relators are residents of, and two of them taxpayers in, school district No. 24, township No. 14, range 12, Scott county, Illinois; that certain free public schools are maintained in said school district in accordance with the statutes of Illinois, and that relators are parents of children between the ages of 7 and 14 years who are entitled to the benefits of said schools and are attending said schools for the purpose of receiving instruction therein; that certain teachers employed in said schools read to the pupils, including the children of relators, every day school is in session, during school hours, portions selected by the teachers from the King James' version of the Bible; that relators and their children are members of the Roman Catholic Church and believe in its doctrines, faith, and forms of worship; that said church believes the King James' version of the Bible to be an incorrect and incomplete translation and that it disapproves of its being read as a devotional exercise; that in addition to reading the Bible, the Lord's Prayer as found in the King James' version is recited audibly in concert under direction of the teachers, and that said prayer is in different words from that taught by the Roman Catholic Church; that during school hours what are called ‘sacred hymns' are sung in concert by the pupils, who are required to stand while singing, one of said hymns, called ‘Grace Enough For Me,’ being set out in full in the petition; that during the reading from the Bible and the reciting of the Lord's Prayer the pupils are required to rise in their seats, fold their hands, and bow their heads, and from time to time certain pupils have been asked to explain the meaning of certain passages of Scripture read; that the said exercises are in violation of the Constitution of this state and of the United States, because they are devotional, sectarian exercises and violate the right of the free exercise and enjoyment of religious profession and worship; that there is no parochial or private school in the county of Scott to which the relators could send their children for instruction; that the laws of Illinois make it compulsory upon them to send their children to school, and that to require said children to be sent to the public school aforesaid requires them to attend a place of worship against the consent of the children and their parents.

The first amendment to the federal Constitution prohibits Congress from making any law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof. That instrument contains no restriction in this respect upon the Legislatures of the states, which are thus left free to enact such laws in respect to religion as they may deem proper, restrained only by the limitations of the respective state Constitutions. 2 Story on Constitution, § 1878; Permoli v. New Orleans, 3 How. 589, 11 L. Ed. 739;Reynolds v. United States, 98 U. S. 145, 25 L. Ed. 244. Our state Constitution guarantees ‘the free exercise and enjoyment of religious profession and worship, without discrimination.’ Const. art. 2, § 3. Section 3 of article 8 prohibits the appropriation of any public fund in aid of any church or sectarian purpose, or for the support of any school, academy, seminary, college, university or other literary or scientific institution controlled by any church or sectarian denomination, or the donation of money by the state to any church or for any sectarian purpose.

The exercises mentioned in the petition constitute worship. They are the ordinary forms of worship usually practiced by Protestant Christian denominations. Their compulsory performance would be a violation of the constitutional guaranty of the free exercise and enjoyment of religious profession and worship. One does not enjoy the free exercise of religious worship who is compelled to join in any form of religious worship. ‘Worship’ is defined by Webster as follows: ‘4. The act of paying divine honors to the Supreme Being; religious reverence and homage; adoration paid to God or a being viewed as God. * * * ‘The worship of God is an eminent part of religion, and prayer is a chief part of religious worship.’' Worcester's definition is: ‘3. Adoration; a religious act of reverence; honor paid to the Supreme Being or by heathen nations to their deities. Worship consists in the performance of all those external acts and the observance of all those rites and ceremonies in which men engage with the professed and sole view of honoring God.’ We know of no technical definition of the word by any court. It includes prayer, praise, thanksgiving. In the ordinary church meeting the congregation is regarded as engaged in religious worship while listening to the sermon, reading the Holy Scriptures or hearing them read, or engaged in the singing. Devotional, religious exercises constitute worship. Prayer is a chief part of worship. The petition avers that the Lord's Prayer is recited in concert under the direction of the teachers, during which the pupils are required to rise in their seats, bow their heads, and fold their hands. Prayer is always worship. Reading the Bible and singing may be worship. The song ‘Grace Enough For Me,’ set out in the petition, is a devotional hymn of religious joy and of praise and thanksgiving for the flood of grace flowing from the cross on Calvary. Praise is defined by Webster as ‘especially the joyful tribute of gratitude or homage rendered to the Divine Being; the act of glorifying or extolling the Creator; worship, often in song, in distinction from petition or confession.’ If these exercises of reading the Bible, joining in prayer, and in the singing of hymns were performed in a church there would be no doubt of their religious character, and that character is not changed by the place of their performance. If the petitioners' children are required to join in the acts of worship, as alleged in the petition, against their consent and against the wishes of their parents, they are deprived of the freedom of religious worship guaranteed to them by the Constitution. The wrong arises, not out of the particular version of the Bible or form of prayer used-whether that found in the Douay or the King James' version-or the particular songs sung, but out of the compulsion to join in any form of worship. The free enjoyment of religious worship includes freedom not to worship.

A decision that the exercises complained of constitute a violation of the guaranty of freedom of worship does not, however, dispose of the questions arising in this case. It is further contended that the reading of the Bible in the schools constitutes sectarian instruction, and that thereby that provision of the Constitution is also violated which prohibits the payment from any public fund of anything in aid of any sectarian purpose. The public schools are supported by taxation, and if sectarian instruction should be permitted in them, the money used in their support would be used in aid of a sectarian purpose. The prohibition of such use of public funds is therefore a prohibition of the giving of sectarian instruction in the public schools.

Is the reading of the Bible in the public schools sectarian instruction? Religion has reference to man's relation to divinity; to the moral obligation of reverence and worship, obedience and submission. It is defined by Webster as the recognition of God as an object of worship, love, and obedience; right feeling toward God, as rightly apprehended. It deals with the soul. Its phenomena are spiritual. It controls external things. Things external cannot control it. Religion cannot be burned out of a man; it cannot be scourged into him, ‘for as he thinketh in his heart so is he.’ His own reason and feeling are, of necessity, his only guide. He cannot, if he would, worship a God in whom he does not believe, though he may be compelled to go through the form of doing so. In the very nature of things, therefore, ‘religion, or the duty we owe to the Creator,’ is not within the cognizance of civil government, as was declared by James Madison in 1784 in his remonstrance against a bill pending in the Virginia Legislature ‘establishing provision for teachers of the Christian religion.’ Not only was that bill defeated, but another ‘for establishing religious freedom,’ drafted by Thomas Jefferson, was passed (12 Hen. Stat. 84) which, after reciting that ‘to suffer the civil magistrate to intrude his powers into the field of opinion and to restrain the profession or propagation of principles on supposition of their ill tendency is a dangerous fallacy which at once destroys all religious liberty,’ declared that ‘it is time enough, for the rightful purposes of civil government, for its officers to interfere when principles break out into overt acts against peace and good order.’ ‘In these two sentences,’ says the Supreme Court of the United States, ‘is found the true distinction between what properly belongs to the church and what to the state.’ Reynolds v. United States, supra.

The practical recognition of...