Rod Paige gives church-state story a second day of headlines

Yesterday I talked about Secretary of Education Roderick Paige causing a stir by saying, “All things equal, I would prefer to have a child in a school that has a strong appreciation for the values of the Christian community, where a child is taught to have a strong faith, where a child is taught that there is a source of strength greater than themselves.”

To be honest, I thought the presence of the story in the Washington Post would be the end of it. Paige would suffer through some minor embarrassment, he’d be a hero to TV preachers like Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell, Americans United for Separation of Church and State would get a fundraising letter out of it, and Paige would probably get a call from Karl Rove’s office telling him to be a little more careful next time.

Ah, but I was wrong. Looks like the story has grown some legs.

First, Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-N.Y.), who is Jewish and apparently didn’t appreciate Paige’s slap at public schools’ diversity of “values,” began circulating a letter to his House colleagues to send to Paige directly. It says, in part, “We believe that you owe a sincere and unambiguous apology to the many American families whose faiths and educational choices your remarks have denigrated. If you are unprepared to make clear that this sort of religious bigotry has no place in the Department of Education, then we would urge you to resign.”

Next, House Minority Leader Nita Lowey (D-N.Y.) got in on the fun, telling reporters that she believes Paige must apologize. “It is offensive to those of many faiths in this country to imply that Christian values turn out better kids than do other religious or moral codes,” Lowey said.

I still think Paige could have avoided a second round of embarrassing news stories if he laid low and let the storm blow over. But Paige took the opposite approach; he held a hastily organized press conference.

Paige, hoping to make the controversy go away, probably ensured the continuation of the story by going on the defensive. “I understand completely and respect the separation of church and state,” Paige. “I have a record that will attest to this.”

Maybe he does, but his comments to the Baptist Press didn’t sound like he was expressing much respect for the First Amendment and school neutrality on religion.

Paige added that he sees no reason to take the remarks back. “I don’t think I have anything to apologize for,” Paige said. “What I am doing is clarifying my remarks.”

In the interests of fairness, I need to point out that the media relations folks at the Dept. of Education released a more thorough transcript of the interview Paige did with the Baptist Press. The context, in this case, does somewhat bolster Paige’s case.

As the Washington Post reported today, Paige was asked, “Given the choice between private and Christian, uh, or private and public universities, who do you think has the best deal?” Paige responded: “That’s a judgment, too, that would vary because each of them have real strong points and some of them have vulnerabilities, but you know, all things being equal, I’d prefer to have a child in a school where there’s a strong appreciation for values, the kind of values that I think are associated with the Christian communities.”

That does change things a bit. The implication in the Baptist Press story’s version of the quote is that Paige was talking about K-12 schools, not universities, as the question clearly indicated.

However, the more detailed transcript doesn’t let Paige off the hook entirely. Aside from the “all things being equal” remarks, Paige also told the Baptist Press that Christian schools are more successful that their public counterparts because of a “strong value system.” He also was implicitly criticizing public schools when he said, “In a religious environment the value system is set. That’s not the case in a public school where there are so many different kids with different kinds of values.”

Paige’s press spokesperson has acknowledged that these remarks are an accurate reflection of what the education secretary said.

In other words, the story lives on. I still doubt the flap will force Paige from his job, but he’ll probably get raked over the coals for a little while longer.