religions and between religion and non-religion, but he does so in a cautioned way. Gutmann does not explicitly distinguish between separation and impartiality in her essay, but she too pulls the two closer together by prescribing equal access to exceptions as the means to both religious and non- religious educational ends. In terms of state funding of religious schools, then, the application of both Audi and Gutmann would dictate a policy that might benefit religious schools so long as it also gave equal benefits to non-religious institutions. Audi acknowledges that such a program might exist within a voucher system, while another option might be the provision of tax breaks or other incentive schemes for all private schools.9 Crucially, however, both of these—and any other—options that Audi and Gutmann would find acceptable disallow the state from directly funding religious schools. Indeed, any of these relatively liberal programs would avoid structural association between the state and religious organizations, allowing private religious and non- religious schools equal opportunities to succeed and to fail.
I.II Religious Observance in Public Schools
VVWhile the above presents a liberal-multiculturalist framework through which analyze public funding of religious schools, the issue of religious observance periods at state-funded non- religious schools must be approached through a slightly different dichotomous conception. Wolterstorff proposes that the legitimacy of regular prayer or meditation periods in public schools rests on the public’s sentiments toward the Rawlsian Idea of liberal democracy. Writing particularly about the United States and referencing particularly the issue of public school prayer, Wolterstorff claims that the majority of the American public would, on this issue, reject the Idea - an idealized proposal of liberal democratic norms and values - and therefore render attempts to reject school prayer on moral grounds a “hopeless” effort.10 By Wolterstorff’s conception, school prayer could be considered defensible only when the majority preferred its presence.
8889. Audi and Wolterstorff, 142.
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