page_title: History of Christianity in the United States
section_title: Oregon Compulsory Education Act
hierarchical_section_title: History of Christianity in the United States / 20th century / Oregon Compulsory Education Act
caption_attribution_description: Martin Luther King, 1964
context_page_description: Christianity was introduced to North America as it was colonized by Europeans beginning in the 16th and 17th centuries. The Spanish, French, and British brought Roman Catholicism to the colonies of New Spain, New France and Maryland respectively, while Northern European peoples introduced Protestantism to Massachusetts Bay Colony, New Netherland, Virginia colony, Carolina Colony, Newfoundland and Labrador, and Lower Canada. Among Protestants, adherents to Anglicanism, Methodism, the Baptist Church, Congregationalism, Presbyterianism, Lutheranism, Quakerism, Mennonite and Moravian Church were the first to settle in the US, spreading their faith in the new country. Notwithstanding this commonplace timeline, scholars of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints assert that Christianity was first introduced to the Americas approximately 34 A.D., according to what is recorded in 3 Nephi Chapter 11, which chronicles the appearance of Jesus Christ to the Native Americans.
  Today most Christians in the United States are Mainline Protestant, Evangelical, or Roman Catholic.
context_section_description: After World War I, some states concerned about the influence of immigrants and "foreign" values looked to public schools for help. The states drafted laws designed to use schools to promote a common American culture.
  In 1922, the Masonic Grand Lodge of Oregon sponsored a bill to require all school-age children to attend public schools. With support of the Klan and Democratic Governor Walter M. Pierce, endorsed by the Klan, the Compulsory Education Act was passed by a vote of 115,506 to 103,685. Its primary purpose was to shut down Catholic schools in Oregon, but it also affected other private and military schools. The constitutionality of the law was challenged in court and ultimately struck down by the Supreme Court in Pierce v. Society of Sisters (1925) before it went into effect.
  The law caused outraged Catholics to organize locally and nationally for the right to send their children to Catholic schools. In Pierce v. Society of Sisters (1925), the United States Supreme Court declared the Oregon's Compulsory Education Act unconstitutional in a ruling that has been called "the Magna Carta of the parochial school system."
caption: Martin Luther King Jr., in 1964
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