Religious lessons
Subtitle: Catholic sisters and the captured schools crisis in New Mexico
By: Kathleen Holscher
Contributors: Holscher, Kathleen A., 1979-
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Published: 2012
Place of publication: New York
Language: eng
Number of pages: 260
ISBN-13: 9780199781737
Subjects: History; Trials, litigation; New Mexico; New Mexico. State Board of Education; Church and state; Law and legislation; Catholic schools; Religion in the public schools
Description: "Religious Lessons tells the story of Zellers v. Huff, a court case that challenged the employment of nearly 150 Catholic sisters in public schools across New Mexico in 1948. Known nationally as the 'Dixon case,' after one of the towns involved, it was the most famous in a series of midcentury lawsuits, all targeting what opponents provocatively dubbed 'captive schools.' Spearheaded by Protestants and Other Americans United for Separation of Church and State, the publicity campaign built around Zellers drew on centuries-old rhetoric of Catholic captivity to remind Americans about the threat of Catholic power in the post-War era, and the danger Catholic sisters dressed in full habits posed to American education. Americans at midcentury were reckoning with the U.S. Supreme Court's new mandate for a 'wall of separation' between church and state. At no time since the nation's founding was the Establishment Clause studied so carefully by the nation's judiciary and its people.^
Notes: Based on doctoral dissertation ""Habits in the classroom: A court case regarding Catholic sisters in New Mexico", Princeton (2008).

Includes bibliographical references (p.         ) and index.
Table of contents: title: Educating in the vernacular: the foundations of sister-taught public schools; title: "We live in a valley cut off from the outside world": local observations on sisters and the separation of church and state; title: A space in between walls: inside the sister-taught public classrooms of New Mexico; title: Captured!: POAU and the national campaign against captive schools; title: Habits on defense: the NCWC and the legal debate over sisters' clothing; title: Sisters and the trials of separation.