The delicate art of asking about religion

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In 2019, amid a national debate about adding a citizenship question to the U.S. census, I wrote a story about why the government does not survey Americans about their faith.
As I explained, the key reason is that faith-related information is sensitive. Government officials don’t want people to worry about being treated differently as a result of their answer, and it’s very difficult to allay that concern.
That story popped into my head this week as I listened to the latest episode of the “Legal Spirits” podcast, which was about a much smaller — but still controversial — surveying effort.
Podcast host Mark Movsesian interviewed his colleague, Patricia Montana, a professor of legal writing at St. John’s University in Queens, New York, about the conflict that arose when Cedar Grove School District in New Jersey surveyed elementary, middle and high school students during the 2020-21 school year about topics like gender identity, race and discrimination without notifying their parents first.
Montana’s children are in that district, and she was part of the large group of parents who criticized the school district for fielding the surveys without being transparent about its plans.
The podcast was primarily focused on pushback to the high school-level survey, which included questions about students’ religious beliefs.
While working with other parents to block the school district from using the survey results, Montana discovered that the school had likely violated a federal policy called the Protection of Pupil Rights Amendment, which requires schools receiving federal funds to notify parents of survey plans, allow parents to look at the survey text and allow parents to opt their kids out of the survey.
The PPRA covers a few key types of “protected information,” including political affiliation, religious affiliation and income, Montana said.
She and other parents in the school district notified the U.S. Department of Education that they believed Cedar Grove School District had violated that policy. It took the DOE quite awhile to respond, but, this summer, federal officials announced that the district had indeed violated the PPRA by not giving families the chance to weigh in on the survey and/or refuse to participate.
The school district was ordered to train its employees on the Protection of Pupil Rights Amendment, to provide documentation of that training to the federal government and to notify parents of their rights under the law, according to the podcast.
“Our plan going forward is to continue to monitor our school district and serve as model for other school districts throughout the nation. There’s no better reason to unite, speak out and battle in the courts than to advocate for the rights of your children,” Montana said.
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The Ukrainian Orthodox Church, as you might guess from its name, is a religious denomination in Ukraine.
Like a separate but related denomination called the Orthodox Church of Ukraine, it’s part of the complex web of Orthodox Christian churches around the world. But unlike the Orthodox Church of Ukraine, the Ukrainian Orthodox Church has roots in the Russian branch of Orthodox Christianity.
Because of its historic ties to Russia, the Ukrainian Orthodox Church has been viewed with suspicion amid the fighting between Russia and Ukraine.
On Aug. 24, Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, signed a bill into law that grew out of that suspicion. It gives government officials the right to ban religious organizations that are discovered to be affiliated with the Russian Orthodox Church, per Politico.
Pope Francis is among those who have criticized the law, calling it a harmful attack on religious freedom, as I wrote last week.
The Harris-Walz campaign has hired a Presbyterian pastor to lead its faith outreach, per Religion News Service. The Rev. Jen Butler will work to appeal to religious voters across the political spectrum.
A faith-related controversy developed in Utah last week after Utah Rep. Trevor Lee shared a video on social media of members of the Muslim community taking part in a religious ritual. Some viewers accused Lee of Islamophobia, while others expressed alarm about what the Muslim group was up to. Lee has since been asked by the Council on American-Islamic Relations to meet with the Muslim community and learn more about their practices and beliefs, according to KSL.
Michelle Boorstein of The Washington Post put together an interesting X thread about Bible-related instruction in Oklahoma schools. Her main point is that very little seems to have changed in classrooms after Oklahoma’s superintendent of education declared that each classroom needed to have a Bible and each school in the state needed to incorporate the Bible into their curriculum plans.
Former Alabama coach Nick Saban appears in a new ad for VRBO. He made my week.