Kensington, 1844: Who Owns 'Nonsectarian'?
Kensington district, Philadelphia, 1844. The public schools enroll thousands of children, a large share of them Irish Catholic. Responding to a request from Bishop Francis Kenrick, the school board allows Catholic children to be excused from reading the King James Bible and from Protestant prayers. Native-born Protestant workingmen petition to reverse the policy, arguing that the schools are 'nonsectarian' precisely because all children read one common text. In May a nativist rally turns into three days of rioting: two Catholic churches and a convent school are burned and more than a dozen people are killed. The legislature is now considering a bill barring Catholic teachers and mandating Bible reading in every classroom.
1. Both sides described their position as 'nonsectarian.' Reconstruct the reasoning by which each could use the word sincerely.
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The word is doing different work on each side, and the disagreement is about what counts as religion in the first place.
- Protestant position: the King James Bible, read without denominational commentary, is the common moral inheritance of the republic - the source of the civic virtues a self-governing people needs. On this view the Bible is culture, not sect, and the Catholic demand for exemption asks the state to prefer one church's scruples over the shared foundation. Exemption itself, not Bible reading, is what introduces sectarianism.
- Catholic position: reading Scripture without note or comment, plus hymns and prayers, is Protestant worship, not a neutral civic exercise. A school that compels a Catholic child to sit through it is teaching that his baptism is defective. Excusing him is neutrality; compelling him is establishment.
The two sides are not haggling over tolerance. They disagree about where the line between 'religion' and 'public morality' falls - a disagreement no amount of goodwill resolves, because each side's neutrality is the other's establishment.
2. Why did a dispute about schoolbooks produce lethal mob violence in a working-class district rather than remain a church-state argument?
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Because the school was a scarce resource and a status marker, and the neighborhood was already organized for conflict.
- Labor competition. Irish arrivals competed for the same unskilled jobs and housing as native-born Protestant workers; the school question became a way of arguing about who belonged in the district.
- Existing institutions. Volunteer fire companies, gangs, and ward machines supplied ready-made crowds, leaders, and weapons.
- Weak coercion. The sheriff's posse was inadequate and the militia was called slowly; a few days of official indecision is all a riot needs.
- Stakes of the school. Public schooling was a claim on tax money and on the definition of the future citizen. Exemption for Catholics looked like a transfer of a public institution to a rival community.
So the theological question became a proxy through which class and ethnic claims were pressed. The right causal order is: the religious dispute supplied the vocabulary, but the neighborhood supplied the powder.
3. Evaluate the legislature's proposed remedy - mandatory Bible reading and a ban on Catholic teachers - as a response to the violence.
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Judge the remedy against the disorder it is meant to prevent.
- It addresses the majority's grievance, which may reduce one mob's motive for violence, and in a democracy that is not nothing.
- It guarantees the minority's grievance becomes permanent by excluding Catholics from the teaching profession and from the ordinary experience of school. That converts a dispute into a standing exclusion, and excluded groups do not become quiet.
- Enforcement cost. Every Catholic family now has a reason to withhold children from public school, funding a separate system and hardening the division.
- Precedent. The bill concedes that control of the school follows control of the street, which is a lesson neither side forgets.
A better test than 'does it satisfy the petitioners' is 'does it give the losing side a reason to keep using the political process.' On that test the bill fails, because it pays the rioters and leaves the Catholics with no stake in the outcome.