Religious lessons

"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.^