Abstract
The Americas were colonized by European nations the cultures of which had been deeply informed by Classical Christian education. The moral and religious convictions of the Greeks and Romans, who understood that religious piety was an essential virtue, had been redefined within Judeo‐Christian monotheism which also understood that honoring the Divine played an important role in the success or failure of a society. In the 20th century, a great deal of the debate over God in American education has focused on the thoughts of Thomas Jefferson. The 20th‐century debates regarding religion in schools moved dramatically from arguments waged in the academic, local, and state contexts to debates engaged at the national level and in cases argued before the Supreme Court. Research that followed upon the Supreme Court decisions of the 1960s indicated that student tests, reflecting a lack of academic rigor, entered into a period of discernable decline.