Florida may soon embark upon a dreadful new experiment in tearing down the wall between church and state. This month, the state’s legislature passed a bill that would allow schools to bring volunteer religious chaplains onto campus to provide students with counseling. If Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican who delights in activist education policy, signs the bill, it will become law.
Florida’s Republican lawmakers have argued that chaplains provide a suitable — if not superior — alternative to trained school counselors. “I believe that sometimes the issue is with the soul and not of the mind, and that’s why I believe that this is a good option for our students in today’s day and age,” state Sen. Danny Burgess said of the bill, as if the business of the government is saving children’s souls.
The emerging crusade to install school chaplains should be understood as an outgrowth of rising Christian nationalism.
This radical movement began in Texas, where in 2023 the state legislature passed a bill that allows school districts to bring chaplains into schools for counseling students. That bill required school districts to vote on whether to bring chaplains into their districts, and fortunately the largest school districts in the state have voted no. Even so, Texas’ bill spurred copycat legislation in at least 14 states, including Ohio, Maryland and Kansas. As Axios reports, right-wing lawmakers are capitalizing on a shortage of school counselors across the country and pushing the narrative that religious guidance is the real salve to the issues that young people face.
The emerging crusade to install school chaplains should be understood as an outgrowth of rising Christian nationalism, and an alarming threat to America’s students. It violates the spirit of the First Amendment for public schools to hire religious administrators who have the opportunity to indoctrinate students with their religious beliefs.
The Florida bill’s requirements for serving as a volunteer chaplain are virtually nonexistent. A chaplain only has to pass a background check and have their name and religious affiliation listed on the website of the school they’d be serving. According to the Florida chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, “It appears that anyone can hold themselves out as a volunteer ‘chaplain,’ as there does not seem to be any credentialing required to become a volunteer chaplain in Florida’s public schools.” The law appears to be designed so that random religious activists can insert themselves into schools and influence student life.
Public schools inviting chaplains onto campus raises obvious First Amendment questions. School districts will be picking and choosing religious figures to come onto campus to provide children with services that would typically be carried out by a school counselor — guidance on issues such as academics, relationships, mental health, trouble at home, bullying and future career ideas. But instead of drawing from education and training specific to counseling young people, chaplains would be drawing from their spiritual beliefs. At the bare minimum, this means schools would be priming students to think of specific religions as an educational resource. And it would effectively provide cover for chaplains to evangelize on behalf of their faith and indoctrinate young, impressionable children seeking help.
Chaplains infiltrating public schools would constitute state-sponsored promotion of religion, in violation of the First Amendment’s commitments to a secular state. In Florida’s bill, parents would have to consent to allow their child to see such a cleric, but in some other states’ bills — including Texas’ policy — no consent is required. But even parental consent is an inadequate safeguard, in part because the scarcity of school counselors and their simultaneous replacement with chaplains could compel parents to allow their children to see chaplains out of lack of a practical alternative. Activists from dozens of civil rights organizations and faith groups, as well as individual chaplains, have rallied against these bills in a number of states out of concern that they violate the First Amendment.
It’s perfectly reasonable for someone to turn to their faith to deal with challenges in life. But that’s a private decision for people to make at their own discretion. Even if one sets aside the alarming intrusion of religion into schools, the notion that chaplains are fit to replace trained counselors is indefensible. It’s a norm in the profession of school counseling to complete a master’s degree and specific training designed to understand and engage with children’s unique psychological needs. What evidence is there that a chaplain, whether through years of study of religion or simply the decision to call themselves one, can act as a substitute? Religious devotion isn’t a substitute for studying the way children experience emotions, struggle to balance schoolwork and life, or can feel plagued or confused about their identity. Many children will be robbed of the opportunity to get proper attention from a professional who’s been trained in how to help them. Moreover, given that this is mostly a red-state phenomenon, it seems plausible that chaplains could push the culture of public schools in a conservative direction, particularly on issues such as sexual orientation and gender identity. The emergence of these bills, even as the U.S. steadily grows more secular, speaks to the way the American right uses its capture of political and legal institutions to push political agendas that aren’t necessarily popular or in demand. Despite the fact that young Americans report being particularly averse to organized religion, there is no safeguard to protect students from a new class of theocratic activists. It’s perfectly reasonable for someone to turn to their faith to deal with challenges in life. But that’s a private decision for people to make at their own discretion, not a decision the state ought to be making for children.
Zeeshan Aleem is a writer for MS NOW. Sign up for his newsletter. 
