Word: accommodationist
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...really one of us" will be the refrain of conservatives, who count the elder's failed promise of "no new taxes" in 1988 as one of the greatest betrayals in Republican Party history. They will also compare George W.'s warm relations with Texas Democrats to his father's "accommodationist" approach toward the other party on Capitol Hill. And they are already suggesting that the son has got as far as he has only by using his father's connections: Tennessee's Lamar Alexander pointedly insists that the presidency cannot be "inherited." The Bush response, by spokeswoman Karen Hughes...
This may turn out to be the first accommodationist court in years. "The wall of separation between church and state is a metaphor based on bad history," declared Chief Justice William Rehnquist in 1985. "It should be frankly and explicitly abandoned." The Lee case is also the first major test of Justice Clarence Thomas, who remarked in 1985, "My mother says that when they took God out of the schools, the schools went to hell. She may be right." Were Thomas and his colleagues to agree with Rehnquist, it could change dramatically the role that religion plays in America...
...years since that ruling, the Lemon test has come under accommodationist fire. With the birth of the Moral Majority in 1979 and the political rise of the religious right, clashes over religious issues that had once been quiet and philosophical became loud and politically explosive. Then, as the composition of the Supreme Court became more conservative in the Reagan and Bush years, expectations began to rise that the accommodationists might get a more sympathetic hearing. Yet many major issues remain in dispute, such as whether voluntary prayer should be allowed in schools, whether government bodies can mount religious displays...
Over time, many schools have come to avoid mentioning religion at all, fearing that the subject was too controversial and invited lawsuits. But in recent years the balance has shifted in areas where accommodationist sentiment has grown. Two years ago, North Carolina's board of education launched a revision of the state curriculum to include religious references in classes on history, social studies and culture. Other states, such as Arizona and California, have introduced similar programs, though all have been careful to distinguish between exposing students to the history and beliefs of various religions and advocating any creed...