Government Sponsored Prayer

Prayer has never been outlawed in the public schools. There is nothing to prevent a student or teacher (or even an administrator) from silently beseeching or thanking the deity of their choice for whatever reason that they want, or for that matter non-silently doing so. I would imagine that the minutes before a test starts are the most prayer-dense times of the day anywhere! What was outlawed in 1962 and 1963 was government led prayer, with teachers and other school employees being viewed as government representatives.

The section of the Constitution that governs religious expression is the first amendment, included in what is called the Bill of Rights. The Supreme Court in its interpretations of the First Amendment has ruled that government must be neutral in its treatment of religion, not favoring one or the other, but that private religious expression is protected speech and cannot be curtailed or regulated. For many years, when prayer and bible readings in public schools were the norm, the assumption was that virtually everyone belonged to some sect of Christianity, which meant that they all worshiped the same god, albeit in different ways. A prayer was neutral in this regard as long as it didn't mention the pope or any other person or belief specific to a particular denomination. Of course, this wasn't entirely true, there were Jews (who technically worshiped the same god anyway) and a large number of native Americans and small communities of other religions, but the vast majority were Christians of one sort or another.

In the early sixties, when the push to abolish school prayer succeeded, the main advocate for ending it was the head of an atheist organization, which for many people, associated outlawing school prayer with a lack of godliness and hence a deficit of morals. While there is no evidence that atheists are any less moral or ethical, worse parents or poorer citizens than religious people, the association remains. (That's the subject for another blog entry). But the false dilemma that is presented, that it's a matter of godly versus ungodly people, believers versus unbelievers, ignores the fact that there are more than one kind of believers. So, ignoring the atheists for a minute, if prayer is to be had in the public schools, what kind do we want to have? Let's for arguments sake set aside for the moment the more physical kinds of prayer, dance, song, trances and the burning of various substances and sometimes smoking them and just look at who we are praying to.

It may come as a great surprise to some that not everyone who isn't an atheist believes in the same god. Believers in the god described in the bible sometimes make the mistake of assuming that everyone is worshiping the same god under different names (others of course believe that some who claim to be worshiping the same god are really worshiping devils or demons if their theology is a little bit off center) when the reality is that there are many who explicitly reject the notion that their gods and/or goddesses are identical to the biblical god (or even some generic, cultural "God"). So would it be okay to offer prayers to Odin, or the Voudoun loa, or the Celtic god Lugh? Most would say "no".

My opinion is that the now fifty year old law outlawing school sponsored prayer was and continues to be a good thing.