Should prayer be allowed in public and/or private schools?

If this question was put to Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, James Madison, or any of the Founding Fathers, I wonder how they would answer it. I believe at least one of them; Jefferson perhaps, might respond with the question, “Why are we even having this discussion?” Madison might ask, “Was this issue not sufficiently addressed in the first Amendment to the Constitution?” While Washington, the Father of our nation, might simply shrug his broad shoulders and wonder, “What happened? How did you become so confused?”

The first sixteen words of the first Amendment are not all that difficult to understand, and contain no ambiguity whatsoever. “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof” Can this be any more straight-forward? Some might say, “So what? The first Amendment doesn’t even mention prayer in school, so why is it relevant?” To those of you who might take that position, here’s a little history.

An issue of paramount importance to early American settlers was that of religious freedom, and the right to worship as they chose, or not to worship at all if they chose not to. They were fed up with that corrupted European system of government that forced religion, as well as other controls over its subjects. But old habits die hard, and even among the early settlers, religious persecution was often practice, until it was slowly abandoned by the process of removing government from the religious affairs of the people. Thus the idea of building a wall of separation between church and state was born.

This doctrine of separation was uppermost in the minds of the framers of the Constitution as they sought to establish and preserve a clear distinction between church affairs and state affairs. That sixteen word clause in the first Amendment, known as the Establishment Clause, was therefore inserted to ensure our religious freedoms are preserved, and protected as well. And no government, city, state, or federal, should be allowed to interfere with the religious preference of its people. It is curious however, that the clause is most often referred to as the Establishment Clause, and rarely, if ever, called the “Protection Clause”. More on that later.

This concept of keeping government out of the religious affairs of the people worked well in America from the end of the eighteenth century, until about the middle of the twentieth century. And during that time prayer in public schools, along with other religious activities such as, religious instruction, the singing of religious songs, student participation in religious plays, etc., were widely accepted by nearly all Americans. Almost 160 years would pass before the Supreme Court would issue a ruling against religious activity in public schools. In 1948 the court ruled that the Illinois Board of Education did violate the Establishment Clause of the first Amendment, by forcing/coercing students to attend religious classes, in McCollum v. Board of Education. However, another 14 years would pass before the critical blow to public school prayer would be felt, and felt hard.

In 1962 Supreme Court Justice, Hugo Black issued the landmark decision in the now famous Engle v. Vitale case. The case was brought about by a handful of parents and students against the New York Board of Education, and its Board of Regents, who held supervisory powers over New York’s public school system. The parents of students enrolled in a New Hyde Park public school claimed that a prayer published by the Board of Regents, for daily use in class rooms, violated the religious freedom of their children, even though no student was compelled to recite the prayer. Citing the first Amendment, attorneys for the students argued that the practice of a mandated prayer in a public school was in violation of the Establishment Clause.

The prayer being recited was generic, non-denominational, non-sectarian, and carefully worded in the hope that none would be offended:

“Almighty God, we acknowledge our dependence upon Thee, and we beg Thy blessings upon us, our parents, our teachers and our Country.”

Obviously the parents of ten students were indeed offended, and brought suit against the Board of Regents. New York’s lower courts rejected the law suit, and upheld the Board’s right to use the prayer, as long as no student was forced to recite it. However, Justice Black and other Justices on the Supreme Court held a different view when the case was heard. And in June of 1962 Black delivered the decision of the court, ruling against the New York State Board of Regents.

Following this landmark ruling, over a dozen religious cases have been heard by the Supreme Court, and in most of them the court has ruled against religion in school. In 1963 the court ruled against the Lord’s Prayer in school (Abington v. Schempp). In 1980 the court ruled against the Ten Commandments being posted on the walls of the class room. (Stone v. Graham) In 1985 the court ruled against the use of silent prayer in schools. (Wallace v. Jaffree) In 1992 the court ruled against prayer at graduation ceremonies. (Lee v. Weisman) And on and on it goes.

Engle v. Vitale set in motion a virtual crusade to totally expel God from the class room, which has continued until finally even the mention of God’s name in the Pledge of Allegiance has been challenged by the courts. (Elk Grove Unified School District v. Newdow, 2004) Such is the history of the first Amendment’s Establishment Clause and it relationship, or should I say, its dramatic and devastating effect on prayer and religious freedom in our school system.

Let’s now revisit those first sixteen words in the first Amendment: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof” I’m sorry, let’s not revisit all sixteen of those words. Let’s just review the last six. … or prohibiting the free exercise thereof… These are the words that make up the “Protection Clause” in the first Amendment, yet oddly enough they are grossly ignored by the Supreme Court in almost every case involving religious activity in public places in this country since 1962. If it is wrong to force an individual to participate in religious activity against his or her will, and I believe it is, it is equally as wrong, according to the first Amendment, to prohibit a person from participation in a religious activity if they so desire. Yet the protection offered by the first Amendment is not often upheld by our court system.

To those who would argue that these ill-advised decisions of a politically charged Judiciary, actually serve to preserve that wall of separation between church and state, which the framers of the Constitution fought so hard to erect, I must profoundly disagree. The Judiciary is as much a part of our system of government as is Congress and the President. Therefore, any ruling from the Supreme Court that binds or compel the people to act one way or another with regards to religious activity in public schools, grossly violates the doctrine of separation of church and state.

This whole notion of prayer in school or no prayer in school and the debate it has generated just in the past fifty years or so, is perplexing to me. You see, I have difficulty accepting, that a county who’s congressional sessions are routinely opened with prayer, can deny school children the right to join in a non-denominational prayer at school. Its hard to understand how a country who’s motto, National Anthem, and currency contain the words, “In God We Trust”, can question the use of the phrase “under God” in its Pledge of Allegiance.

At the end of the day, the question of whether or not prayer should be allowed in schools, public or private, was settled a long time ago by those great framers of the Constitution, and they fixed it so that we cannot legally “prohibit the free exercise thereof”. So, I ask you, as I believe Thomas Jefferson might ask if he were alive, “Why are we even having this discussion?”