By Dr. John Adams, Executive Director • Moral Action
Public expression of our faith through prayer is a fundamental part of our American heritage. Nearly every President has proclaimed an annual day of public prayer to acknowledge Almighty God. We acknowledge God’s guidance on our coinage, in our national anthem and in the Pledge of Allegiance. Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas stated in 1952, “We are a religious people whose institutions presuppose a Supreme Being.”
If the U.S. Senate, the House of Representatives, all state legislatures and even the U.S. Supreme Court can begin each day with prayer of religious invocations, why aren’t public school children allowed the same privilege?
A Word from Our Nation’s Capital
After three years of effort, the Reagan administration introduced its voluntary school prayer amendment to the U.S. Senate in early 1984 for a vote. The prayer amendment had popular support. A June 1982 and January 1984 Gallup poll showed that an average of 79% of the American public wanted to allow prayer in public schools; yet, only 56 of 100 senators voted for it, 11 votes shy of the required two-thirds majority.
The major purpose of the prayer amendment was that the courts could not forbid children from voluntary vocal prayer in their schools. It reaffirmed their right to free religious expression. It would ensure that no child would have been forced to recite a prayer.
A Supreme Court decision, Widmar vs. Vincent, upheld the right of religious persons to meet on college campuses. However, that right has not been expanded to high school and elementary students.
Madalyn Murray O’Hair was the one lady who challenged and won in the U.S. Supreme Court in 1963, and the ruling was directly responsible for abolishing school prayer. Since then, her son has disclaimed her devilish efforts against God.
President Ronald Reagan, in an address to broadcasters, stated, “Neither should the freest country on earth ever have permitted God to be expelled from the school classrooms. When the Supreme Court ruled that school prayer was unconstitutional, I believe it ruled wrong.” Americans can be heard by writing their representatives to let them know how they feel.
A Word from Our States
• Texas — Several tornadoes deluged a Texas school, and to protect themselves, teachers and students were herded into the school gym, where they prayed out loud for their lives. The school was destroyed, except for the gym, but the school principal was strongly reprimanded for praying aloud, as school prayer is unconstitutional in Texas.
• New York — One New York (along with dozens of other states) lower court overacted, holding the following verse recited by kindergarten children to be an establishment of religion: “We thank you for the flowers so sweet. We thank you for the food we eat. We thank you for the birds that sing. We thank you for everything.”
Students at Guilderland High School, near Albany, New York, sought to use an empty classroom as a voluntary prayer meeting room before the start of class. The Second Circuit Court of Appeals said “No,” claiming it could be a bad influence on other students if they were “to see the captain of the football team or the student body president’s participation in communal (school) prayer meetings.”
A Word from Heaven
Luke 18:1 declares that flesh will faint and become wearisome apart from prayer to God. All our children are made in God’s divine image and should have time to talk to the Heavenly Father. How absurd and bizarre our times are when the First Amendment is invoked to allow Nazis and the Ku Klux Klan to march on public property, urging the extermination of Jews and the subjugation of blacks, yet it prevents children from Bible study and prayer in public schools.
Solomon, the great King, declared, “The sacrifice of the wicked is an abomination to the Lord: but the prayer of the upright is his delight,” (Prov. 15:8). The entire division of Psalms 5 relates to God honoring those who pray.
Permission for such school prayer exercises is urged through bible verses such as I Tim. 2:1, Matt. 19:13-15 and Rom. 13:1-4. Permission for such exercises is necessary for those who want them if the schools are truly to be neutral in the matter of religion. A refusal to permit students to pray is seen not as neutrality, but rather as the establishment of a secular religion. God restore again thyself before our children!
