Judging by all the letters we get for the Backtalk page, school prayer is a big deal to KidNews readers. So we thought we’d take a look at what the two side are arguing about.
“The issue is very much alive,” says Barry Lynn, head of the Americans United for Separation of Church and State.
Groups like Americans United and the American Civil Liberties Union say organized prayer is wrong in schools because the school, as a government agency, cannot sponsor religion — that would violate the 1st Amendment of the Constitution. They also say that students with religious beliefs different from the majority would be discriminated against. “The laws that are currently being challenged are just efforts to get around the Supreme Court’s clear message in the ’60s that school-promoted prayer violates the Constitution,” Lynn says.
But Miriam Moore, a legal policy analyst with the Family Research Council, says school-prayer foes intimidate school districts, which end up trampling on another constitutional right — freedom of speech — in the process.
“It seems, in many cases, that school districts are reacting to letters they get from organizations like the ACLU,” Moore says. “They worry that they would have to spend the entire sports budget on attorney fees over the next three years so they impose [overly strict] rules that they hope are insulating them from lawsuits.”
Last year, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that a Santa Fe school district was wrong when it allowed an opening prayer over the loudspeakers before a football game because it was, in essence, sponsoring prayer. And as a branch of the government, the court said, the district couldn’t do that.
Here are four other cases that may end up before the U.S. Supreme Court as well:
– ALABAMA: The 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in October that it was OK for students to lead prayers at DeKalb County school events if teachers and administrators did not take part in the prayers.
– CALIFORNIA: Two brothers — valedictorians in different years — were barred from speaking at their Oroville graduation ceremony because they planned to credit their religious faith for their success. So far, courts have sided with the school.
– FLORIDA: Students in the Duval school district elect a student each year to give a short “message,” which may include a prayer, at their graduation ceremony. A federal appeals court said students have that right because the administration isn’t involved.
– LOUISIANA: The Beauregard Parish school board said it would allow kids to pray at school functions as long as it was the kids who initiated it and as long as they didn’t try to convert people. The ACLU is fighting that in court.
With so much conflict, is there any agreement on the issue? Yes. About 14 months ago, every school in the country got a package in the mail from then-President Clinton and the Department of Education. Inside were three booklets with these titles: “A Teacher’s Guide to Religion in the Public Schools,” “Public Schools and Religious
Communities” and “A Parent’s Guide to Religion in the Public Schools.”
The booklets are intended to be guidelines for how schools can deal with issues like school prayer. They were endorsed by groups on both sides of the issue and were put together by the Freedom Forum’s First Amendment Center.
“The good news is we’ve found some common ground,” says Freedom Forum scholar Charles Haynes, an expert on stuff like this who helped write the guidelines.
According to the booklets, here’s what prayer can and can’t be in schools:
Students can pray alone or in groups in school — during breaks, recess, at lunch, before school, after school — as long as they don’t disrupt the school or try to force other kids to participate. “Any administrator who tells Sally and her classmates that they can’t say grace before lunch is violating the 1st Amendment,”Haynes says. Maybe this surprises you; Haynes says it surprises a lot of schools.
“School prayer has never been banned; that isn’t the issue,” he says. “The debate is over to what extent school officials can be involved in prayer. But many students, administrators and parents are so confused by the national rhetoric on this by politicians and others that they somehow get the idea that kids can’t pray in a public school.”
However, school officials can’t lead prayer or organize kids to pray. They can’t let students lead a prayer over loudspeakers. Teachers can’t lead prayers. Seems clear, doesn’t it? But Haynes said some groups on both sides aren’t entirely happy with the guidelines. So the debate goes on. And it may intensify under President George W. Bush, Lynn says.
“As governor, he filed a friend-of-the-court brief on the side of a school that wanted to do the prayers,” he says. “He even declared Jesus Day in Texas last June.”
