Constitutional Opinions / Let Us Pray
Rabkin, Jeremy A.
Let Us Pray by Jeremy A. Rabkin p undits and editorial writers pounced on Newt Gingrich when he suggested, soon after the election, that Republicans in the House would take up a school prayer...
...Students with physical handicaps may not be able to participate in these sporting contests, but no one argues that schools must therefore abolish their sports programs...
...When a school board this past October withdrew books on voodoo and witchcraft from school libraries in response to parental complaints—including books explaining how to cast love "spells" or killing "spells"—a federal court ruled this action unconstitutional...
...align itself with the overwhelming majority of voters, and to leave Democrats to do the bidding of their fearful, angry little pressure groups...
...The White House staff demonstrated as much when it hastily disclaimed the president's statement on this issue...
...Many schools sponsor patriotic rituals centered around flag-raising ceremonies or the singing of patriotic songs...
...After all, then, the issue is not really one of assuring accommodation of differing viewpoints and trying to limit wounded feeling...
...Nonetheless, the court has not dared to carry this logic through to its full conclusion...
...Most insisted the proposal was a major political blunder...
...Where there are any sizable numbers of non-Christians among the students, it seems unlikely in the 1990s that school officials will insist on religious formulas that are bound to offend many people...
...But the Democratic Party is deeply committed—both financially and culturally—to constituents demanding perpetual allegiance to their own version of "civil liberties...
...Ever since its 1962 ruling against prayer and Bible-reading in public schools, the Supreme Court has used the supposed menace of religion in public schools as a doctrinal and political launching pad for broader attacks on religious references or accommodations to religion in public life...
...Whatever those officials might do, they are unlikely to offend more people than the federal courts have done...
...C.:1 The American Spectator February 1995 47...
...Public opinion polls over the last thirty years have continually shown that roughly three-quarters of the electorate already supports prayer in the schools...
...T he importance of the school prayer issue goes beyond both prayer and the schools, for there is no direct mention in the Constitution of either...
...It is not a bad thing for the majority party to Jeremy A. Rabkin is an associate professor of government at Cornell University...
...Even liberal justices have acknowledged that the national motto, "In God We Trust," may remain on American money, and that the reference to "one nation under God" may remain in the Pledge of Allegiance...
...so the courts must be vigilant against religion in school settings...
...In 1982, the Supreme Court ruled in Pico v. School Board that schools could not even voluntarily accommodate objections from religious parents to school practices that offended them...
...Many public schools put a great deal of emphasis on competitive sports...
...The court unaccountably ruled in the mid-1980s that prayers at the opening of state legislative sessions were constitutionally permissible, even when delivered by sectarian chaplains remunerated with taxpayer funds...
...Let Us Pray by Jeremy A. Rabkin p undits and editorial writers pounced on Newt Gingrich when he suggested, soon after the election, that Republicans in the House would take up a school prayer amendment after acting on the agenda outlined in the Contract With America...
...T he most common rationale for such religio-phobic rulings is unconvincing but nonetheless revealing...
...The truth, however, is that while schools may usually try to avoid giving offense, no one seriously pretends that schools have a constitutional duty—or even a practical hope—of making every student feel equally comfortable at all times...
...46 The American Spectator February 1995 (The case is being appealed by the indefatigable Washington-based Center for Individual Rights...
...The issue is essentially one of assuring that public schools remain in the hands of approved liberal secularists...
...Students who are citizens of other countries, or who have been raised to think that America is not a land of "liberty and justice for all," may find such ceremonies alien or repellent...
...It ruled that the display of a Christmas creche in a public building was also a constitutional violation...
...The New York City Board of Education provoked a ruckus when it proposed to teach tolerance of gays by getting elementary school students to read works like "Heather Has Two Mommies" (which contains a rather graphic description of how one of those mommies conceived Heather by artificial insemination...
...In 1992, the Court held that a brief convocation statement at a high school graduation ceremony was unconstitutional because it mentioned the word "God...
...President Clinton seemed to acknowledge this when he expressed openness to a prayer amendment soon after Gingrich's statement...
...Lots of things go on in public schools these days that offend ordinary American parents...
...Lower courts have enforced the spirit of such rulings with a vengeance...
...In a 1968 case, the court held that schools could not omit the teaching of evolution theory, sincethis would endorse the "religious" objections of Bible-believers to evolution theory...
...Similarly, white parents in Prince George's County, Maryland protested the excesses of the public school system's "Afrocentric Curriculum," in which some texts degenerate into anti-white racism...
...Even student-initiated prayer and Bible-study sessions outside regular classrooms (given only for those who desire them) have been disallowed by lower court judges, who ruled that such activities suggest impermissible endorsement of prayer by public authorities if held on school grounds...
...A lower court even ruled that one school district had violated the Constitution by banning school dances, since the court found grounds to suspect that the objection to dances was "religious...
...The New York state prayer struck down by the Supreme Court was itself entirely non-sectarian...
...Even seemingly popular general proposals can founder on emotional objections to particular details, as the failure of the Equal Rights Amendment ought to remind us...
...The issue is assuring that certain privileged minorities get their way, and that others—even when they are the majority—are denied control of school practices...
...Even if not finally adopted, a prayer amendment would send a strong signal to the Supreme Court to leave difficult issues such as accommodation of religion to the good sense of accountable officials at the state and local levels...
...In this case, the court held that removing "offensive" books from school libraries was an impermissible form of censorship...
...Children and adolescents, it is said, are particularly vulnerable to psychological coercion and the sting of exclusion...
...The Court has been most insistent, however, about suppressing concessions to religion in public schools...
...One lower court even held that a public school was acting in accord with the Constitution in preventing a teacher from displaying a copy of the Bible on his desk and including a book of Bible stories among the books made available for free-time reading by students in his class...
...The question is not protected minorities—in most communities, for example, conservative Christians who object to books on witchcraft in school libraries are probably minorities themselves...
...If a school prayer amendment removes the federal judiciary from its current role as umpire of cultural etiquette in this area, some families are sure to find the consequences disturbing to their sensibilities...
...If the most insistently liberal or secularist students find their schools to be intolerably religious or conservative or whatever, they are free to attend private schools more to their liking—which is exactly the advice given to students who sought some acknowledgment of religion in their schools over the past thirty years...
...There is certainly some awkwardness in asking non-Christians to participate in, or remove themselves from, explicitly Christian devotion, which public schools have sometimes sponsored explicitly...
...The Supreme Court itself, in a celebrated 1943 case, ruled that school children could not be required to say the Pledge of Allegiance if it violated their conscience to do so...
...They could not get a day in court for such objections...
...Indeed, many and perhaps most conservatives would support some form of government aid to these private liberal havens as long as the courts would also allow aid to private schools operated under religious auspices...
...Some justices have even argued that laws restricting access to abortion manifest an improper "establishment of religion" by imposing a religious opinion on legislative policy—reasoning, in other words, that the Constitution requires religious opinion not only to be hidden, but also to be disenfranchised...
...It held that state aid to parochial schools violates the Constitution...
...but the court did not conclude that because some children have conscientious objections to the flag salute, schools must discontinue the practice forall children...
...Justice Brennan, ina widely cited opinion, argued that such concessions to tradition were constitutionally acceptable because they were merely "ceremonial" and "solemnizing" gestures no longer conveying a serious "religious" connotation...
...t may not always be possible to satis- fy everyone...
...The court progressed from banning prayers in schools to banning the display of the Ten Commandments in public school hallways...
...The point is worth stressing...
...The federal courts have not been content with this one-sided vigilance against affronts arising from actual religious expression...
...no court doctrine establishes a general right to protest offensive material in public schools...
...Only those who object to religious displays are given veto rights under current constitutional law...
...In 1985 it ruled that even a state-mandated "moment of silence" at the beginning of the school day was an affront to the ' Constitution, because some students might take it as encouragement to use that moment for silent prayer...
...But then most of them had previously decried the contract itself as a major political blunder, sure to lose votes for Republican candidates...
...Few would then maintain that these ceremonies be abolished...
...Almost any version of a prayer amendment will trigger an extensive debate, and such a debate will be helpful for Republicans and healthy for the nation...
...But parents who object to this sort of thing are confined to political channels of protest...
...In a case now on appeal to the Supreme Court, lower courts have held that the University of Virginia acted properly in denying financial subsidies to a student Christian magazine, while allowing subsidies to a range of other student publications (including publications by Jewish and Islamic student groups): aid to a Christian publication might appear to be government endorsement of religion, and thus in violation of the First Amendment...
...The school prayer amendment is an excellent idea, but an ambitious version of the proposal—one that tries to remove most or all current restrictions on state legislatures and local school boards—might not secure adoption by the required three-quarters of the states...
...But from the time of President Washington onward, public figures, public proclamations, and public rituals have invoked divine authority while steering clear of sectarian references...
Vol. 28 • February 1995 • No. 2
