PUBLIC PIETY

...And, it might be added, there seems to be enough of the Pharisee in many of us to argue, in effect, that our educational system will collapse without a prayer...

...Senator Hubert Humphrey of Minnesota exposed a national scandal in the heart of Washington a few weeks ago when he revealed the capital's schools were using science, arithmetic, and geography books printed before the dawn of the Atomic Age...

...Speaking of that faith in the power of prayer which animated so many of the authors of the Constitution, Justice Black went on: "These men knew that the First Amendment, which tried to put an end to governmental control of religion and of prayer, was not written to destroy either...

...They knew rather that it was written to quiet well-justified fears which nearly all of them felt arising out of an awareness that governments of the past had shackled men's tongues to make them speak only the religious thoughts that government wanted them to speak and to pray only to the God that government wanted them to pray to...

...There is a richness in America's spiritual tradition...

...Too frequently too many parents are inclined to leave the character-formation of their children almost entirely to the schools, as if they, happy to shuck their own responsibility in the bargain, had bought the dubious idea that God-fearing patriots and all-around good citizens can be produced on an assembly-line basis, merely by exposing them in classroom to the pledge of allegiance to the flag and the Lord's Prayer...

...This, I suggest, is a main reason for the sanctimonious furor over the Court's action...

...And Congress in its wisdom has taken care to keep the material and the spiritual separate in District of Columbia schools where it encouraged religious services but has refused sufficient funds for textbooks...

...But is there not enough candor and common sense among us to make us see that no prayer, however fervid, can correct the monstrous and growing inadequacies of our educational system if we continue to insist on shortchanging it...

...They were muffled, I suggest, in the fear that, however deep and private your own convictions, you must pay lip-service to a kind of public piety...

...It was reaffirming the principle, which should be welcome by most thoughtful citizens, that religion is a private affair between Man and his Maker...

...It is a matter of history that this very practice of establishing govern-mentally composed prayers for religious services was one of the reasons which caused many of our early colonists to leave England and seek religious freedom in America...

...There was no outcry in Congress or the country when Senator Humphrey pointed out some of the textbooks were so tattered and torn they looked as if they were relics from the Nineteenth Century...

...The point is not that the twenty-two-word prayer conceived by the New York State Board of Regents was brief, bland, and, therefore, presumably innocuous...

...How interesting it would be if the Supreme Court's harshest critics practiced what they preach...

...but it is dangerous as well to have rancor and ill will among persons of good motive...

...There is enough money in this city," Humphrey told the Senate angrily, "to build new hotels, cocktail bars, racetracks, and a stadium . . . [and] to give it one of the highest per capita income ratings in the world...

...On each morning at the appointed hour, at the signal of the teacher, could not each child turn silently to reflection, meditation, or prayer, in conformity with the articles of his own faith or the instruction and wishes of his own parents...

...As an erudite Frenchman observed to me after the Court's decision, this situation could not come up in Catholic France where the non-religious character of public schools is so jealously guarded...

...And when the controversy has cooled a bit, perhaps a way can be found...

...Supreme Court's constitutional wisdom on the school prayer issue and of the sincerity and good faith of those who are profoundly disturbed and worried by that opinion will wish a way might be found to reconcile these opposing and deeply felt necessities...

...Representative John Bell Williams of Mississippi branded the decision as part of "a deliberate and carefully planned conspiracy to substitute materialism for spiritual values...

...Is this Christianity in action...

...Surely such an interlude could give no offense to anyone and it might give solace to many...

...It is neither sacrilegious nor anti-religious to say that each separate government in this country should stay out of the business of writing or sanctioning official prayers and leave that purely religious function to the people themselves and to those the people choose to look to for religious guidance...

...Kennedy said, "a very easy remedy, and that is to pray ourselves...

...Supporting the court's unpopular decision the President, at his first news conference following the historic decision, said we had a ready remedy—to pray a good deal more at home...

...Why, in a country set on keeping government out of business, do we get upset when the Constitution is applied to keep it out of religion...

...And I would think it would be a welcome reminder to every American family that we can pray a good deal more at home, we can attend our churches with a good deal more fidelity, and we can make the true meaning of prayer much more important in the lives of all our children...

...A Moment of Silence Many citizens who are convinced of the U.S...

...The Washington Post (This is precisely the practice of the United Nations—a moment of silence for prayer or meditation.—The Editors...

...No, it was doing something more...

...But there is not enough money in this city to buy even simple arithmetic books for ten-year-old children...

...of the Court, said so clearly in his opinion: "Under [the First] Amendment's prohibition against governmental establishment of religion, as reinforced by the provisions of the Fourteenth Amendment, government in this country, be it state or Federal, is without power to prescribe by law any particular form of prayer which is to be used as an official prayer in carrying on any program of govern-mentally-sponsored religious activity...

...The point is, as Justice William O. Douglas made it in quoting a dissent in a prior case, that "if a religious leaven is to be worked into the affairs of our people, it is to be done by individuals anil groups, not by the government...

...How obviously but how flimsily we wear our religious beliefs on our sleeves, as if we wanted to make sure everybody sees them no matter how thinly held they are...

...But this is not government's business...

...Couldn't this quiet moment be utilized for whatever silent purpose, religious or otherwise, that suits the inclination and discipline of each student...

...But too often in the frantic tempo of today we do no more than pay lip-service to it...

...Would it be possible and acceptable to those of varying views to have each school day commence with a quiet moment that would still the tumult of the playground and start a day of study...

...As Justice Hugo L. Black, speaking for the six-to-one majority EDWARD P. MORGAN, much-honored newscaster for the AFL-CIO, broadcasts nightly over ABC...

...We have in this case," Mr...

...Or as Justice Black put it, "religion is too personal, too sacred, too holy, to permit its 'unhallowed perversion' by a civil magistrate...

...It is dangerous to venture at all into an area where so many hotly held convictions are involved...

...The recent Supreme Court decision declaring a government-composed and sponsored prayer in New York public schools unconstitutional does not threaten to turn the country over to atheists and non-believers, but it does threaten the pretentious religiosity that too many Americans have accepted in place of devout belief...

...Perhaps those not directly engaged or committed might suggest a point at which all minds might meet...

...They put the Negroes in the schools," cried Congressman George Andrews of Alabama, "and now they've driven God out...

...Where were the voices of prominent public servants and of the multitude hailing the Court's decision as another victory for the constitutional separation of church and state...

...The Court was simply doing ils job of upholding the Constitution...

...We can start what the President proposed by asking for help in improving our synthetic spiritual values...

...What kind of god, Congressman, is it that would condemn twenty million Americans to second class citizenship...

...I suspect one reason is that we have victimized ourselves in a tyranny of conformity...