Many years ago, I was on a panel discussing the relationship between religion and public education. These were the early days of the Religious Right, and one of the panelists held forth at some length about the importance of reinstating prayer in public schools.
I expect that one of my eyebrows twitched a bit, and I may have muttered something about religious diversity and the First Amendment.
“That’s really not a problem,” the panelist responded brightly. Her solution was to have a Christian minister give the prayer on Monday, a rabbi on Tuesday, an imam on Wednesday, maybe a Hindu on Thursday. At that point the narrative slowed; she wasn’t sure what religious group to include next, although there are plenty to choose from on the American religious landscape.
She had run head on into the establishment clause of the First Amendment, which prohibits the state from preferring one religion over another — or none at all.
Ever since the Supreme Court’s Engel v. Vitale decision of 1962, which held that the state cannot sponsor prayers in public schools, religious conservatives have been agitating to “restore” prescribed prayers in public education, presumably to instill religious, especially Christian, values in school children.
Their arguments include a lot of hyperventilating about how once prayer was removed from public schools, education began to decline, thereby committing the classic logical fallacy of confusing causation with correlation, ignoring such factors as diminished funding and the exodus of white families from public schools to avoid racial integration.
The arguments over prescribed prayer in public schools miss a simple but crucial point: No court, no legislature has outlawed prayer in school. This point was made most emphatically by Mark O. Hatfield, Republican senator from Oregon, a devout Baptist and an evangelical.
On July 27, 1994, Hatfield asked to address the United States Senate. “I must say very frankly that I oppose all prescriptive prayer of any kind in public schools,” he began. “Does that mean that I am against prayer? No, it does not mean that at all. I am very strong in my belief in the efficacy of prayer.”
The issue at hand was an amendment offered by Jesse Helms, Republican senator from North Carolina, that would have mandated prayer in public schools.
Hatfield opposed the amendment, pointing out the obvious fact that prayer in public schools had never been outlawed. In fact, Hatfield argued, “there is no way that this body or the Constitution or the president or the courts could ever abolish prayer in the public schools.”
The senator then confessed to “having prayed my way through every math course examination I ever took.” He continued: “All I am saying is that this can be very personal, and silent prayer is happening all the time.” He concluded his remarks by asserting that “the simplest and best way to deal with this subject is to take no action relating to school prayer. Let students continue to pray as they do now, silently as an undeniable personal right.”
Such commonsense statements are nevertheless considered heresy by the Religious Right.
I’m currently writing a biography of Hatfield, and I ran across a letter responding to one of the senator’s earlier efforts to defend the First Amendment.
“In my opinion you have voted yourself out of Public Office by becoming one of the forty-four ‘unholy’ members of the U.S. Senate who voted against PRAYER in Public Schools,” the letter from Edward J. Head of Alabama began. “May God Damn you for your unholy act.”
Head was just getting started. “Your act makes me proud that I am an American Christian,” he wrote. “If I had the legal right and privilege to act out my feelings about you, I would chop you up in pieces the size of your soul and ship you to Siberia via Moscow to show the Russion [sic] Comunist [sic] Bastards how Christian Americans regard ‘self-made’ Judas Iscariots and anybody else who deliberately denies children the privilege of having Prayer in their Public Schools.”
On another occasion, Hatfield was berated by a congregant on the steps of Hillsboro Baptist Church. When the parent argued that she wanted her child to start the day with prayer, Hatfield provided a simple solution: Pray with her son before sending him off to school.
No one has ever outlawed prayer in public schools. The Supreme Court wisely determined that prescribed prayer in school violated the establishment clause and impinged on the rights of minorities, religious or not.
As for instilling Christian virtues, the last I checked those included justice, mercy, forgiveness and compassion. I’m not sure how Edward Head’s closing line to the Oregon senator reflected Christian values: “Again, May God Damn you for your act.”
Randall Balmer’s latest book, a New York Times bestseller, is “America’s Best Idea: The Separation of Church and State.”