Rep. Barney Frank (D. Mass.) warned Monday that those who are seeking a return of prayers in the school want the United States to be not just a Christian nation, but one that officially espouses their type of Christianity.
“The distinguishing thing about America is not that we have minorities, it is that we have no majorities,” he told some 300 persons attending a meeting of B’nai B’rith International commissions at the Mayflower Hotel.
“We are not fighting, as Jewish Americans, for the right of Jews to dissent without being picked on,” Frank stressed.
He explained that as a Jew he does not want to be part of a “fully recognized protected minority because that is an unequal situation. I want to be like everyone else.”
Frank criticized President Reagan’s State of the Union statement that Congress should end “the expulsion of God from America’s classrooms.”
The Massachusetts Congressman said it was “nonsense” to say that either God or prayer had been expelled from the public schools. “How do you forbid someone to pray?” he asked.
Frank said there were “infinite” opportunities for children to say prayers during the school day if they wanted to. He said that those who want officially organized prayers in the school “don’t think that every family gives enough religious instruction to their kids.”
Instead, he charged, they want the schools to use their “coercive mechanism” to “inculcate more religion than you have at home.”
Frank also warned against the effort to have a constitutional convention in order to adopt an amendment to the Constitution requiring the federal government to have a balanced budget. He said such a convention could not be limited to the budget and could impair the protection now in the Bill of Rights, including the separation of church and state.
Frank stressed that Blacks provide a “great deal of support” in upholding the separation of church and state. He noted that while they are statistically important in many of the religious groups seeking to break down the barrier, they “understand what it means to be a minority.”
He added that Blacks in Congress back Israel 90 percent of the time and next to Jewish Congressmen have the best record against providing arms to Saudi Arabia.
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The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
