Despite all the hype over school prayer these days, the issue is hardly new.
The emerging school prayer battle is merely the latest chapter in a decades-old saga that has often pitted courts against lawmakers and students against school authorities.
While the new Congress holds the best chance to return prayer to America’s schools for the first time since 1962, opponents and advocates alike agree that students are still a long way from legally organized prayer in school.
Nonetheless, the push on the part of the new Republican leadership in Congress to pass a school prayer amendment has revived discussion about what role religion historically has played in the American classroom.
Until 1962, most students began their school day with some from of organized prayer, whether it was the Lord’s prayer or other Christian readings – and in some predominantly Jewish neighborhoods, selections from the Bible.
But all that changed in 1962 with a landmark Supreme Court decision that dramatically altered the country’s landscape on this issue.
By striking down a New York state law recommending a non-denominational prayer in all classrooms, the court effectively declared school prayer illegal.
The court strengthened this decision, Engel v. Vitale, one year later when justices ruled that all school-sponsored prayer and Bible readings in public school were unconstitutional. The court included voluntary prayer in it ruling.
In two companion cases – Abington Township School District v. Schempp in Pennsylvania and Murray v. Curlett in Maryland – the court ruled that even laws that permitted students to be excused during prayer time violated the principle of separation between church and state.
Taken together, the 1962 and 1963 decisions sounded the death knell for legal prayer in America’s public schools.
Although court decisions spanning the next three decades generally continued to stifle prayer in public schools, about half of the 50 states currently have some law pertaining to school prayer.
“The most broadly violated Supreme Court decision in the history of this republic is the ban on organized prayer in schools,” said Jerome Chanes, co-director for domestic concerns at the National Jewish Community Relations Advisory Council, an umbrella group of 13 Jewish organizations and 117 local communities.
Although most of the laws currently on the books call for moments of silence, some states, in apparent violation of the Supreme Court rulings, allow for student-led classroom prayer.
And in many rural areas of the country, prayer continues today unchecked, despite the Supreme Court’s efforts and many state legislative battles to block attempts to circumvent the court’s decisions.
“Many southern communities has to be dragged kicking and screaming into abolishing prayer in public schools. At best there has been reluctant, minimal compliance,” said Charles Whittenstein, who recently retired after serving over 20 years as the Anti-Defamation League’s southern civil rights director.
As an example, he noted that some rural schools in Georgia continue to allow students to recite prayers over intercom systems.
“Court edicts continue to be violated and ignored but we’ve made slow progress ending prayer in schools,” Whittenstein said.
By the 1980s, federal courts had continued to expand the official ban on prayer to all schools functions, including assemblies and athletic events. Included in the dozens of rulings that addressed this issue was a specific ban preventing students from volunteering to recite prayers for school assemblies or classes.
In an effort o circumvent these court decisions, many states began to cloak their school prayer laws as moments of silence, according to observers.
In Alabama, such a moment of silence law was challenged all the way to the Supreme Court by students who were beaten when they refused to bow their heads during prayer time.
In that case, Wallace v. Jaffree, the Supreme Court declared the Alabama law unconstitutional in 1985. The justices said that the state legislator’s intent when they crafted the law was to promote school prayer in public schools.
In contrast, some lower courts have found legislation on moment of silence to be within the bounds of the Constitution.
But opponents of school prayer continue to argue that in practice, teachers and students frequently use the time for proselytizing and vocalized prayer.
The courts and the states continue to wrangle over the issue.
Over the past two years Virginia, Tennessee, Mississippi and Alabama have enacted moment of silence laws, according to Robert Peck, legislative counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union. The Mississippi law was declared unconstitutional by a U.S. District Court and is currently under appeal. The ACLU is planning to challenge the Alabama and Georgia statutes, Peck said.
The Virginia law has not been implemented, Peck said.
During President Clinton’s term as Arkansas governor, he pushed a moment of silence law for the state that would comply with the 1985 Supreme Court decision. The state repealed the law last year after officials decided it was unnecessary and not being used by school districts.
“I have always supported a moment of silence when I was a governor,” Clinton said at a Nov. 22 news conference.
Responding to outrage after the president appeared conciliatory to Republican plans to push a constitutional amendment on school prayer, Clinton said, “I do not believe that we should have a constitutional amendment to carve out and legalize teacher or student-led prayer in the classroom.
“I think that that is inherently coercive in a nation with the amount of religious diversity we have in this country,” Clinton said.
One of the more recent issues of emerge as part of the school prayer imbroglio centers on prayer at school graduation ceremonies.
In the most prominent court case, Lee v. Weisman, the Supreme Court ruled in 1992 that prayer at a public school graduation violated the Establishment Clause.
In an effort to appease Jewish students, a Rhode Island high school had chosen a rabbi to give an invocation after Jewish families had voiced opposition to prayers at graduation ceremonies.
But a Jewish student sued, bringing the case all the way to the Supreme Court.
The Supreme Court decided in the student’s favor, ruling that graduations are school functions and should not include prayers.
But that decision took a new twist in Jones v. Clear Creek Independent School District, also in 1992. The U.S. Court of Appeals, in a Texas case, attempting to distinguish between coercive and non-coercive graduation prayers, ruled that it is constitutional if students vote for prayer at their graduations.
In a move puzzling to school prayer opponent who saw no justification for such a distinction, the Supreme Court refused to hear an appeal of the case in 1993.
And the issue continues to make headlines.
On Nov. 18, in Harris v. Joint School District #241, a U.S. Court of Appeals, ruling on an Idaho case, appeared to use the 1992 Supreme Court ruling as a precedent, saying that students cannot select prayers for graduation.
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.
