Sharing Prayers in School?

One state law is struck down, others are still in doubt

After the morning Pledge of Allegiance, a third-grade teacher in Watertown, Mass., asks whether anyone wants to pray. "Not in school," responds one pupil. "I'd feel embarrassed to share a prayer, if I knew one," says another. But eventually eight-year-old Brendan volunteers. Then the teacher carefully asks whether anyone would like to be excused during the prayer, and the class responds with a chorus of "Naw." Finally, all alone, Brendan whispers a memorized prayer, beseeching the angels to watch over him while he sleeps.

The devotional exercise in Watertown took place under a Massachusetts law that went into effect in February, requiring teachers to invite students to say prayers if they wanted to. Last week the state's highest court declared the law unconstitutional. During its brief life, students seemed confused or embarrassed, and results were mixed. A Plymouth sixth-grader prayed for release of the hostages in Iran. A Scituate pupil prayed for a volleyball victory. A Jewish girl said she could not lead because "all our prayers are in Hebrew, and I don't know Hebrew." Most children chose the Lord's Prayer, an occasional Hail Mary, or did not pray at all. Few opted to leave the room.

The law was conceived by Paul Pierce, a Watertown Baptist minister. Says he: "My intent was to allow prayer in the public school, but not force it on anyone who does not want to pray." The law passed the Massachusetts legislature by a wide margin and had popular support. But many state religious leaders were against it. Some critics saw it as another example of parents foisting off on schools what they should be doing at home.

Eight pairs of parents filed the successful challenge against school prayer. The Supreme Judicial Court's swift ruling held that prayer, even voluntary, spontaneous and nondenominational, is "religious in character," hence forbidden. At week's end it was unclear whether prayer proponents would appeal.

The Massachusetts confrontation was part of a new wave of agitation over school prayer that has produced legislative debates, laws and counter-lawsuits, as well as bitter debate across America. The U.S. Catholic Conference has long favored a constitutional amendment to permit prayers. Now right-wing Protestant groups are pressing the cause, supported by many who see a religious and moral drift in the U.S. and seek ways to correct it.

Ten states now have laws either requiring or permitting a "moment of silence" for student meditation. Tennessee and Mississippi have laws requiring "voluntary" prayer, and Massachusetts-type legislation is pending in six states. After the Mississippi Civil Liberties Union decided to challenge its law, a group of parents and children in Rankin County requested an injunction against all prayers until the suit's resolution. Some local school board members promptly denounced them as "agents of Satan."

Prayer crusaders are also rallying behind a bill introduced in the U.S. Senate by North Carolina Republican Jesse Helms that would remove school prayer from court jurisdiction. The bill, passed by the House but mired in a Senate committee, has already stirred a dispute within Helms' own denomination, the Southern Baptist Convention. The denomination's president, Memphis Pastor Adrian Rogers, supports Helms. But the top Washington lobbyist for Baptist denominations, the Rev. James Wood, says the law would violate church-state separation, a venerable Baptist principle.

The First Amendment states that "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof." In still controversial rulings of 1962 and 1963, the U.S. Supreme Court used that clause to outlaw mandatory recitation of a bland, nonsectarian "Regents' prayer" in New York State and of the Lord's Prayer in Pennsylvania. But the Supreme Court has never addressed the issue of "voluntary" prayer. Thus chances are that the new laws will eventually require a new Supreme Court decision. Perhaps more important than the constitutional issue is a point made by James Nash, chief executive of the 17-denomination Massachusetts Council of Churches. His state's new law, says Nash, is an offense to true religious practice because it fosters "innocuous, diluted, demandless" prayers.

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