THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, January 29, 1995 TAG: 9501290070
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY PHILIP WALZER AND ESTHER DISKIN, STAFF WRITERS
LENGTH: Long : 208 lines
Final exams. Athletic events. College admission. A relative's illness. Emotional release. The reasons teenagers pray reflect the shape of their lives.
But the shape of their prayers comes from the hidden world inside them, the sides of their personalities they rarely reveal. Prayer brings them comfort, they said, but all have different ways of finding it:
When Kelly Lancaster's mother was seriously ill, the 17-year-old prayed to the spirit of nature for her recovery, she said. ``If I look up at a tree or whatever, I say, `I believe in you, so please believe in my mom.' ''
David Weiden, 18, says he prays to let out emotions and find some hope. It happens suddenly, even when he's waiting at a stoplight, he said. ``There's no real definition of what prayer is. I feel that you do it for yourself.''
Prayer is constant dialogue, said 14-year-old Alicia Luma. ``Prayer is not `Help me pass this test' or `Help my friend feel better.' It's `Hey, God, what's going on?' It's just talking on a regular basis.''
Michael O'Konek, 16, doesn't pray. For years, he went to church with his parents, but the experience left him cold. ``The more I learned about the different religions, and the more I learned about philosophy, I said I don't need religion.''
The students' individualistic styles of worship frame their thinking on whether to allow organized spoken prayer in the classroom.
The issue, for many of them, is not a constitutional debate on the separation of church and state. They see it on a more personal level: How would I - or my friend - feel if prayer were reintroduced in school?
For many, the answer is that they would feel uncomfortable or excluded, even if students were the ones to pick the prayer and even if participation were voluntary.
Though students will be the ones affected by a change in law, they have felt left out of the debate by politicians and pollsters. To learn their opinions, The Virginian-Pilot and The Ledger-Star talked with 52 students picked at random at high schools throughout South Hampton Roads and held a two-hour roundtable discussion two weeks ago with 15 high school and middle school students.
A majority - including Baptists and Buddhists, Catholics and doubters - said that allowing organized prayer in schools would be a mistake.
``When you implement something like prayer in schools, you will ostracize a larger number of people than you accommodate,'' said Raegan Williams, a senior from Maury High in Norfolk, who has ties to no denomination. ``With our transient society . . . we've got everyone so diverse in our schools. You're not going to find a moderate center.''
Most of the teenagers interviewed said the best compromise, maybe the only one, is the ``moment of silence,'' which is permitted in Virginia public schools. Not all schools in Hampton Roads observe it.
The students appear to differ with adults, who - most surveys show - support organized prayer by a 2-to-1 margin. Yet a poll released last week indicates that the teens may not be out of sync with their elders after all.
Most pollsters have asked simply whether people support or oppose organized prayer in schools. Mason-Dixon Political Media Research, a polling company in Maryland, offered more choices to 819 Texans, 18 and older. It found that 58 percent were in favor of allowing a moment of silence, but only 24 percent supported a ``student- or teacher-led audible prayer.'' Fifteen percent didn't want either.
``When you get right down to it, nobody is against a moment of silence,'' Mason-Dixon vice president Del Ali said. ``When you start getting into student-led prayers, that's where the line is drawn.''
When Adam Rex wakes in the morning, he often prays in solitude. When he gets to Norfolk Christian High School, a schoolwide blessing starts the day and some teachers speak words of worship before beginning class.
Group prayer adds another dimension. ``Being around other believers who feel the same as you is encouraging to your spiritual life,'' said Rex, the student body president. ``The point of prayer in a group is to be in agreement on any particular subject.''
But Rex doesn't think group prayer belongs in a public school. The intense discomfort of some people would diminish the power, and the purpose, of a prayer gathering, the 17-year-old said. ``It would put them in a hostile environment. You have to respect where they are coming from. They have every right you have.''
Rex exemplifies the openness and tolerance shown by students at the roundtable forum. They expressed respect, sometimes curiosity, never hostility, toward beliefs vastly different from their own.
``Why is it that people must go to church on Sunday? Why can't you do it by yourself?'' Lancaster, who believes in nature's power to heal, asked some of the more traditional students at one point. Later, Lancaster was asked about her beliefs. Luma, a Baptist, wondered: ``When you're praying to a tree or the environment, do you feel like you're getting an answer?''
At school, students don't always offer respect to people who are different - those with different haircuts, different clothes, different faiths. With organized prayer, the teenagers said, members of non-mainstream religions would feel even more heat.
``As someone who's on the fringe, religiously speaking, I get a lot of flak and I think it would be a lot worse if there was sanctioned student prayer,'' said Kate Farley, a junior at Virginia Beach's Kellam High, who worships an ancient goddess, Wicca. ``I know it's very intimidating when everyone around you is saying one thing, and this is right and this is true, and you don't agree with them, but you're afraid to speak up because everyone's against you.''
Senior Lamont Mosley, a football player and wrestler at Tallwood High in Virginia Beach, says some teams recite the Lord's Prayer before events. He wonders whether some athletes are alienated by the tradition, but fear speaking out. ``It fits into my beliefs,'' said Mosley, a Baptist. ``In the back of my head, I think of other kids. What if they take part in this, but they don't believe in the ritual?''
Jennifer Glenn, a Baptist who is in eighth grade at Landstown Middle School in Virginia Beach, thinks students would feel the same pressure they now are under to say the Pledge of Allegiance: ``The teacher practically has to shoot them this evil look because they won't stand up and say (it). . . . And if they force you to get up there and say the prayer, that will be just as bad.''
As it is, students already feel that teachers challenge their religious beliefs, and they fear more intrusion if prayer comes. Lancaster wore her ``healing crystal'' to algebra class at Tallwood last year, and a substitute teacher began questioning her, saying, `` `Don't you know if you don't do this, this and this, you're going to hell?' And I said, `Wait a minute, you can't do that.' And I took his butt to the principal.''
Christians, even though they're in the majority, sometimes feel under attack. Christine de Triquet, a Catholic student in 10th grade at Chesapeake's Western Branch High, remembers a teacher telling her last year that ``my morals were too strong for me to ever be able to uphold them and lead a productive life.'' She said she didn't argue with the teacher.
Some supporters of school prayer say banning it hurts everyone.
``No one's being respected. If you allow it for any religion, then I don't see anything wrong with it,'' said John Close, a Baptist who is a senior at Oscar Smith High in Chesapeake.
Telisha Randall, a senior at Norfolk's Granby High who also is Baptist, thinks school prayer could help expand teens' understanding of religion: ``If they want to learn, why can't we teach them? . . .''
``In school, we talk about everything else in the free world. We talk about sex, we talk about music. Why not religion?''
Donna King, a Granby senior who describes herself as ``usually Baptist,'' added, ``If they heard about God, maybe they would stop having sex.''
But Glenn, the Landstown student, said prayer would bring no benefits: ``Just because you pray at school, that's not going to change life as we know it. We're not going to become one big Norman Rockwell painting because you have prayed.''
Melissa Smith, a Baptist who is a senior at Oscar Smith, fervently believed that prayer should be allowed. But after listening to 11 of her classmates, she decided a moment of silence would be sufficient. ``It would be good for everybody,'' Smith said.
Most students in the roundtable also gravitated to that opinion. Lancaster, who prays to the environment, calls the moment of silence ``the true and ultimate compromise. . . . Either you can pray, pick your nose, you can sit there and write - you can do whatever you want.''
Nineteen states, including Virginia, allow schools to provide a moment of silence, according to the American Center for Law and Justice, a Virginia Beach-based nonprofit foundation started by Pat Robertson. Students say some schools, like Granby, observe it, but others, such as Oscar Smith, do not.
De Triquet, the Catholic student from Western Branch, said her treatment at school helped her realize the value of the moment-of-silence compromise: ``No one should bother me about what I believe and give me a bad time about it. But yet I should be able to express myself if I want to. I guess the moment of silence is the best way to do it because everyone can do what they want.''
The trouble, teenagers say, is that the moment of silence is not taken seriously at some schools.
Weiden, a Jewish senior at Kempsville High in Virginia Beach, said ``The entire moment of silence consists of the teacher going, `Guys, this is the moment of silence - be quiet.' Or, `Guys, I want to go back to what I was saying before.' Or, `This is your homework.' Whether it be the students disobeying it or the teachers disobeying it, in the three years I've been in that school, I've never heard it completely silent except for once, and that was in memory of one of the students that passed away.''
Not all students think it's the perfect compromise. Will Jenkins, a junior at Norfolk Christian High, thinks group prayer should be allowed. ``If students feel like they need to pray for something, they should be allowed to. I don't think we can control that to say that they will not have any needs in a six-hour day at school.''
Michelle Odanga, an atheist who is a junior at Booker T. Washington High in Norfolk, thinks even a moment of silence crosses the line. ``By the time I get to school, I've already collected my thoughts,'' she said. ``. . . During that eight hours in school, I want to learn, to work, to get my thoughts all together. In the next 16 hours, they can use that time to pray as much as they want.''
Williams, the Maury senior, felt the same way, but by the end of the roundtable talk, she agreed that ``the moment of silence is the best compromise you're going to get.''
Luma, a home-schooled student from Norfolk, said that if students put aside their differences and push for the moment of silence, they might finally gain some say in the debate.
``We should try it, man,'' Luma said. ``We should try getting along and getting them to notice us. We can get to a compromise and make them listen to us. Because these are our schools, our future, and it should be our decision.'' MEMO: [For related stories, see pages A6 and A7 for this date.]
ILLUSTRATION: TAMARA VONINSKI/Staff
Kelly Lancaster, a student at Tallwood High, believes in nature's
power to heal. She calls the moment of silence a ``true and ultimate
compromise. . . . Either you can pray, pick your nose, you can sit
there and write - you can do whatever you want.''
Prayer In Schools
STAFF Graphic
Poll
SOURCE: CBS News/The New York Times;
Mason/Dixon Political Media Research
[For a copy of the graphic, see microfilm for this date.]
KEYWORDS: EDUCATION PRAYER PUBLIC SCHOOLS by CNB