
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: MONDAY, September 13, 1993                   TAG: 9310280325
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A6   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: ROBERT S. JOHNSON
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

SCHOOL-PRAYER HYPOTHESIS IS WEAK

I'M SURPRISED that a mathematician would rest his case against public-school prayer on (1) a model constructed with utter disregard for its pertinence and (2) a conclusion drawn from his premise that is only one of two that are equally valid. (The one suppressed, of course, inconveniently contradicts his position.)

Professor Thomas McMillan (Aug. 19 letter to the editor, "The case for freedom from religion," hypothesizes, "for the sake of discussion," a scenario in which he asks us to imagine that there are but two sects of Christianity, one holding public prayer as a fundamental requirement of its faith and the other holding, equally fundamentally, the opposing view.

Needless to say, that has never been the case and almost certainly never will be. One cannot logically characterize as "true" or "false" any conclusion drawn from an hypothesis contrary to fact. Moreover, in this irrelevant model, McMillan states the conclusion: "Any governmentally sanctioned prayer promotes one of these religions and officially degrades the other." Can't one just as well argue from his hypothesis that any governmentally banned prayer promotes one of these religions and officially degrades the other?

Let's return to the real world. Although we cannot know with certainty, there seems little doubt that Thomas Jefferson and others among the founding fathers were not orthodox Christians as we might today use that term. However, there appears to be little doubt that they were perfectly comfortable with prayers and other displays of religion in connection with activities of government. Vestiges remain today, of course: prayers in sessions of Congress and the Supreme Court, and, at presidential inaugurations, oaths sworn on the Bible, and so forth. (Oddly, these remnants are most visible at the national and not the local level.)

Furthermore, while Anglicanism became disestablished in Virginia before the birth of the Republic, the First Amendment had no effect on established churches in other states of the union. For example, Congregationalism remained the established religion of Connecticut well into the 19th century.

How could that have been? It's simple. The First Amendment states merely that "Congress shall ... make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof." Whether any given state opted for an official religion, or whether other public manifestations of religion occurred, these were in no way consequences of congressional action and hence not addressed by the Establishment Clause. Likewise, no reading of those plain words supports Professor McMillan's contention that prayer in public schools "violates the First Amendment and should therefore be banned."

One hundred and fifty years elapsed before the Supreme Court dramatically altered the intent of the First Amendment by applying it against the states and not just Congress. Thus, in a sense, the court did what Congress was forbidden to do and thereby set the stage for today's increasing hostility toward religion.

Robert S. Johnson of Lexington teaches mathematics at Washington & Lee University.

by CNB