Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, March 26, 1995 TAG: 9503250008
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: G-3 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: MILTON E. NOBLE
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
To date, the only nonpolitical item targeted for consideration by the new majority in Congress, after the Contract with America items, is a constitutional amendment restoring prayer to public schools. Our religious communities, without a real consensus, were seemingly caught by surprise, probably because other social and moral issues have drawn more attention in recent years. Yet a recent poll indicates that 74 percent of Americans favor such an amendment.
School-led prayer was eliminated by a 1962 Supreme Court ruling that it violated the First Amendment. That amendment, the only specific reference to religion in our Constitution, reads: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof ...."
Obviously, the court was convinced that the common practice of opening the school day with an audible prayer by a school official infringed on the First Amendment rights of students. Prayer ceased, but debate about the scope and interpretation of the decision has continued unabated.
It will take a Solomon-like effort to word, without trivializing prayer, a proposed amendment that will meet the objections and foster the degree of unity required for passage. The GOP has floated one draft which seeks to do this: ``Nothing in this Constitution shall be construed to prohibit individual or group prayer in public schools or other public institutions. No person shall be required by the United States or by any state to participate in prayer. Neither the United States nor any state shall compose the words of any prayer to be said in public schools.''
But, even if the above version, or something like it, passes, there will still remain a question as to whether or not a greater problem, of which prayer in schools is just a part, has been addressed. Since the 1962 prayer decision, a whole series of rulings, at all levels of authority, have riddled the constitutional provisions banning congressional establishment of religion or free exercise thereof.
Instead, it appears in the administration of these provisions, the Constitution has been rewritten with terms such as ``separation of church and state'' and ``entanglement between church and state'' - to such an extent that there is now a commonly perceived anti-religion bias throughout our nation. Just last term, Justice Sandra Day O'Connor suggested that the court should re-examine discrimination decisions against religion, religious ideas, religious people or religious schools, and return to jurisprudence that shows ``government impartiality, not animosity, toward religion.''
After 30 years of misinterpretation, creative reasoning and just ignoring, a constitutional amendment appears necessary to clarify that all religious expression, including prayer, is protected under the establishment and free-exercise clauses and may not be prohibited.
Change will not come easily, but at least two of the largest religious communities in the country, the National Association of Evangelicals and the Southern Baptist Convention, are already on record as favoring a broader amendment addressing all religious expression. These two groups consist largely of conservative Christians, a segment of society that supplied 30 percent of the vote last November. Also, last year Congress passed the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, a significant change from the court's understanding of the appropriate constitutional relationship between church and state.
A friendlier attitude toward religion may indeed be on the way.
Milton E. Noble is Director of Community Relations of the Rhode Island Association of Evangelical Churches.
- Knight-Ridder/Tribune
by CNB