Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, June 21, 1995 TAG: 9506220015
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-8 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE:
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
That's right: She's Jewish, and lives in Roanoke. There are Jews in our midst, even here in Western Virginia.
Muslims, too. And Buddhists. People of all sorts of religious persuasions live around here. Even atheists.
We take note of this fact because some may be interested to know what prompted Ballin to write about her religious status. She tells us she was troubled by an experience at Patrick Henry High School's recent graduation ceremonies.
It seems the valedictorian ended his speech with a prayer - asking the audience to participate - in the name of Jesus Christ. Heads were bowed. Cheering followed.
But Ballin, and apparently some others, in that moment felt their minority status acutely. They felt apart from the celebration. They did not join in the cheering.
So what? Well, let's be clear about a few things.
First, the valedictorian's right to include a prayer in his speech should not be questioned. He earned the privilege of delivering his remarks by virtue of his scholarly achievement.
Second, there's no evidence he meant less than well. No one should condemn him for feeling passionately about his Christian beliefs, or for wanting to express them.
Third, the prayer wasn't illegal. Students feel obliged to attend graduations, whether they are mandated to or not, and they shouldn't be put in a position of participating in religious exercises that may be contrary to their personal beliefs. But this prayer was student-initiated. It wasn't in the official program. School officials didn't know the valedictorian was going to do it. Such circumstances hardly seem consistent with government establishment of religion.
Fourth, no statement, generally speaking, can be measured by its capacity to offend. A call for racial desegregation, in a 1950s valedictorian address, doubtless would have discomfited many listeners.
We're not saying, then, that the scholar should have been arrested on the spot by thought police.
Our point is simply that people - including some of those who cheered - should know that a call to pray in the name of Jesus Christ, at a public-school graduation ceremony in the Roanoke Valley, will affect different people in different ways.
Some will take such a call not as a gesture of humility and solidarity, but as a proud reassertion of majority religious sentiment. Some will take it as a subtle signal to conform and exclude.
Graduation is a time of celebration and hope for the future. It calls for some sort of blessing. Individuals, if they want, can pray on their own. Churches and synagogues can organize private baccalaureate services. Valedictorians can pray in their speeches if they like. It's a free country.
But Patrick Henry is not a Christian school. If the salutatorian this year, who happens to be Jewish, had chosen to pray to her God in her speech, that would have been her prerogative.
But when a student uses the machinery of a public-school ceremony to tell others how to pray and whom to pray to, when he asks the audience to participate in a sectarian devotional exercise, he should understand he is showing less than full regard for the personal consciences, individual family values and religious pluralism of his listeners and our diverse nation.
by CNB