THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, July 2, 1994 TAG: 9406300024
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A12 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Letter
LENGTH: Short : 47 lines
Throughout the country children prayed in the public schools. The teachers were told by government leaders that in order to return to traditional family and national values, prayer would be the order of the day. Those students who refused to pray were to be excused, but their names were to be noted by the teachers and their classmates. The time and place? Nazi Germany in the 1930s. These devotional exercises had no humanizing restraint on the alumni of those schools. Many became some of the most savage Nazi barbarians.
The phrase ``voluntary prayer'' sounds favorable and innocent, even helpful. Yet it is filled with danger. I am a great advocate of prayer and worship. However, I am opposed to any official prayer in public schools, voluntary or otherwise.
Christian, Jewish and Moslem leaders have noted that in order for prayer to be authentic, it needs to be said with deep feelings of need and love. That need and love cannot be required. To embarrass a Jewish child by requiring a prayer ``in Jesus' name'' is shattering. To ask a Christian student to pray without the name of Jesus would, in fundamentalist Christian theology, be ineffective.
In essence, school prayer is already voluntary. A student can pray at any time. He can pray before class asking God for guidance (he also should have studied for the class). A student can pray before lunch, during a ride to school, before an athletic game - at any time.
For example: The courts have ruled that a Jewish student is allowed to offer minhah (afternoon) prayers if he so desires.
If you want an America who prays, you may have one; by praying by yourself, with others in their homes, and in your house of worship. You can teach your children the value of prayer.
The pressure for public prayer is not based on a slide in morality; it is not based on an increase in abortion, pornography, violence or any other social pathology. It is a screen. It is a screen for ``officials'' to say that religion is to be preferred over non-religion. And if religion is to be preferred, someone has to decide which religion that will be.
THOMAS D. ROPER
Virginia Beach, June 22, 1994 by CNB