The Courage of Youth

I have been in the field of education for 30 years and must say I am confused about the role of religion in our education system.  If I were an alien from a distant universe I would wonder about the sanity of the American education system.  Here’s why.

In Rhode Island the Cranston School Committee voted 4-3 to fight the ACLU over a prayer banner hanging inside the school.  The prayer banner has been there for many years.  But because of one single complaint the banner is now in question.  More than 4000 of the local resident have signed a petition asking the district to keep the prayer banner.  The banner reads:

Our Heavenly Father,
Grant us each day the desire to do our best,
To grow mentally and morally as well as physically,
To be kind and helpful to our classmates and teachers,
To be honest with ourselves as well as with others,
Help us to be good sports and smile when we lose as well as when we win,
Teach us the value of true friendship,
Help us always to conduct ourselves so as to bring credit to Cranston High School West.
Amen

I realize this is a dangerous prayer and might change the lives of public school children to become responsible citizens. But that would not meet the agenda of those who wish to destroy the morals of our youth.  

  In Texas we have another problem with prayer.  It seems that one single complaint has stopped the school’s tradition of praying at graduation. A federal judge has ordered a Texas school district to prohibit public prayer at a high school graduation ceremony. Chief U.S. District Judge Fred Biery’s order against the Medina Valley Independent School District also forbids students from using specific religious words including “prayer” and “amen.” He also ordered the school district to remove the terms “invocation” and “benediction” from the graduation program. “These terms shall be replaced with ‘opening remarks’ and ‘closing remarks’,” the judge’s order stated. His ruling also prohibits anyone from saying, “in [a deity’s name] we pray.” 

Should a student violate the order, school district officials could find themselves in legal trouble. Judge Biery ordered that his ruling be “enforced by incarceration or other sanctions for contempt of Court if not obeyed by District official (sic) and their agents.”

The ruling was in response to a lawsuit filed by Christa and Danny Schultz. Their son is among those scheduled to participate in Saturday’s graduation ceremony. The judge declared that the Schultz family and their son would “suffer irreparable harm” if anyone prayed at the ceremony.

It would seem to me that anyone who would offer a prayer at graduation should be considered to be armed and dangerous.  After all prayer is the weapon against evil.  I think E.M. Bounds said it best "The more praying there is in the world the better the world will be, the mightier the forces against evil everywhere. Prayer, in one phase of its operation, is a disinfectant and a preventive. It purifies the air; it destroys the contagion of evil. Prayer is no fitful, short lived thing. It is no voice crying unheard and unheeded in the silence. It is a voice which goes into God's ear, and it lives as long as God's ear is open to holy pleas, as long as God's heart is alive to holy things. God shapes the world by prayer. Prayers are deathless. The lips that uttered them may be closed in death, the heart that felt them may have ceased to beat, but the prayers live before God, and God's heart is set on them and prayers outlive the lives of those who uttered them; outlive a generation, outlive an age, outlive a world."

So the Schultz family should be concerned about the “irreparable harm” that will come from a graduation prayer that could change the course of history—by stopping evil.   

Here we have two public school systems that are fighting for the right to allow a prayer banner to hang in their school and the valedictorian to give thanks to God for her personal success and then we have a school system that bans a Christian Club.

A federal lawsuit has been filed on behalf of a group of Christian high school students in New York who said their principal Brijinder Singh, banned them from starting a Christian club. The principal said, ‘I don’t want any of these Christian clubs at my school,’” She has repeatedly turned down similar student requests to start Christian clubs – telling one would-be group in 2008 that any religious club would have to be “multi-faith,” open to all religions, and allow non-believers to lead the organization. In other words, Christian clubs are welcome at her school as long as they’re not Christian.

It is apparent that she failed Government 101. Public schools cannot ban Christian student clubs simply because they are religious.  Students have a constitutionally protected right to express their beliefs.  This may not be the way religious freedom is exercised in her homeland but in America we still have religious freedom.  But if we continue to allow anti-Christians, atheist and agnostics to take way our freedom we will have changed the very make-up of our country.

To the poor extraterrestrial making a visit to our world they will find this all confusing.  There are those who are in public schools that wish to acknowledge that God had a role in their lives and thank him for helping them to become successful.  On the other hand there are those in public school who would deny individuals their right to freedom of speech and religion because they don’t like Christians.  In one area of our country it is acceptable to pray at graduation and in other areas the very mention of pray will get you arrested and put in jail.  

What I fail to understand is why this continues to be an issue when Federal Law allows prayer in school.

The following is taken from the Department of Education- 

http://www2.ed.gov/policy/gen/guid/religionandschools/prayer_guidance.html

Section 9524 of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act ("ESEA") of 1965, as amended by the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001, requires the Secretary to issue guidance on constitutionally protected prayer in public elementary and secondary schools. In addition, Section 9524 requires that, as a condition of receiving ESEA funds, a local educational agency ("LEA") must certify in writing to its State educational agency ("SEA") that it has no policy that prevents, or otherwise denies participation in, constitutionally protected prayer in public schools as set forth in this guidance.

The purpose of this guidance is to provide SEAs, LEAs, and the public with information on the current state of the law concerning constitutionally protected prayer in the public schools, and thus to clarify the extent to which prayer in public schools is legally protected. This guidance also sets forth the responsibilities of SEAs and LEAs with respect to Section 9524 of the ESEA. As required by the Act, this guidance has been jointly approved by the Office of the General Counsel in the Department of Education and the Office of Legal Counsel in the Department of Justice as reflecting the current state of the law.

The relationship between religion and government in the United States is governed by the First Amendment to the Constitution, which both prevents the government from establishing religion and protects privately initiated religious expression and activities from government interference and discrimination.  The First Amendment thus establishes certain limits on the conduct of public school officials as it relates to religious activity, including prayer.

The legal rules that govern the issue of constitutionally protected prayer in the public schools are similar to those that govern religious expression generally. Thus, in discussing the operation of Section 9524 of the ESEA, this guidance sometimes speaks in terms of "religious expression." There are a variety of issues relating to religion in the public schools, however, that this guidance is not intended to address.

The Supreme Court has repeatedly held that the First Amendment requires public school officials to be neutral in their treatment of religion, showing neither favoritism toward nor hostility against religious expression such as prayer.  Accordingly, the First Amendment forbids religious activity that is sponsored by the government but protects religious activity that is initiated by private individuals, and the line between government-sponsored and privately initiated religious expression is vital to a proper understanding of the First Amendment's scope. As the Court has explained in several cases, "there is a crucial difference between government speech endorsing religion, which the Establishment Clause forbids, and private speech endorsing religion, which the Free Speech and Free Exercise Clauses protect." 

The Supreme Court's decisions over the past forty years set forth principles that distinguish impermissible governmental religious speech from the constitutionally protected private religious speech of students. For example, teachers and other public school officials may not lead their classes in prayer, devotional readings from the Bible, or other religious activities.  Nor may school officials attempt to persuade or compel students to participate in prayer or other religious activities. Such conduct is "attributable to the State" and thus violates the Establishment Clause. 

Similarly, public school officials may not themselves decide that prayer should be included in school-sponsored events. In Lee v. Weisman, for example, the Supreme Court held that public school officials violated the Constitution in inviting a member of the clergy to deliver a prayer at a graduation ceremony. Nor may school officials grant religious speakers preferential access to public audiences, or otherwise select public speakers on a basis that favors religious speech. In Santa Fe Independent School District v. Doe, for example, the Court invalidated a school's football game speaker policy on the ground that it was designed by school officials to result in pregame prayer, thus favoring religious expression over secular expression.

Although the Constitution forbids public school officials from directing or favoring prayer, students do not "shed their constitutional rights to freedom of speech or expression at the schoolhouse gate," and the Supreme Court has made clear that "private religious speech, far from being a First Amendment orphan, is as fully protected under the Free Speech Clause as secular private expression." Moreover, not all religious speech that takes place in the public schools or at school-sponsored events is governmental speech. For example, "nothing in the Constitution ... prohibits any public school student from voluntarily praying at any time before, during, or after the school day, and students may pray with fellow students during the school day on the same terms and conditions that they may engage in other conversation or speech. Likewise, local school authorities possess substantial discretion to impose rules of order and pedagogical restrictions on student activities, but they may not structure or administer such rules to discriminate against student prayer or religious speech. For instance, where schools permit student expression on the basis of genuinely neutral criteria and students retain primary control over the content of their expression, the speech of students who choose to express themselves through religious means such as prayer is not attributable to the state and therefore may not be restricted because of its religious content.  Student remarks are not attributable to the state simply because they are delivered in a public setting or to a public audience. As the Supreme Court has explained: "The proposition that schools do not endorse everything they fail to censor is not complicated, and the Constitution mandates neutrality rather than hostility toward privately initiated religious expression. 

It looks to me that the judge and the principal are violating the Constitutional rights of the students who wish only to exercise their freedom of speech and religion.  But, I’m not a lawyer so what would I know about Constitutional rights? I do know how important it is for a community to support the students who have the courage to stand against the evil that is destroying our freedoms.  It is these students who will one day be the leaders of this country and God will honor them for their courage.