And there's a very good reason for that. It's called the First Amendment guarantee of religious freedom. This guarantee means that my children or grandchildren cannot be forced to participate in your religious rituals, and further guarantees that the government will not favor any religion above all others -- which a teacher or school official (i.e., government employee) leading the school, or a class, in a christian prayer would entail.
Any child that wants to pray at school may still do so under current law, and many still do (both individually and at gatherings like "Prayer at the Flagpole"). And I (as an atheist) have no problem with that at all. After all, the Constitution gives them that right. But that is not good enough for many christian fundamentalists. They seem to think that their religious rights have been violated because they can no longer force others to participate in a christian ritual like prayer (which is really an anti-constitutional view).
Not being able to force others to participate in your religious rituals is not a violation of your religious freedom. It simply gives everyone the same right -- the right to make their own decision on what religious rituals they will or will not participate. And shouldn't that be what we all want in a free country?
I was a religious child in the early 60's, raised Catholic but attending a public school. Every day our teacher led us in the Protestant version of the "Lord's Prayer" which is slightly different from the Catholic version. I went to her and asked if we could say the Catholic version. She said no. I also wanted to say the "Hail Mary" (a Catholic prayer) and she said definitely no.
ReplyDeleteSo when the Supreme Court said no teacher-led prayer, I was both horrified (I'd only just given up belief in the Easter bunny) but also HAPPY. The older I got the happier I was. It was like they had done it for me. And, in a sense, they had.
I experienced a similar scenario as a Catholic child in public school but I was too afraid of being ostracized by my classmates to think of objecting or requesting that my version of the "Lord's Prayer" be said. Then when I was in high school, I began thinking of all the Hindus, Buddhists, Sikhs, Taoists, Jews, Jains, Shintos, etc. who had to put up with Christian prayer in our institutions, and remain totally silent about it. I grew up in many places and around many different faiths because my father was in the Air Force. There were myriad faiths represented in the Armed Forces but all the churches on base were Christian and mostly Protestant, with few or no Catholic services on Sunday at some smaller bases. There were no other religions represented on base then. We may be a mostly Christian Nation but there are many different varieties of Christianity and so many other religions represented. Yet it is assumed that one religious size fits all. I appreciate the ruling of the Supreme Court about teacher led prayer but I think we should treat the First Amendment as a warning about imposing de facto state sanctioned religion on our citizens. Public schools were built for learning. Churches were built for praying.
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