Word: prayers
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...clergy ought to be the last group to argue about prayer. Instead, it is among the foremost. Last week religious leaders of many major denominations gathered before the Senate Judiciary Committee to testify loudly for and against President Reagan's proposed constitutional amendment legalizing prayer in the public schools...
...years, state and local lawmakers have tried to skirt U.S. Supreme Court decisions barring prayer in public schools. One of the most direct challenges to the court came last week in Alabama, where Governor Fob James Jr. signed a bill allowing teachers to lead "willing" students in prayer. The bill recommended a prayer written by the Governor's son, Fob James III, 25, a Mobile attorney, in a spirit of patriotic ecumenism. It reads: "We acknowledge you as the Creator and Supreme Judge of the world. May your justice, your truth and your peace abound this...
Opposition to the new law was sharp and quick. "Patently unconstitutional," declared Paul Hubbert, executive director of the Alabama Educational Association. Earl Potts of the Alabama Baptist Convention objected on different grounds. Said he: "We need prayer in the public schools, but I don't think the government should provide the prayer to be used. What legislators are not realizing is that the government could become more involved in prescribing what its citizens should be doing...
Alabama legislators voted overwhelmingly for the prayer bill. "It's an election year," observed Mary Weidner, executive director of the state American Civil Liberties Union. "They have a history of not wanting to grapple with the issues and turning to the federal courts to rescue them...
...establishment of an official prayer is only the latest step in Alabama's drive to bring religion back to the schools. A law passed in 1978 and broadened last year allows "silent meditation" or "voluntary prayer." Said Charlene Boyd, a Mobile elementary school teacher: "The children in my classroom were allowed, if they voluntarily chose to do so, to sing the following jingle: 'God is great, God is good,/ Let us thank him for our food./ Bow our heads, we are fed./ Give us, Lord, our daily bread.' " When Ishmael Jaffree, a Mobile attorney, discovered that...