Word: prayers
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Blessing the Prayer Book...
...Williams, officials held two prayer meetings and replaced half a day of classes with seminars on campus race relations. A reward of $1,000 was offered for information about the cross burners...
...consistency of the federal bench in prayer cases was demonstrated again last week when an appeals court rejected the arguments of a Guilderland, N.Y., group called Students for Voluntary Prayer. The high-schoolers had sought a classroom for informal prayer meetings before school, but had been turned down by officials. The refusal was justified, wrote Judge Irving Kaufman, in part because the students were free to say their prayers at other times and places...
Weary of fighting the courts on the prayer issue, some members of Congress have come up with a solution: bypass them. The Senate has passed a bill that would deprive the federal bench of the power to decide certain "voluntary" school-prayer cases, and backers hope that the rightward swing signaled by the Reagan victory will persuade the reluctant House to give the measure its blessing too. The latest Gallup poll indicates that 76% of Americans are willing to go even further and approve a constitutional amendment allowing school prayers...
...well cause a constitutional showdown. Congress has the right to limit the federal judiciary's jurisdiction, but some scholars believe that the legislators would be exceeding that power if they took away the authority to enforce something as sacred as the First Amendment. If the bill becomes law, prayer cases could still be tried in state courts, but that might produce a crazy quilt of constitutional interpretations...