Word: prays
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...overwhelming majority of prayer advocates, of course, would be horrified by such tactics. It is their freedom to pray, they insist, that has been taken away by a zealous cadre of secularists, and they are only trying to reclaim it, without coercing anyone. Polls have consistently shown heavy majorities in favor of school prayer; Gallup reported last September that 81% of respondents who had followed the issue supported an amendment that would permit "voluntary" prayer, vs. only 14% opposed. Says Dan Alexander, president of a Mobile, Ala., organization called Save Our Schools: "We've allowed a small, very vocal...
Harvard Constitutional Scholar Laurence Tribe, speaking for many opponents of the amendment, replies that "the premise that prayer is not allowed in schools...is a lie. Official, organized prayer is not allowed, true, but kids can pray if they want"-silently, individually, on the bus, in the lunchroom, during classes. North Carolina Democratic Congressman Charlie Rose wryly notes, "As long as there are math tests, children will pray in school...
...profound on being the father of a President. He was having a terrible time. So he switched the subject to Billy Graham, who had just played golf with the President-elect,down in Palm Beach and proclaimed to the press that "the Bible teaches that we 'are to pray for those in authority...
...irrelevant hand wringing about the "passive symbolism" of the Nativity display as opposed to the "active symbolism," say, of the cross. (The distinction is meaningless.) In the matter of school prayer, the court continues to hold its ground, but why? And why not have an amendment allowing everyone to pray to his or her God, or to none...
...Christian God, who seems to bear no resemblance to the God of his synagogue, and an atheist would have no place in the scheme whatever. Third, school prayer does not allow full freedom of choice because it deals with children, and in an educational situation; if a school says, "Pray (or do what you feel like)," a child assumes that prayer is a part of learning. Finally, school prayer violates a fundamental assumption of American life, one that has something to do with privacy, something with freedom of speech, and something less codified and explicit: that one ought...