Political Student

Written by Dave Chase | Posted on May 07

In honor of National Day of Prayer, I thought I would give the top 5 reasons why school prayer simply should not be allowed. This post was inspired by some Tweets I have been reading demanding prayer in schools. By the way, a few of these also work for why we shouldn’t have anything even close to a National Day of Prayer but that is for another post another year.

Let’s first describe what we are talking about and what we are not talking about. We are talking about organized and school sponsored prayer. No one is saying if a student wants to say a Hail Mary before a test that he or she should not be allowed to. However, we are talking about organized school prayer even if it is voluntary.

In reverse order:

#5: School prayer does not help schools accomplish their mission. The mission of any public school is to first and foremost educate its students. There is no doubt that education about religion can be valuable to this goal but simply reciting a prayer tells students nothing about that religion or it’s history. Another goal of schools is without question to instill a set of moral values within it’s students but yet again reciting a prayer does not accomplish this goal without further discussion of it’s religious context. If you want to have that discussion, which religion do you choose?

#4: It’s unconstitutional. Since the Government can make no law respecting an establishment of religion under the first amendment to the constitution for a State sponsored school to promote any religion let alone to promote one religion over the other is unconstitutional. And the Supreme court agreed some 50 years ago in the case Engel v. Vitale.

#3: In practice, it favors Christians. Although one could argue that voluntary school prayer could be organized for any religion, in reality it favors Christians. That leaves out a large number of people including (just to name a few) Muslims, Jews, Buddhists and, the group that is most often left out in these discussions, atheists. Even Catholics can be left out of the lurch since they say certain prayers differently then other Christian denominations.

#2: Promotes the concept that the founders intended us to be a Christian nation. By sanctioning prayer in our public institutions we are, however subtly, suggesting that our government is tied to a particularly religion. Regardless of how you feel, it is very clear not only from the first amendment but from the federalist papers that the founders intended a very clear separation of church and state. Beyond the historical argument, there is the moral argument that our government should not be promoting any religion in a country as religiously diverse as ours… 25% of the country is non-Christan and another 25% is Catholic. That’s half the country who wouldn’t say Our Father (or at least not the same way as Protestants would).

#1: It is just another way to make kids different from one another. Allowing voluntary prayer automatically singles out whoever in the class is different. Don’t kids have enough ways to be singled out for not being able to read yet or wearing used clothes because they cannot afford new ones? Do we really need to add relgion to it?