How to Return Prayer to America's Schools

The public’s wishes are ignored

The decision remains highly unpopular with the American public. Polls over the last 50 years continue to show a majority hoping the rulings could be overturned by Congress or a constitutional amendment. Critics of the decisions say that the Supreme Court chose to ignore the intent of the writers of the U.S. Constitution – and the rich Christian history of the nation. But the Supreme Court had established an official hostility to Christianity that would transform everything. “Engel is seen by some as the first salvo in this long-running battle between religious conservatives and people on the left” who were hostile toward religion, says David Masci, a senior researcher at the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life.

Bible reading banned, Lord’s Prayer forbidden

In 1963, in Abington School District v. Schempp, the Supreme Court makes mandatory reading of the Bible or recitation of the Lord`s Prayer illegal in state-run schools. These two decisions are also unpopular and widely denounced. A 1991 opinion poll found that: "In a country where 95 per cent of the population believe in God and some 60 per cent belong to a religious organization, it comes as no surprise to learn that 78 per cent of Americans support the reintroduction of school prayer." The Oxford Companion to the Supreme Court of the United States reported that the public's support for school prayer was translated by various state legislatures into statutes aiding religious schools and practices – as the states attempted to undo the damage.

It’s up to America’s Christian kids to be bold

“It is well settled that religious speech is protected by the First Amendment of the Constitution, even when that speech is taking place on the public school campus,” notes Sekulow, quoting the 1981 decision Widmar v. Vincent. “Supreme Court ‘precedent establishes that private religious speech, far from being a First Amendment orphan, is as fully protected under the Free Speech Clause as secular private expression,’” he notes, quoting the 1995 Capitol Square & Advisory Bd. v. Pinette case. “In fact, the right to persuade, advocate or evangelize a religious viewpoint, implicates the very reason the First Amendment was adopted. Accordingly, the Constitution forbids school officials from censoring student speech because of the religious content of that speech.”