School Prayer Should Be Phohibited

A pupil is unable to give or withhold their consent to participating in school prayer. This is because the school environment does not facilitate the free exercise of consent. It mandates attendance, it is delivered in an inherently instructional facility, and its subjects are immature, having underdeveloped faculties of resistance and consent, and being subject to the pressure of their peers. The Supreme Court in Santa Fe Independent School District v. Doe recognised that such social influence upon pupils, exerted by colleagues and staff, can render even attendance at voluntary extra-curricular events, such as a football game, a matter of compulsion. A pupil does not opt into the practice of prayer. The practice typically takes place in the context of an assembly at which attendance is compulsory. The consent of the pupil to the prayer is not sought but merely presumed.

The provision of school prayer fundamentally undermines the proper role of the parents or guardians of the child. The Court in Pierce v. Society of Sisters and Wisconsin v. Yoder recognised that the liberty of parents and guardians to direct the upbringing of children under their control extends to the religious faith that is imparted to the children. The proper purpose of schooling is not indoctrination. Should religion be considered a valuable part of a balanced curriculum, it ought to be taught in a broad and critical context in the classroom. A formal prayer instils obedience to a faith that the child might neither understand nor accept and to which the parent or guardian might properly object. The practice does not stimulate discussion or debate.

The prohibition of school prayer is wholly compatible with the free exercise of religion and the denial of its establishment. The dynamic tension between the free establishment and free exercise clauses of the First Amendment is neither novel nor insoluble. A formal school prayer cannot properly be considered as the free exercise of religion. The practice is directed by an ordinance of the local board of education. The staff of the school implement the ordinance. By participating in the prayer, the pupils simply obey it. The free exercise clause protects religious liberty and not religious compulsion. In the alternative, it might be assumed that banning school prayer impairs to some degree free exercise. Yet, this infringement is exceedingly minor given that the pupil is not precluded from engaging into private or group prayer of her own accord.

Any limitation of free exercise must be balanced against the significant hazards posed by deviation from the rigid separation of church and state. The Founding Fathers, the Framers of the Constitution and the Justices of the Supreme Court for over two hundred years have recognised that even seemingly the slightest integration of religion and government ‘tends to destroy government and degrade religion’: Engel v. Vitale. Justice Black expounded in this case the unfortunate historical fact that governmentally established religions and religious persecutions have tended ‘to go hand in hand’. To insist on the separation of church and state even in the school assembly is not to conjure a slippery slope and a pair of skis. It is to practise awareness of the tragic experience that founded the Republic and informed the Constitution.

Religious discrimination is completely unacceptable and should certainly not be condoned or even facilitated by a school. Yet, in order to be meaningful, a prayer must also be discriminatory between different religious beliefs. The imprecation of one deity (as opposed to another or several others), the choice of language and the supplication sought are distinctive to each faith. The incorporation of any or all such addresses into a single prayer at best confuses its meaning, and at worst renders it meaningless. Where the practical precatory choice is between discrimination and equivocation no school prayer should be permitted.

Neither democracy nor taxation is sufficient for the scientific management of a school. The majority of voters are unlikely to be expert in the constitutional issues of the separation of church and state, or free exercise and free establishment. The majority is also unlikely to select candidates for the board of education on account of their attitude towards school prayer and the candidates equally unlikely to seek such a mandate. Mere payment of taxes does not qualify or entitle a majority of residents to determine the circumstances of local education. Few would suggest that simple non-violation of tax laws also allowed taxpayers to choose, say, the amount of time devoted to the teaching of history, the opening hours of the school, or the appointment and dismissal of the members of staff. The facts that the local board of education is elected and that local property taxes fund schools are simply irrelevant to the specific discussion of school prayer.