On Prayer in Public Schools
By Ralph Lynn
[Dr. Ralph Lynn is a retired professor of history at Baylor University.]
Many politicians, preachers, and other publicists are using their mastery of the media to support the "restoration of prayer" to the public schools. It is time for all of us to ask some questions such as the following. What is prayer? What do supporters of prayer in the public schools have in mind? Is this exercise in public schools constitutional? Prayer has to be an intellectual exercise in which one human being tries to establish contact with God.
It has to be intellectual since this exercise calls for a degree of concentration of the mind which may be beyond most people save in some nearly unique circumstance. Even people who have unusual mental endowments and whose minds are attuned to this sort of exercise probably feel that they have touched the hem of the garment of God only rarely and then only for fleeting moments. So hard is it for the finite to establish contact with the Infinite.
Moreover, prayer has to be an attitude of the mind and not an outpouring of words. It is an attitude in which the individual bares his life, his mind, his soul, his all to God and offers to adapt himself, at whatever cost to his own selfish wishes, to God`s program. Obviously, one cannot use God as a tool nor can one wheedle God into participating in any program outside his grand design. Prayer is thus exclusively a private, individual, totally voluntary, and often a silent and wordless reverie. It has little relation to a ritual in which somebody "leads" and others listen or follow. The requisite concentration and individuality are almost certainly lost in this contrived situation. In churches, such rituals often degenerate into sermonizing and exhortations to the audience to support the church programs-with the times and places duly announced, presumably for God`s benefit.
Obviously, the supporters of prayer in the schools have in mind an institutionalized ritual in which they hope the students will voluntarily participate. Equally obviously, such rituals have little to do with either free choice or prayer. The supporters of these rituals clearly hope to use the rituals as tools to keep the kids away from liquor, drugs, sex, and cigarettes. But no power on earth can prevent real prayer anywhere or any time. It is a thought process. It can only be individual and voluntary. Fortunately for the mass of inarticulate people, God does not need to hear words. These public school rituals would have to be conducted over the public address system piped to each and every area of the building or the announcements about them would have to be made over the public address system. Even the setting aside of a quiet time for individual, silent prayer would have to be institutionalized and announced. No student could escape the propaganda.
The only kind of prayer possible in the public schools-aside from what I have defined as real prayer which probably goes on all the time-would have to be institutionalized and announced and would therefore be unconstitutional. It would still he an unconstitutional imposition even if some of the students take the initiative without suggestion or encouragement from teachers and administrators. It would be imposed unless every single student voluntarily voted approval. But even in this case, it would have to be institutionalized and announced-and unconstitutional.
It is too often forgotten, even by lawyers, that the United States is not legally a Christian or any other kind of religious nation. We should see the pleas for prayer in the public schools as the demagogic appeals they are. They are appeals of ignorance to ignorance, of passion to passion. They are attempts by frightened adults who have neglected home and church responsibilities to foist upon the public schools still another burden.
