Alabama schools could lose funding if they don't mandate daily Christian prayers

A proposed law would allow officials to withhold 25% of state funding from school districts if they don't enforce daily "Judeo-Christian" prayers

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In perhaps the most drastic instance of Christian Nationalist legislation so far—topping even the resolution in North Dakota to honor the “Kingship of Jesus Christ”—Alabama Republicans have introduced a bill that would not only force public schoolchildren to recite a Christian prayer every day, it would withhold state funding from any school districts that don’t enforce that rule.

House Bill 231, if passed, would alter the State Constitution to do the following:

1. Force every public school board to adopt a policy requiring K-12 schools to say the Pledge of Allegiance as well as a “prayer representative of the Judeo-Christian values upon which the United States was founded” every morning. (Students would not be forced to participate.)

2. Allow the State Superintendent of Education to investigate supposed violations of this law.

3. Give that official the power to withhold 25% of the district’s funding the following year if there’s a “continued pattern of intentional refusal to comply.”

4. Permit that same official to withhold even more funding if the violations continue.

The idea that the government would pressure kids to say two separate Christian prayers each day—because the Pledge is just a Christian prayer by a different name—is bad enough. To essentially tell school districts the state will deprive them of necessary resources if they don’t play along with the religious charade is nothing more than educational blackmail.

Al.com notes that the Birmingham City Schools could lose up to $40 million a year if they’re found to violate this law.

While Republicans were quick to say during a committee hearing that both the Pledge and prayer were voluntary, they failed to mention how students would be coerced into participating. After all, what are they supposed to do if they don’t want to play along? Stand outside the classroom? Draw more negative attention to themselves? Get ostracized by their classmates?

And what “Judeo-Christian” prayers would qualify? Who’s writing them? Who’s delivering them? Who gets to decide what “values” are represented here, considering the “Judeo-Christian values” that existed at the country’s founding presumably endorsed slavery and denied women equal participation in the government?

State Rep. Reed Ingram, the Republican who sponsored this bill, attempted to justify it during a State Government Committee hearing on Wednesday. He didn’t try very hard, though. Hell, just look at how long he took introducing the bill:

That’s all of 11 seconds right there. Ingram clearly didn’t want to spend time talking about it because he knew more exposure would be bad news. When he was eventually asked some follow-up questions, like why the hell this bill was needed, his responses were predictably pathetic:

“Our recruiting is down for the National Guard,” Ingram said. “It’s down in every branch of the military. A lot of these kids don’t understand what the flag is.”

It never occurs to these morons that more people might want to go into the military if they felt our country was worth defending. Instead, Republicans go out of their way to make everyone’s lives more miserable and then wonder why patriotism isn’t as high as they want it to be. Their proposed solutions always involve coercing children into saying how much they love the country because they refuse to give them reasons to do that on their own.

Ingram later added: “I think it would help on crime.” (No citation provided.)

Bill sponsor State Rep. Reed Ingram (screenshot via YouTube)

Needless to say, there’s nothing ethical or legal about any of this. It’s a constitutional crisis waiting to happen and it’s a problem that Republicans want to create because the alternative would be doing something to actually improve public education.

As the Freedom From Religion Foundation points out, school districts may soon be placed in a position where they have to choose between respecting their students’ freedom of religion or losing vital funding.

“This bill is an outrageous attempt to impose religion on captive public school students even as young as 5,” says FFRF Co-President Annie Laurie Gaylor. “Public schools exist to educate, not to evangelize. Religious instruction should be left to the home, where it belongs.”

While the Supreme Court has taken a wrecking ball to the wall of separation between church and state, government-mandated prayer in schools was struck down in 1962, in Engel v. Vitale, and that has yet to be overturned. So despite what Ingram claims, this is not legal. Allowing voters to have the final say on it—something he’s pushed because it removes him from taking responsibility for this horrible idea—wouldn’t negate that.

There are many, many steps before this bill becomes a part of the State Constitution, and most of them require Republicans ignoring the whole idea of religious freedom… which is to say there are very few obstacles in the way. But schools are not clamoring for this, and it would only create new problems, not fix existing ones.

I know no one expects anything useful from Alabama’s legislature, but this would be a new low even for them. It’s a desperate attempt to shove Christianity into classrooms by wasting time, alienating a large population of students, and punishing school districts that dare to stand up for the kids they represent.

Alabama is currently ranked 45th in the nation in education. Reed Ingram and his fellow Republicans are determined to make the state even worse.

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