A new Pew Research Center survey finds 61% of Americans are okay with teachers leading prayers in class—a troubling sign for church-state separation advocates
No one ever said kids couldn't pray in public schools, they just can't force it on others. I don’t care how many people support organized prayer in the public schools, it’s still unconstitutional. I think people may agree with the idea in the abstract, but when their child is being coerced into observing a different faith their attitudes will change in a hurry. In any event, children aren’t going to be as willing to accept it as they seem to think they will.
I say let any teacher who wants to push their kids into Christian prayer take them on a field trip to a children's cancer ward (or a ward with children that have lost their sight or their limbs) and lead them in prayer for those children's full recovery. See what the results would be.
Or perhaps they can organize a new series of Children's Crusades. (To Russia, I'd guess that's where Trump would tell them to go, so they can work building towns, factories and slave camps in Siberia for Putin's benefit.)
IF they choose to participate, of course. (Or, of course, the same parents actively working to prevent their children from being protected from a horrible death by easily preventable childhood diseases can sign up for them to become "slaves for Trump, Putin and GAWD"!!)
Do the 87% of white evangelical protestants still agree with teacher-led prayers if the remaining part of the question is included: "five times a day with your face in the direction of mecca"?
How many of them thought about the protections the students are going to need? Not just from other students who decide their "religious freedom" means they have the right to harass the students who don't pray "correctly", but the teachers as well. I have no doubt teachers will punish students who don't partisipate.
My online search found only this from a little while ago:
"A Queens high school teacher who was suspended last year for refusing to lead his home-room class in the Pledge of Allegiance to the flag won an important victory yesterday in his fight for reinstatement. The trial examiner appointed by the Board of Education in the case recommended to the board that the teacher, Seymour Jacobs, who had shunned the pledge "for reasons of conscience," be returned to his teaching duties with all charges dismissed... The teacher indicated that his distaste for the war in Vietnam had played a role in his decision to refuse to participate in the pledge and he blamed pro-war sentiment for his suspension.
Asked if he regarded patriotism as a form of hypocrisy, he replied: "No, I do not think that. I mean, by that, I do not think that patriotism in itself is a valuable contribution to life. Now, I think a sense of the world, the sense of the earth and a love for it and its people and animals and conception and so on are more worthy of thought and attention than patriotism as such."
The examiner, Bethuel M. Webster, stressed that neither state law nor school regulations required Mr. Jacobs, as the board contended, “to rise to his feet, lead the children in the Pledge of Allegiance and to recite the terms thereof." Mr. Webster, an adviser to Mayor Lindsay and a former president of the Association of the Bar of the City of New York, found that, on the contrary, United States Supreme Court precedents demanded that the Board of Education, under the First Amendment's broad protection of freedom of speech, "adopt means for promoting student patriotism that do not impair the personal liberties of teachers.""
('Teacher Who Refused to Lead Flag Pledge Backed by Arbiter', NYT 7th Sept 1968)
There's also the matter of the Jewish and Muslim students that might be present. Indeed, there is disagreement among wording in Christian prayers, which is why the whole business of authority led prayers in schools shouldn't be allowed in the first place.
This kind of prayer in public schools is a disaster waiting to happen, never mind spawning more lawsuits than anyone would care to count. I have little doubt but that there are evangelicals and Christian nationalists out there who would love to take this survey and run with it.
That's why this survey needs massive blowback and the sooner the better.
Children attend public schools to learn facts as to how the world truly works. It is NOT the teacher's job to act as a substitute pastor filling their heads with nonsense.
Every time someone says the Constitution was "Divinely Inspired" it makes my skin crawl. The two parts of the original I think were particularly inspired (small 'i') are 1) the ability to amend it, recognizing their own fallibility and the fact that societies change and evolve; and 2) separation of Church and State.
If the Constitution were divinely inspired, I would imagine that the preamble would open with the words: "In The Name of Jesus Christ..." It doesn't. It opens with:
𝗪𝗘 𝗧𝗛𝗘 𝗣𝗘𝗢𝗣𝗟𝗘 𝗢𝗙 𝗧𝗛𝗘 𝗨𝗡𝗜𝗧𝗘𝗗 𝗦𝗧𝗔𝗧𝗘𝗦...
"We the people" are the foundation for this government, not some no-account deity. A fact most evangelicals and Christian Nationalists would prefer to ignore or forget.
I wouldn't read too much into that. The men writing the Constitution were not faced with any other religions, just different denominations. But they had just come through centuries of religious wars in Europe - 30 Years War, the English Civil War - it's only in the last 30 years or so that Catholics and Protestants have stopped blowing each other up.
Approximately 10% of African enslaved persons were Muslims and were in this country since the 1500's. There were also Jewish communities in the colonies since the mid-1600's. The Founders may have ignored them, but there were other religions present in this country.
Fair point for sure, in terms of population / religions. And I think you're right, the founders generally ignored them. Not as a rule, but for the most part. Consider that the "inspired Constitution" specified that you had to be a white, land-owning male to vote.
I guess then there was no reason to write the treaty of Tripoli then, if there weren’t other religions or that they ignored the others. And the Crusades were a thing before then as well. The Christian sects infighting might be their clear and present, but the rest of it was also front of mind as well. None of it was too far in space and time to affect them.
That is what I was leaning toward when I mentioned 30 Years War and English Civil - the Crusades were relatively long before that. I think it's fascinating that the men who started the Anglican Church were burned at the stake. My personal opinion is that the Founders were probably not foreseeing a nation with immigrants of every religion. jmax mentioned the enslaved Muslims above - the first known mosque was built in the US in 1915.
I believe they were worried most about the wars they and their direct ancestors had lived through between various Christians.
None of that was what I was saying - I think the best part of the Constitution is Separation of Church and State. I am somewhat unconcerned as to whether the Founders understood we might one day be home to people from every nation and religion. In a way, that proves my point that the Founders were not "Divinely Inspired".
Sure they thought it was default ... which is why they put in that little bit in Article VI, paragraph 3: "... no religious test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States."
Something else the religious hotshots would wish away, if they could.
It is natural that any people of differing backgrounds, whether race, creed, nationality or sexuality, have at least a little trepidation about each other. In my experience, the more exposure one has to "others", the more we realize we generally all want the same things. Justice. Peace. Freedom.
The problem comes when people grow up in communities where there is NO diversity, where virtually everyone is a Christian of one stripe or another, where there may be differences of beliefs, but nothing excessive or serious, and where minorities are minimal, relegated to "the other side of town," or simply nonexistent. My daughter ran onto this when she went to college in North Carolina, where she met people who had never met a Jew or a Muslim. Pretty obviously, she had met and gotten to know BOTH, and others as well, and she very likely benefited from that experience.
There is a LOT of America that HASN'T grown up with that experience or ever had it in any substantial form. Add to that passed down bigoted attitudes that can frequently accompany such environments, and you have the current problem we face.
How we cure that, I don't know, particularly because you cannot FORCE diversity. Maybe we can create opportunities for diversity, though with the current regime, that is a tough ask.
The last school I taught in was in rural southwest Virginia. I can bet those parents would have stroked out if I led the class in a Hail Mary.
And the school I taught at before that (in Houston) had Buddhist, Muslim, and Hindu teachers, and even a Wiccan teacher. I can only imagine what would have happenned if any of those teachers had offered a prayer in a room with even a single pentecostal kid present.
They need to ask each of these anti American assholes which religious sect they hate most and then tell them that group would be controlling the prayers in question.
We're going to have to go through a few centuries of bloody, sectarian strife like Europe to learn the lesson, aren't we?
We don't have a few centuries left.
I'll be long dead, so.......🤔
No one ever said kids couldn't pray in public schools, they just can't force it on others. I don’t care how many people support organized prayer in the public schools, it’s still unconstitutional. I think people may agree with the idea in the abstract, but when their child is being coerced into observing a different faith their attitudes will change in a hurry. In any event, children aren’t going to be as willing to accept it as they seem to think they will.
I say let any teacher who wants to push their kids into Christian prayer take them on a field trip to a children's cancer ward (or a ward with children that have lost their sight or their limbs) and lead them in prayer for those children's full recovery. See what the results would be.
NOGODZ20,
That's truly a brilliant suggestion!
Or perhaps they can organize a new series of Children's Crusades. (To Russia, I'd guess that's where Trump would tell them to go, so they can work building towns, factories and slave camps in Siberia for Putin's benefit.)
IF they choose to participate, of course. (Or, of course, the same parents actively working to prevent their children from being protected from a horrible death by easily preventable childhood diseases can sign up for them to become "slaves for Trump, Putin and GAWD"!!)
Do the 87% of white evangelical protestants still agree with teacher-led prayers if the remaining part of the question is included: "five times a day with your face in the direction of mecca"?
About prayer...
"If God listened to the prayers of men, all men would quickly have perished: for they are forever praying for evil against one another."
-- Epicurus
"Pray: To ask the laws of the universe to be annulled on behalf of a single petitioner confessedly unworthy."
- Ambrose Bierce
How many of them thought about the protections the students are going to need? Not just from other students who decide their "religious freedom" means they have the right to harass the students who don't pray "correctly", but the teachers as well. I have no doubt teachers will punish students who don't partisipate.
Just look how students are treated by their teachers when they excercise their constitutional rights not to stand up during the pledge.
Do any American teachers refuse to stand up for that pledge? If so, what happened afterwards?
Now THERE's one hell of a question!
My online search found only this from a little while ago:
"A Queens high school teacher who was suspended last year for refusing to lead his home-room class in the Pledge of Allegiance to the flag won an important victory yesterday in his fight for reinstatement. The trial examiner appointed by the Board of Education in the case recommended to the board that the teacher, Seymour Jacobs, who had shunned the pledge "for reasons of conscience," be returned to his teaching duties with all charges dismissed... The teacher indicated that his distaste for the war in Vietnam had played a role in his decision to refuse to participate in the pledge and he blamed pro-war sentiment for his suspension.
Asked if he regarded patriotism as a form of hypocrisy, he replied: "No, I do not think that. I mean, by that, I do not think that patriotism in itself is a valuable contribution to life. Now, I think a sense of the world, the sense of the earth and a love for it and its people and animals and conception and so on are more worthy of thought and attention than patriotism as such."
The examiner, Bethuel M. Webster, stressed that neither state law nor school regulations required Mr. Jacobs, as the board contended, “to rise to his feet, lead the children in the Pledge of Allegiance and to recite the terms thereof." Mr. Webster, an adviser to Mayor Lindsay and a former president of the Association of the Bar of the City of New York, found that, on the contrary, United States Supreme Court precedents demanded that the Board of Education, under the First Amendment's broad protection of freedom of speech, "adopt means for promoting student patriotism that do not impair the personal liberties of teachers.""
('Teacher Who Refused to Lead Flag Pledge Backed by Arbiter', NYT 7th Sept 1968)
That's a GREAT story! I have to wonder what would have happened if the same situation were set in, say, Alabama ... or Mississippi. 😖
Or simply ask to have their identities respected.
There's also the matter of the Jewish and Muslim students that might be present. Indeed, there is disagreement among wording in Christian prayers, which is why the whole business of authority led prayers in schools shouldn't be allowed in the first place.
Imagine the outrage when a Jewish or Muslim teacher led prayers for their religion.
This kind of prayer in public schools is a disaster waiting to happen, never mind spawning more lawsuits than anyone would care to count. I have little doubt but that there are evangelicals and Christian nationalists out there who would love to take this survey and run with it.
That's why this survey needs massive blowback and the sooner the better.
I'm old enough to remember not just school prayer, but mandatory Bible classes. (This was in mountainous western Virginia near Marion, about 1968-9.)
I'm certain we were anything but an exception, but when we moved to Florida at the end of that time, there were no such classes there.
I’m pretty sure your WV schools were flouting federal law in 1968. And likely no one there cared.
I did!
But they told us that if we didn't go to Bible class, we'd have to go to 4-H.
(4-H being a program to teach farm kids to NEVER have a pet.)
Thank GAWD!!!
It's lost on those people that rights are not matters of majority rule. Rights protect the individual from the tyranny of the majority.
What the hell, America?
Children attend public schools to learn facts as to how the world truly works. It is NOT the teacher's job to act as a substitute pastor filling their heads with nonsense.
Know what this sounds like? Grooming. The very thing xtians falsely accuse LGBTQs, drag queens, liberal, Democrats, etc. of doing.
To those who favor teachers leading kids in very xtian prayer...
Engel v. Vitale, 370 U.S. 421 (1962)
A 6-1 decision that said mandatory or state-sponsored prayer in public schools violates the Establishment Clause.
Learn it. Know it Live it.
The current SC is waiting for a pretext to overrule this "bad decision" because it violates the Free Excercise Clause.
OT
This got missed yesterday so I'll mention it here. The 2000-year-old man turned 100. Happy Birthday to Mel Brooks.
𝐴𝑠 𝑐ℎ𝑎𝑖𝑟𝑚𝑎𝑛 𝑜𝑓 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑤𝑒𝑙𝑐𝑜𝑚𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑐𝑜𝑚𝑚𝑖𝑡𝑡𝑒𝑒, 𝑖𝑡 𝑖𝑠 𝑚𝑦 𝑝𝑟𝑖𝑣𝑖𝑙𝑒𝑔𝑒 𝑡𝑜 𝑒𝑥𝑡𝑒𝑛𝑑 𝑎 𝐿𝑎𝑢𝑟𝑒𝑙 - 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝐻𝑎𝑟𝑑𝑦 ℎ𝑎𝑛𝑑𝑠ℎ𝑎𝑘𝑒 𝑡𝑜 𝑜𝑢𝑟 𝑛𝑒𝑤...
Tell me seriously, even back then, who else could have done that?
VERY BEST WISHES, MEL!!! 🥳🥳🥳
THE SHERIFF IS NEAR!
No, gone blame it dang blammit! The sheriff is a ... [GONG!!!]
Every time someone says the Constitution was "Divinely Inspired" it makes my skin crawl. The two parts of the original I think were particularly inspired (small 'i') are 1) the ability to amend it, recognizing their own fallibility and the fact that societies change and evolve; and 2) separation of Church and State.
If the Constitution were divinely inspired, I would imagine that the preamble would open with the words: "In The Name of Jesus Christ..." It doesn't. It opens with:
𝗪𝗘 𝗧𝗛𝗘 𝗣𝗘𝗢𝗣𝗟𝗘 𝗢𝗙 𝗧𝗛𝗘 𝗨𝗡𝗜𝗧𝗘𝗗 𝗦𝗧𝗔𝗧𝗘𝗦...
"We the people" are the foundation for this government, not some no-account deity. A fact most evangelicals and Christian Nationalists would prefer to ignore or forget.
Funny how the Constitution makes no mention of Christianity or any other religion’s beliefs or practices.
I wouldn't read too much into that. The men writing the Constitution were not faced with any other religions, just different denominations. But they had just come through centuries of religious wars in Europe - 30 Years War, the English Civil War - it's only in the last 30 years or so that Catholics and Protestants have stopped blowing each other up.
Approximately 10% of African enslaved persons were Muslims and were in this country since the 1500's. There were also Jewish communities in the colonies since the mid-1600's. The Founders may have ignored them, but there were other religions present in this country.
Fair point for sure, in terms of population / religions. And I think you're right, the founders generally ignored them. Not as a rule, but for the most part. Consider that the "inspired Constitution" specified that you had to be a white, land-owning male to vote.
I guess then there was no reason to write the treaty of Tripoli then, if there weren’t other religions or that they ignored the others. And the Crusades were a thing before then as well. The Christian sects infighting might be their clear and present, but the rest of it was also front of mind as well. None of it was too far in space and time to affect them.
That is what I was leaning toward when I mentioned 30 Years War and English Civil - the Crusades were relatively long before that. I think it's fascinating that the men who started the Anglican Church were burned at the stake. My personal opinion is that the Founders were probably not foreseeing a nation with immigrants of every religion. jmax mentioned the enslaved Muslims above - the first known mosque was built in the US in 1915.
I believe they were worried most about the wars they and their direct ancestors had lived through between various Christians.
None of that was what I was saying - I think the best part of the Constitution is Separation of Church and State. I am somewhat unconcerned as to whether the Founders understood we might one day be home to people from every nation and religion. In a way, that proves my point that the Founders were not "Divinely Inspired".
To which Christian Nationalists reply that Christianity was the default so the founders didn't have to mention it, it was just understood 🙄
Sure they thought it was default ... which is why they put in that little bit in Article VI, paragraph 3: "... no religious test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States."
Something else the religious hotshots would wish away, if they could.
It is natural that any people of differing backgrounds, whether race, creed, nationality or sexuality, have at least a little trepidation about each other. In my experience, the more exposure one has to "others", the more we realize we generally all want the same things. Justice. Peace. Freedom.
The problem comes when people grow up in communities where there is NO diversity, where virtually everyone is a Christian of one stripe or another, where there may be differences of beliefs, but nothing excessive or serious, and where minorities are minimal, relegated to "the other side of town," or simply nonexistent. My daughter ran onto this when she went to college in North Carolina, where she met people who had never met a Jew or a Muslim. Pretty obviously, she had met and gotten to know BOTH, and others as well, and she very likely benefited from that experience.
There is a LOT of America that HASN'T grown up with that experience or ever had it in any substantial form. Add to that passed down bigoted attitudes that can frequently accompany such environments, and you have the current problem we face.
How we cure that, I don't know, particularly because you cannot FORCE diversity. Maybe we can create opportunities for diversity, though with the current regime, that is a tough ask.
ha - just replying above. I think it's all the more compelling that they wanted to separate Church and State.
Actually, the Constitution does mention religion twice, both times preceded by the word "no".
I was thinking of the religions themselves by name. Christianity, Judaism, Islam, etc.
Well, the majority of Americans want gun control & abortion rights. They have no problem ignoring that, so we shouldn’t have a problem ignoring them
The last school I taught in was in rural southwest Virginia. I can bet those parents would have stroked out if I led the class in a Hail Mary.
And the school I taught at before that (in Houston) had Buddhist, Muslim, and Hindu teachers, and even a Wiccan teacher. I can only imagine what would have happenned if any of those teachers had offered a prayer in a room with even a single pentecostal kid present.
Wow! Diversity up the wazoo! That's damned impressive!
They need to ask each of these anti American assholes which religious sect they hate most and then tell them that group would be controlling the prayers in question.
We do live in 𝑰𝒏𝒕𝒆𝒓𝒆𝒔𝒕𝒊𝒏𝒈 𝑻𝒊𝒎𝒆𝒔.
If this is the zeitgeist's idea of interesting times, I'd rather be bored.