Two articles in the Globe recently reported on that perennial flower of the American political gardenscape: prayer in public schools. But the reporting demonstrated a difference from previous presentations on the topic: in this case, the writers profiled religious leaders who, quite rightly, see the government's push to bring prayer into the classroom as destructive of religious values and ignorant of prayer's power to shape people's lives.
How could this effort be so mistaken, when so many self-styled conservatives, and not a few avowed liberals, have championed prayer in the classrooms as a way to heal the nation's wounds and reconstitute the moral values of the polity? It has to do with the nature of prayer itself. By its very nature prayer is a private communication between the deepest spiritual reserves of each individual human being and the source of that person's being, whether it be the traditional concept of God or an idiosyncratic blend of Druid tree worship and goddess channeling. Some prayers may be written, some, as in Quaker rituals, spontaneously spilling out of full heart, some nothing more than strong emotions beyond the versatility of language. But in each case the communication link is private, unmediated by temporal interventions like the state.
People have suffered greatly for this right to pray unharassed by the concerns of the power-brokers of the moment, not only in the cauldrons of the European Inquisition but as close to home as Anne Hutchinson and Roger Williams. The reason for their sacrifice is simple: if the tie between human and divine is to remain special, powerful, authentic, life-giving, it cannot be scripted and it cannot answer to the decrees of Caesar. Anything less means rendering up to Caesar what rightly belongs to the sacred.
Why is this so difficult for people like Rep. Henry Hyde of Illinois to understand? Prayer that does not come from the heart is simply recitation. Compelling children to stand in a classroom, no matter how benign or "non-denominational" the pressure, and honor a moment of silence which is meant to somehow foster their moral regeneration is no different than compelling an oath of allegiance to build patriotic attachments to the state. In fact, it turns prayer into a pledge of fealty to the government because it is the government that sponsors the free moment for the prayer. When people encourage the identification of religious faith with state largesse, then this plants the roots of fascism, the triangular integration of self, state, and spirit.
Nor is this an issue of religious freedom, as argued by Rep. Dick Armey of Texas. The ban on prayer in the classroom does nothing to prevent anyone from praying, since, like Franny in J.D. Salinger's Franny and Zooey, prayer can be so woven into the fabric of one's life that breathing itself becomes a form of prayer. It only says that prayer cannot happen in a place funded by money donated by all citizens of wildly differing beliefs, including the non-belief of atheism. And that is appropriate: public space should not be reserved for what is rightly the private actions of a limited number of people.
To be sure, school and other public officials have made a large number of mistakes regarding the boundary between the religious and secular spheres, in part because the case and constitutional law in this area is quite murky. Should student religious groups be allowed to meet after school just like the chess club or yearbook, even if it involved prayer? Why not? Should teachers disallow biographies written of Jesus? Of course not.
But these essentially curricular considerations should not be confused with the effort to force students to adhere to a particular religious practice. That is what the First Amendment was created to prevent; the "separation between church and state" is there not to defame religion but to honor it by giving religion its own sphere in which it can rule as it sees fit. The First Amendment ratifies the dignity of the individual soul and protects it against the incursions of secular power by keeping the two separate. This does not mean that religious values cannot have a say in the ongoing political discussions of the day, nor that religious leaders should not try to use moral suasion to change people's behaviors. It is just that if prayer is to remain the powerful agent many believe it to be, then it cannot afford to ally itself with governmental efforts to install it in the public sphere. To do otherwise is to change prayer from an agent of personal salvation into a instrument of conformity, the very antithesis of what it is supposed to accomplish.
(July 1996)