Title: Governmental Encouragement of Religion in Public Schools: Prayers and Bible Reading - FindLaw
Headings: Governmental Encouragement of Religion in Public Schools: Prayers and Bible Reading
Governmental Encouragement of Religion in Public Schools: Prayers and Bible Reading
Parents Challenge Beginning School Day With Bible Reading
Supreme Court Strikes Down Required Prayers in School
Student Vote Does Not Eliminate Establishment Clause Problem
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Rejected were contentions by the state that the object of the programs was the promotion of secular purposes, such as the expounding of moral values, the contradiction of the materialistic trends of the times, the perpetuation of traditional institutions, and the teaching of literature 4 and that to forbid the particular exercises was to choose a religion of secularism in their place. 5
Though the place of religion in our society is an exalted one, the Establishment Clause, the Court continued, prescribed that in the relationship between man and religion, the state must be firmly committed to a position of neutrality. 6
Supreme Court Strikes Down Required Prayers in School
In Wallace v. Jaffree, 7 the Court held invalid an Alabama statute authorizing a 1-minute period of silence in all public schools for meditation or prayer. Because the only evidence in the record indicated that the words or prayer had been added to the existing statute by amendment for the sole purpose of returning voluntary prayer to the public schools, the Court found that the first prong of the Lemon test had been violated, i.e., that the statute was invalid as being entirely motivated by a purpose of advancing religion. The Court characterized the legislative intent to return prayer to the public schools as quite different from merely protecting every student’s right to engage in voluntary prayer during an appropriate moment of silence during the school day, 8 and both Justices Powell and O’Connor in concurring opinions suggested that other state statutes authorizing moments of silence might pass constitutional muster. 9
The school prayer decisions served as precedent for the Court’s holding in Lee v. Weisman 10 that a school-sponsored invocation at a high school commencement violated the Establishment Clause. The Court rebuffed a request to reexamine the Lemon test, finding [t]he government involvement with religious activity in this case [to be] pervasive, to the point of creating a state-sponsored and state-directed religious exercise in a public school. State officials not only determined that an invocation and benediction should be given, but also selected the religious participant and provided him with guidelines for the content of nonsectarian prayers. The Court, in an opinion by Justice Kennedy, viewed this state participation as coercive in the elementary and secondary school setting. 11 The state in effect required participation in a religious exercise, since the option of not attending one of life’s most significant occasions was no real choice.