Prayer in Public Schools

Prayer in Public Schools

The issue of prayer in public schools has been the subject of intense debate. That is because religious people would like for their children to be able to follow their religious teachings by praying in school but people who are not religious would prefer that religion was kept out of the public schools altogether. Prayer in public schools is also sometimes a problem for people who are religious but whose religions are not the religious traditions recognized in school prayers. The debate actually demonstrates the two fundamental ideas addressed by the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution: (1) the establishment of religion by the government; and (2) the infringement of the free exercise of religion by the government.

The Two Constitutional Issues: Religious Infringement and Religious Establishment

When the Colonialists first left Britain to establish a new society in North America, one of the most important principles that they wanted to live by in America was the freedom to worship without the interference of the government. In Britain, the King required everyone to accept the Church or England and the royal authorities punished people for worshipping the "wrong" religion with imprisonment and death (Friedman, 2005). So when the Colonialists established colonial America, they hoped to build a society where everybody could worship freely instead of being required to accept the religion of the government authorities. During the Constitutional Conventions that led to the drafting and ratification of the U.S. Constitution, the Framers of the Constitution made sure to include a provision guaranteeing religious freedom: the First Amendment of the Bill of Rights (Hall, Ely, & Grossman, 2005).

The First Amendment reads as follows: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances." The first part is known as the "establishment clause" and it prohibits the government from doing anything that could be considered establishing any religion (Dershowitz, 2002; Laycock, 2011). The second part is known as the "free exercise clause," and it prohibits the government from doing anything to interfere with the rights of religious exercise (Dershowitz, 2002; Laycock, 2011). These two clauses were intended to protect all of the rights that were unavailable to the Colonialists who left Britain. However, in some respects, these two clauses can sometimes conflict with one another, such as in the case of prayer in public schools (Laycock, 2011) and in the case of prayer in the public workplace (Gregory, 2010).

The source of the conflict is that people who want to be able to exercise their religion freely in public schools argue that by prohibiting school prayer, the government is violating their rights under the free exercise clause of the First Amendment (Dershowitz, 2002). Meanwhile, the people who do not share the religious beliefs of the dominant religions in the U.S. And the people who do not believe in any religion argue that the government is infringing on their rights by establishing religion in schools where they do not want to have to attend or participate in any religious worship (Dershowitz, 2002; Laycock, 2011). It seems that, because the government runs the public school system, it must violate the First Amendment rights of one group to protect the First Amendment rights of the other group.

Resolution of the Conflict

There is little doubt that students who wish to pray in school can not be prohibited from praying by school authorities without violating their free exercise rights. However, when the public school requires all students to participate in prayers of any kind, it obviously violates the establishment clause-based rights of any students who do not want to pray in school or who subscribe to different religions than the ones recognized by schools (Dershowitz, 2002). In that regard, students who have no religious beliefs (such as agnostics and atheists) also have rights that prohibit the government from establishing any religion in their schools. The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that even allowing non-religious students to "opt out" of school prayers violates their rights because it makes them "different" and because they have a right not to have religion (or lack of religion) become an issue for them in their schools (Dershowitz, 2002).