Prayer in Schools

Praying Parents in Wilson County, Tennessee, met openly on public school grounds, held prayer sessions around the flag pole, handed out fliers to promote their activities, sent notes to students letting them know that they had been prayed for, and posted a link to their web site on the school’s web site. The administration of Lakewood Elementary School openly supported the group’s activities, permitting Praying Parents to address students in their classrooms during instructional time. Teachers led students in prayers and in the singing of religious songs.

Parents sued, and when the school board finally came down on these Praying Parents and forced them to cease their illegal activities, their Alliance Defense Fund attorneys argued that the school board had displayed “clear hostility towards Christians.”

Of course, these praying parents are all very proud of their unconstitutional efforts to turn a public school into what the neighbors describe as a “religious school.” They think Christianity is synonymous morality, and that non-Christians [particularly atheists] are immoral. Of course these Praying Parents are all Christians, praying to their Christian God, with no thought at all for the number of students who attend the school who are not Christian. Middle Tennessee has one of the nation’s largest Muslim populations. How un-Christian of these parents…how insensitive. More importantly, these people are my neighbors. I send my five kids to public schools in Middle Tennessee.

It is the Praying Parents who initiated hostilities here. Their actions are hostile to the Constitution and to non-believers. Their irrational belief in the power of prayer, i.e. wishing, is hostile to reason and to science.

When my children ask for my perspective on life, philosophy and ethics, I teach precisely the lessons I’ve been writing about over the past year. I explain the difference between my rational philosophy and the irrational. I try to be persuasive, but I do not indoctrinate. My children are free to make decisions about the nature of reality and moral behavior. When they express curiosity about religion [because all of their friends are church-going Christians], I explain Jesus’ teachings and what Christians believe. If they want to go to church with their friends, I let them go. I encourage my children to learn about every perspective under the sun, but I don’t send them into the fray unarmed. I arm them with science and reason, and knowledge of the perfect moral code, Egoism.

I do not indoctrinate my kids, so you can be sure, I will not sit back silently while these ignorant, Bible-beaters attempt to do so on public school grounds. Ignorant is not too strong a word to describe these people. I know them well. They know nothing of science. For them, everything is God’s doing, God’s will. How do they know anything? They feel it. They don’t read. It’s clear they don’t even read their own holy book:

Matthew 6:5-6: "And when thou prayest, thou shalt not be as the hypocrites are: for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and in the corners of the streets, that they may be seen of men....when thou prayest, enter into thy closet and when thou has shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret...."

Parading around in public praising their Lord, imagining Jesus smiling down on them, they believe they’re doing God’s work, so the Constitution be damned.

These Praying Parents think America was a more moral nation when Christian prayers were forced on school children, when few people complained because most people were Christians. They think that all that ills society started after the 1962 Supreme Court decision, Engel vs. Vitale, banning prayer in public schools. For example: They blame the divorce rate on secularism and the demise of “family values,” ignoring the fact that women in this country achieved equality during the 60’s. Women go to college, now. They earn advanced degrees and enjoy prosperous careers. Women are no longer dependant upon their husbands. They can choose when and if to have children. If more marriages end in divorce these days, that is because women no longer have to endure decades of emotional and/or physical abuse honoring and obeying their terrible husbands. All veils have been lifted. It is no longer shameful to be a woman in the West. [And it’s no longer considered murder when an abused wife, Mary Winkler, puts a bullet into her preacher-husband’s back, killing him.]

I’m sure these Praying Parents have never considered the fact that they actually send exactly the wrong message to young people. Our schools have been failing to compete with students around the globe for decades in areas critical to our economic superiority. Since the 60’s, successive administrations, including the Born Again Bush Administration, have warned that United States schools must do a better job educating young people about science and mathematics. Science is the epistemological opposite of religion. Faith does not factor into the scientific method. Math is the language of science. Religion is hostile to science. How does this practice in mysticism and unreality advance student progress in the very real world of scientific inquiry and mathematics?

We shouldn’t be teaching our children how to pray. We should be encouraging them to think and to study.