It’s OK to pray

Last Friday, a dozen students at Heritage High in Vancouver, Wash., were suspended for refusing to move their early-morning prayer group out of the school’s commons. Principal Ann Sosky said the group had been meeting for two weeks prior, and had been given brochures about their rights regarding prayer in school. They were also told they must form a club with a staff adviser when they met for prayer, and had to do so in an assigned room so as to not disrupt or offend other students.

It doesn’t seem like something too out of the ordinary. Modern liberal society has largely upheld this kind of decision-making, calling such practices unconstitutional under the idea of separation of church and state. Religious practices and public schools just don’t mix, and many of those who remember being forced to recite the Lord’s Prayer in school (or other similar activities) will agree that sponsoring such practices is a bad idea.

Yet does that truly relate to the actions of those students at Heritage High? Yes, there were other factors involved in the case, such as an adult who joined the students one day and claimed to be affiliated with the kids as a youth pastor (causing an understandable security issue), but the question still remains: Does not allowing a group of students to pray in public fall under the category of breaching the church and state divide?

It seems counterproductive to the goal of openness and unity to throw a peaceful group of praying students into a room where they cannot be seen or heard. Is praying really such an offensive practice? Does it really trample on the rights of those who don’t adhere to Christianity, and is it unconstitutional?

The 1971 Supreme Court case Lemon v. Kurtzman was the final step in outlawing school-sanctioned prayer in public schools, and established the “Lemon test.” The current Lemon test (it was modified in 1997) states that there are “three primary criteria for determining whether a government action has a primary effect of advancing religion: 1) government indoctrination, 2) defining the recipients of government benefits based on religion, and 3) excessive entanglement between government and religion.”

I fail to see how the students over at Heritage High fall into any of the above three categories. There’s no indoctrination, as no school officials are involved in the prayer, there’s no government benefits involved, and it’s a bit of a leap to consider a dozen students praying in a commons area “excessive entanglement” of government and religion.

If silent prayer is considered offensive by those who don’t adhere to similar practices, it really shouldn’t be. Silent prayer disturbs no one, and it doesn’t push belief on others. It’s as non-aggressive an action as wearing a burqa, an act that’s causing a similar kerfuffle over in Europe (so much that the newly elected government in the Netherlands is considering introducing legislation to ban the wearing of burqas nationwide).

While these attempts to push displays of religion out of the public eye are by no means widespread across our country, they’re not productive, and follow a methodology that smacks of the repressive practices of those who mandated prayer in schools a century ago. If you’ve got certain beliefs, that’s great, but we don’t want to see or hear them.

That line of thinking isn’t OK, and it conflicts with the very religious nature of our country. The CIA World Factbook tells us that 78 percent of Americans are Christians, and 12 percent practice other religions. In a survey of eight developed nations in 2002, the United States was the only country with a majority of citizens (59 percent) reporting that religion is a “very important” part of their life. Gallup International reports that 41 percent of American citizens regularly attend religious services, compared to 25 percent of Israeli citizens, 15 percent of French citizens and 7 percent of U.K. citizens.

The United States is also leaning more and more toward religious polarization. Two of the three fastest-growing religious groups are evangelical Christians and those who claim no religion (the third is nondenominational Christians). Religious divisiveness has always been a problem in the melting pot of the United States, and the issue isn’t going to go away. It deserves our attention, and that shouldn’t involve shoving benign religious practice under the bed.

Religious differences are best dealt with through honesty and openness. If public prayer makes us uncomfortable, we should ask why, not require that it be carried away where we don’t have to see it. Like other countries with more volatile religious differences, we would all do well to understand other beliefs, become comfortable with them, and accept them as part of the diversity of our country.