Word: prayerful
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...clubs' explosive spread coincides with a more radical but so far less successful movement for a complete overturn of the 1963 ruling. On the federal level is the Religious Freedom amendment, a constitutional revision proposed by House Republican Ernest Istook of Oklahoma, which would reinstate full-scale school prayer. It passed the Judiciary Committee, 16 to 11, last month but will probably fare less well when the full House votes in May. One of many local battlefields is Alabama, where last week the state senate passed a bill mandating a daily moment of silence--a response to a 1997 federal...
...members of prayer clubs like the one at Patrick Henry High aren't waiting for the conclusion of such epic struggles. They have already brought worship back to public school campuses, although with some state-imposed limitations. Available statistics are approximate, but they suggest that there are clubs in as many as 1 out of every 4 public schools in the country. In some areas the tally is much higher: evangelicals in Minneapolis-St. Paul claim that the vast majority of high schools in the Twin Cities region have a Christian group. Says Benny Proffitt, a Southern Baptist youth-club...
...developed enough clout to force Congress to make a change. The resulting Equal Access Act of 1984 required any federally funded secondary school to permit religious meetings if the schools allowed other clubs not related to curriculum, such as public-service Key Clubs. The crucial rule was that the prayer clubs had to be voluntary, student-run and not convened during class time...
Early drafts of the act were specifically pro-Christian. Ultimately, however, its argument was stated in pure civil-libertarian terms: prayers that would be coercive if required of all students during class are protected free speech if they are just one more after-school activity. Nevertheless, recalls Marc Stern, a staff lawyer with the American Jewish Congress, "there was great fear that this would serve as the base for very intrusive and aggressive proselytizing." Accordingly, Stern's group and other organizations challenged the law--only to see it sustained, 8 to 1, by the Supreme Court in 1990. Bill Clinton...
Evangelicals had already seized the moment. Within a year of the 1990 court decision, prayer clubs bloomed spontaneously on a thousand high school campuses. Fast on their heels came adult organizations dedicated to encouraging more. Proffitt's Tennessee-based organization, First Priority, founded in 1995, coordinates interchurch groups in 162 cities working with clubs in 3,000 schools. The San Diego-based National Network of Youth Ministries has launched "Challenge 2000," which pledges to bring the Christian gospel "to every kid on every secondary campus in every community in our nation by the year 2000." It also promotes a phenomenon...