Word: prayerful
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America's liberal democracy has always been about majority rule, but within a framework that guarantees the rights of the minority. Proponents of prayer in school forget about the latter. Pat Robertson claims, "Those men and women who founded this land made a solemn covenant that they would be the people of God and that this would be a Christian nation...
Religion has no place in public schools, and the problem with prayer in school of any sort, momentary silence or not, is that it will always place pressure on members of the minority. And this is even more troublesome when these minority students are merely children...
Defenders of prayer in school most often discount the views of the minority, suggesting that they should not infringe on the rights of the majority group. One New Jersey State Assemblyman argued against consideration of the views of atheist students by suggesting they "were so few in number their views could be discounted...
...this view limited to local officials. Chief Justice Warren Burger once defended the Nebraska legislature's employment of a Presbyterian minister to open all assembly meetings with a prayer, by suggesting that this was "simply a tolerable acknowledgement of beliefs widely held among people of this country...
Perhaps the most ridiculous part of the prayer in school issue is the claim that the "moment of silence," proposed by Gingrich, is really something other than a back door in which to return prayer to schools. Its defenders claim that this pause can be used for any voluntary activity on the part of the student, and so it has nothing to do with prayer. Of course, its defenders had never called for it before the Supreme Court decided prayer in school was in violation of the Constitution...