Word: prayerful
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These arguments melt before the case for school prayer, which is historical and political. The Founders knew that religion should be left to believers. They invoked God not to instruct Americans about theology, but to remind them about the nature of liberty...
Will it do little hellions any good to be exposed to such sentiments in homeroom? Maybe not. Congress begins each day with a prayer, and look how it behaves. But a society should know where the things it holds dear come from, and why there are limits to its own actions. School is one place to learn such things, and one way of learning is to repeat the lesson daily...
There are also conservative arguments against public school prayer. The practical counterargument is that it would buy time for the public school system. One of the great engines of disenchantment with the way bureaucrats instruct children is the religious right, for which Johnny's inability to pray and to read are linked. Returning prayer to public schools might deflect conservative evangelicals from the campaign against the education establishment. Evangelists for school choice don't want the public school system to get better; they want it to get worse, as a prelude to getting out of it and into private schools...
...meaningful would the prayers be, anyway? Religious opponents of school prayer fear petitions that would be content-free. As Christian libertarian Doug Bandow puts it, "Formalistic rituals teach an empty spirituality devoid of meaning." Is there any reason to think the pedagogues who once gave kids George Washington and the cherry tree and who now give them Crispus Attucks and other patriots of color would do any better at framing appeals to the Almighty...
...ATHEIST SACRILEGE: In support of his call for a constitutional amendment permitting prayer in schools, Gingrich asserted that "most people don't know it's illegal to pray. When they learn that a 10-year-old boy in St. Louis was put in detention for saying grace privately over his lunch, they think that's bizarre . . . That's what we used to think of Russian behavior when they were the Soviet Union...