Word: prayerful
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Amendment opponents insist that organized, vocal prayer can never be truly voluntary. Children of different faiths, or none, will feel themselves forced by social pressure to join in. Contends Rabbi Balfour Brickner of Manhattan's Stephen Wise Free Synagogue: "If the prayer is spoken, it will be physically coercive, and if silent it will be psychologically coercive." The alternative, opponents contend, is to offer prayers so general as to be meaningless, even offensive to the truly religious. The establishment of a neutered "civil religion" is offensive to many who believe deeply in their own faiths. Says Robert Minor, professor...
Whatever the outcome, school-prayer advocates now have the aggressive national champion they had long lacked: Ronald Reagan. The President's ardent embrace of their cause has raised cynical eyebrows among Democrats like House Speaker Tip O'Neill, who notes that Reagan is hardly a regular churchgoer. In more than three years as President, Reagan has attended worship services only nine times. Apparently referring to the disruption his attendance at a worship service might cause, Reagan said last week of his churchgoing, "I miss it very much. But I represent too much of a threat to too many...
Reagan's push for a prayer amendment may reflect longstanding conviction, but its timing and strategy at least have been heavily influenced by electoral calculation. Fundamentalist and Evangelical Protestants contributed many ballots to Reagan's 1980 sweep. But some have been grumbling that the President has done little to advance the so-called social issues that concern them most, like antiabortion legislation. Some months ago, White House strategists decided that the outset of the presidential campaign was the right time to placate this "core constituency" and that school prayer was the issue to stress in doing so. Explains...
Reagan made pleas for school prayer to national TV audiences in his January State of the Union address and the subsequent announcement of his candidacy for reelection. In his speech to the Evangelicals last week, Reagan said, "Hasn't something gone haywire when this great Constitution of ours is invoked to allow Nazis and Ku Klux Klansmen to march on public property and urge the extermination of Jews and the subjugation of blacks, but it supposedly prevents our children from Bible study or the saying of a simple prayer in their schools...
Even if Reagan's advocacy should help push a school-prayer amendment through Congress, however, years could be required before it could amass enough state ratifications to take effect, if indeed it ever did. At least until then, the deciding voice in church-state relations will continue to be that of the Supreme Court. But the accent in the court's voice seems to be changing too, as evidenced by the praise showered on last week's crèche decision by some of the conservative religious groups that have long seen the court as their special...