smb@ulysses.UUCP (Steven Bellovin) (03/16/84)
There's an interesting article in Wednesday's N.Y. Times that I think bears repeating: Can a person abstain from voluntary prayer without incurring some stigma? The Senate has been debating this and related issues for days in connection with the proposed school prayer amendment to the Constitution, and reporters covering Vice President Bush on a Southern campaign swing last week got an illustration of the controversial nature of the question. At a political breakfast in Tampa, a local minister was introduced for an invocation, and he delivered a demonstrably Christian prayer, calling on Jesus Christ to bless the occasion. While the minister prayed, a Washington-based reporter, who is not a Christian, quiety read a newspaper at the press table, being careful not to rustle the pages. When the invocation was over, one of the Vice President's military aides reprimanded the reporter for what he called a display of bad manners. It was not clear now the aide had detected this lapse while he was praying. Add to that the inherently coercive nature of a school classroom, the peer pressure on relatively immature students, and the documented record of abuse by teachers, and you see why any such program is offensive to those who value religious freedom. (For examples of abuse of disgression by teachers, see the ACLU newsletter. My favorite example took place about 3 years ago, in (I believe) Tennessee. A teacher was about to lead a class in prayer (showing great respect for the law...), but -- to preserve its "voluntary" nature -- told students that they did not have to participate, even telling a (the?) Jewish student, "Sam, you shouldn't participate, since Jews don't pray." I could also comment on the level of education demonstrated by that teacher, but I'll forbear.) In light of arguments like this, it's truly intriguing that the Supreme Court dismissed the question of the voluntary nature of such prayers as totally irrelevant. That is, their ruling was made solely on the grounds that the *existence* of such prayers (or Bible readings) was in itself a violation of the First Amendment, regardless of what anyone present thought. Below are assorted quotes from the famous Madalyn Murray case in 1963, as well as some from a lesser-known case a year earlier in New York. The prayer in question in that case was your generic non-denominational prayer, of little semantic content -- about what the proponents of the school prayer amendment would like. The Murray case involved reading Biblical passages and/or the Lord's Prayer. It is a matter of history that this very practice of establishing governmentally composed prayers for religious services was one of the reasons which caused many of our early colonists to leave England and seek religious freedom in America. The Book of Common Prayer, which was created under governmental direction and which was approved by Acts of Parliament in 1548 and 1549, set out in minute detail the accepted form and content of prayer and other religious ceremonies to be used in the established, tax-supported Church of England. The controversies over the Book and what should be its content repeatedly threatened to disrupt the peace of that country as the accepted forms of prayer in the established church changed with the views of the particular ruler that happened to be in control at that time.... It is an unfortunate fact of history that when some of the very groups which had most strenuously opposed the established Church of England found themselves sufficiently in control of colonial governments in this country to write their own prayers into law, they passed laws making their own religion the official religion of their respective colonies. Indeed, as late as the time of the Revolutionary War, there were established churches in at least eight of the colonies and established religions in at least four of the other five. But the successful Revolution against English political domination was shortly followed by intense opposition to the practice of establishing religion by law.... In 1785-1786, those opposed to the established Church, led by James Madison and Thomas Jefferson, who, though themselves not members of any of these dissenting religious groups, opposed all religious establishments by law on grounds of principle, obtained the enactment of the famous "Virginia Bill for Religious Liberty" by which all religious groups were placed on an equal footing... There can be no doubt that New York's state prayer program officially establishes the religious beliefs embodied in the Regents' prayer. The respondents' argument to the contrary, which is largely based on the contention that the Regents' prayer is "non-denominational" and the fact that the program, as modified and approved by state courts, does not require all pupils to recite the prayer but permits those who wish to do so to remain silent or be excused from the room, ignores the essential nature of the program's constitutional defects. Neither the fact that the prayer may be denominationally neutral, nor the fact that its observance on the part of the students is voluntary can serve to free it from the limitations of the Establishment Clause, as it might from the Free Exercise Clause, of the First Amendment.... Although these two clauses may in certain instances overlap, they forbid two quite different kinds of governmental encroachment upon religious freedom. The Establishment Clause, unlike the Free Exercise Clause, does not depend upon any showing of direct governmental compulsion and is violated by the enactment of laws which establish an official religion whether those laws operate directly to coerce nonobserving individuals or not. This is not to say, of course, that laws officially prescribing a particular form of religious worship do not involve coercion of such individuals. When the power, prestige, and financial support of government is placed behind a particular religious belief, the indirecte coercive pressure upon religious minorities to conform to the prevailing officially approved religion is plain. But the purposes underlying the Establishment Clause go much further than that. Its first and most immediate purpose rested on the belief that a union of government and religion tends to destroy government and degrade religion. The history of governmentally established religion, both in England and in this country, showed that whenever government had allied itself with one particular form of religion, the inevitable result had been that it had incurred the hatred, disrespect and even contempt of those who held contrary beliefs.... Another purpose of the Establishment Clause rested upon an awareness of the historical fact that governmentally established religions and religious persecutions go hand in hand. The Founders knew that only a few years after the Book of Common Prayer became the only accepted form of religious services in the established Church of England, an Act of Uniformity was passed to compel all Englishmen to attend those services and to make it a criminal offense to conduct or attend religious gatherings of any other kind.... And they knew that similar persecutions had received the sanction of law in several of the colonies in this country... It is true that New York's establishment of its Regents' prayer as an officially approved religious doctrine of that State does not amount to a total establishment of one particular religious sect to the exclusion of all others -- that indeed, the governmental endorsement of that prayer seems relatively insignificant when compared to the governmental encroachments upon religion which were commonplace 200 years ago. To those who may subscribe to the view that because the Regents' official prayer is so brief and general there can be no danger to religious freedom in its governmental establishment, however, it may be appropriate to say in the words of James Madison, the author of the First Amendment: [I]t is proper to take alarm at the first experiment on our liberties... Who does not see that the same authority which can establish Christianity, in exclusion of all other Religions, may establish with the same ease any particular sect of Christians, in exclusion of all other Sects? That the same authority which can force a citzen to contribute three pence only of his property for the support of any one establishment, may force him to conform to any other establishment in all cases whatsoever? The Murray case is cited more often, though the practices involved were more clearly Christian. But the Court's reasoning (the vote was 8-1) was the same. I'll only quote two brief passes from this opinion: [T]he State contends... that the program is an effort to extend its benefits to all public school children without regard to their religious belief. Included within its secular purposes, it says, are the promotion of moral values, the contradiction to the materialistic trends of our times, the perpetuation of our institutions and the teaching of literature.... But even if its purpose is not strictly religious, it is sought to be accomplished through readings, without comment, from the Bible. Surely the place of the Bible as an instrument of religion cannot be gainsaid, and the State's recognition of the pervading religious character of the ceremony is evident from the rule's specific permission of the alternative use of the Catholic Douay version [as opposed to the King James version, which was prescribed by the statute] as well as the recent amendment permitting non-attendance at the exercises. None of these factors is consistent with the contention that the Bible is here used either as an instrument for nonreligious moral inspiration or as a reference for the teaching of secular subjects. .... It is insisted that unless these religious exercises are permitted a "religion of secularism" is established in the schools... We do not agree, however, that this decision in any sense has that effect. In addition, it might well be said that one's education is not complete without a study of comparative religion or this history of religion and its relationship to the advancement of civilization. It certainly may be said that the Bible is worthy of study for its literary and historic qualities. Nothing we have said here indicates that such study of the Bible or of religion, when presented objectively as part of a secular program of education may not be effected consistent with the First Amendment. But the exercises here do not fall into those categories. They are religious exercises.... These quotations are taken from the "Bill of Rights Reader", Fourth Edition, by Milton Konvitz. The other case relevant to our discussion -- the one that banned student religious clubs on school property -- was heard after this edition was published. I can probably dig up the opinions in that case if there's sufficient interest. (Better yet, someone at a university with a law school could do it even more easily...) But before I do, I'd like to see some debate on the subject *based on the Court's logic*. --Steve Bellovin