Written by Don Byrd
A banner hanging in Rhode Island’s Cranston High West containing a prayer to “Our Heavenly Father” must come down after a federal judge ruled today that it violates the separation of church and state.
No amount of debate can make the School Prayer anything other than a prayer, and a Christian one at that. Its opening, calling upon the “Heavenly Father,” is an exclusively Christian formulation of a monotheistic deity, leaving out, inter alia, Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, and atheists alike. The Prayer concludes with the indisputably religious closing: “Amen;” a Hebrew word used by Jews, Christians and Muslims to conclude prayers. In between, the Prayer espouses values of honesty, kindness, friendship and sportsmanship. While these goals are commendable, the reliance on God’s intervention as the way to achieve those goals is not consistent with a secular purpose.
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It remains for this Court to attempt to soothe those who may believe that this decision represents a harsh result over a minor Constitutional infraction. The Supreme Court offers two pertinent lessons. First, the Supreme Court urges us to remember that “insistence upon neutrality, vital as it surely is for untrammeled religious liberty, may appear to border upon religious hostility. But in the long view the independence of both church and state in their respective spheres will be better served by close adherence to the neutrality principle.”
