School officials in a Rhode Island town voted 4-3 last night to keep a large banner in place at West Cranston High sporting an "Our Heavenly Father" prayer, fashioned about 50 years ago. The state's ACLU had warned that the prayer banner violates the separation of church and state, and requested the banned be removed. But after hours of heated debate, a slim maajority of the school committee decided to throw religious liberty principles overboard, and risk great cost to taxpayers in the process, as one committee member noted:
“I cannot in good conscience, on hope and a prayer,” said [no-voter Stephanie] Culhane, “put that burden on another School Committee member.”
Calling the decision to go to court “a Foxwoods gamble,” Culhane said Cranston students cannot afford the educational cuts that may be made to pay for the litigation. “It’s a gamble that my three children [would] have to pay the cost of in the end.”
