THE WORD "pray" literally is a four-letter word. Considering the heated debate over the "minute of silence," it might as well be a four-letter word, figuratively. Religion is an issue that ignites controversy like few others. Unfortunately, one of those other issues is public education. With that in mind, the implementation of State Sen. Warren Barry's "minute of silence" law, required at the beginning of the day in all Virginia public schools, is like using an acetylene torch to light the candles on a birthday cake (baked with plenty of rum). However, misunderstandings about the nature of the so-called "separation of church and state," and the intention of the law itself have given an undue amount of fuel to this fire, which hopefully has been extinguished permanently by the Supreme Court's decision not to hear the case challenging the Virginia law.
I was surprised to learn while slugging through AP Government class last year that the anxiety over the mere mention of God in public schools is a phenomenon with its origin in rather recent Supreme Court history. In the last 30 years, the American Civil Liberties Union and other civil liberty organizations have used the First Amendment to force religion behind closed doors. To them, the First Amendment guarantees freedom from religion.
In 1962, the Court heard the case of Engle v. Vitale, which dealt with a non-denominational prayer composed by the New York State Board of Regents, read every day by school officials: "Almighty God, we acknowledge our dependence upon Thee, and we beg Thy blessings upon us, our parents, our teachers and our country." Clearly this is a violation of the First Amendment but has no bearing on the issues in Brown v. Gilmore, the case brought before the Court that deals with Virginia's minute of silence law. The Engle case forced a religious prayer upon the students in New York public schools; the minute of silence law simply asks students to sit still and be quiet for one minute each day, and offers prayer as one of the silent activities that may be engaged in during this minute.
The Engle decision infuriated many leaders, both religious and secular, striking them as being hostile toward religion. The author of the majority opinion, Justice Hugo Black, anticipated this sentiment. He wrote of our founding fathers: These men "come to this country filled with the hope that they could find a place in which they could pray when they pleased to the God of their faith in the language they chose. And there were men of this same faith in the power of prayer who led the fight for adoption of our Constitution and also for our Bill of Rights. These men know that the First Amendment, which tried to put an end to governmental control of religion and prayer, was not written to destroy either."
This decision began the slow but steady removal of religion from the public sector, which resulted from the rapid and apparently unyielding advance of religion on the public sector in the 1950s. Religious leaders like Francis Cardinal Spellman, Billy Graham and Bishop Fulton Sheen were attempting to affect political policy via their pulpit. During the Red Scare early in that decade, being an atheist made one the target of instant suspicion and, in some unfortunate cases, unwarranted retribution. Several atheist professors at major secular universities were fired for fear that their belief was somehow immoral, Soviet and "un-American." In Hawaii, a judge administering the oath of citizenship denied naturalization to one atheist who refused to swear to a God he would have been well within his rights as an American not to believe in. These are breaches of the separation of church and state. These men and women were denied their First Amendment rights.
We have come a long way from the persecution of atheists and agnostics that occurred during the heyday of McCarthyism. Many brave men and women of our armed forces have lost their lives to protect the non-believer's right to deny God's existence and the agnostic's to question him. But they also gave their lives to protect the Jews' right to keep kosher, the Muslim's to point himself toward Mecca, and the Catholic's to partake in the sacraments. The First Amendment guarantees freedom of religion.
In the end, the issue at hand in the Brown decision is best defined by what it is not. It is not the imposition of religious values on non-believers, or members of a different faith. It is not an issue of whether or not a school can encourage students to pray. It is not an issue of whether or not schools can hang up the Ten Commandments in their classrooms or have a nativity scene during Christmas. The question is, can a school ask all of its students to sit down and shut up for one minute every morning, so that those who want to may meditate, relax, contemplate, unwind or even, pardon my language, pray.
(Ali Ahmad is a first-year College student. He is a member of the College Republicans.)
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