Religion: Camel's Nose?

Our Father which art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven. . . .

Is the Lord's Prayer, like the New Testament in general, a sectarian document (TIME, Jan. 27), and should its recitation therefore be barred from public schools? Dr. Vivian Trow Thayer, Leader of the New York Society for Ethical Culture, thinks the answer is yes. Last week in Manhattan he declared: "The use of the Lord's Prayer in the public schools is but a camel's nose for a larger program. . . . Certain religious denominations now look to the public schools as a means for insuring their survival. . . .

"Until it is generally understood that character education and the specific inculcation of religious tenets are in no way identical, we shall easily be induced . . . to ride roughshod over the rights of children to religious freedom."

Children may now legally study the Bible in Illinois' public schools. After due consideration, the State Supreme Court has said it is all right. But Mrs. Vashti McCollum, 33, an angry atheist of Champaign, who had brought the subject up, planned to appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court. Her eleven-year-old son James had been "embarrassed," she said, because he was the only pupil in his class who had declined the voluntary Bible lesson. Religion, fumed Mrs. McCollum, is "a racket based on fear and prejudice and a chronic disease of the imagination contracted in childhood."