Mixing Politics With Prayer

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Uncle Sam jumps into the church-state debate

Religion and government are two mighty forces that the founders of the American Republic decided must be kept separate for the sake of a free society. But the intricate relationship between church and state has never ceased to inflame public debate. Last week that dispute, involving all three branches of the Federal Government, rose to perhaps its highest pitch in two decades:

> Congress began consideration of proposed amendments to the Constitution that would permit supposedly voluntary prayer in public schools, overturning Supreme Court decisions in 1962 and 1963 that are bitterly resented by many religious groups and their political allies. The high court rulings, cried Ohio Republican Delbert Latta during an all-night House speech-making session, "favor atheism over Christianity."

> President Reagan threw the full weight of his persuasive powers behind the drive for school prayer; in fact, one of the amendments up for debate was drafted under his supervision at the White House. Said the President, in an address to the National Association of Evangelicals in Columbus: "I firmly believe that the loving God who has blessed our land and made us a good and caring people should never have been expelled from America's classrooms."

> The Supreme Court, in a 5-to-4 decision upholding inclusion of a crèche in a municipally financed Pawtucket, R.I., Christmas display, gave new heart to those who hope, and new worries to those who fear, that the court may now be less insistent on maintaining a "wall of separation between church and state."* Chief Justice Warren Burger, writing for the majority, called the wall "a useful figure of speech" but "not a wholly accurate description of the practical aspects of the relationship that in fact exists between church and state."

Together, the three developments demonstrated that church-state disputes are reaching a level of emotional intensity not seen since conservatives mounted the drive to impeach Earl Warren. The campaign, as it happens, was fueled partly by the decisions, made when he was Chief Justice, that prayer or Bible readings in public schools violate the First Amendment's ban on laws "respecting an establishment of religion."

Fervent believers of many faiths, and less devout citizens appalled by what they see as a national breakdown of moral standards, have never reconciled themselves to those decisions. Their anger has been steadily fanned by a series of lower-court interpretations that have gone so far as to bar voluntary prayer sessions on school property organized by students outside of class hours. Critics fear the courts are attempting to forbid any public acknowledgment of God whatsoever in the schools and thus, in effect, to enthrone indifference or even hostility toward religion as official government policy. They can even cite the example of the protests last week in Poland, a nation that is 90% Roman Catholic, where the people are protesting the government's attempt to quash the nation's religious and cultural spirit by removing crucifixes from classrooms.