Is There a Place For God in School?

DURING A SINGLE WEEK LAST MONTH in the District of Columbia public schools, two high school students were shot and seriously wounded, another student was stabbed by a sixth-grade girl, an assistant principal was punched in the face, and a policeman was assaulted by students. Mayor Sharon Pratt Kelly responded to the mayhem as big-city mayors often do: she announced plans to post 60 more cops on campus. But her predecessor in the job is convinced that a higher power is required. Ex-mayor and now councilman Marion Barry has proposed a law allowing students to lead nonsectarian classroom prayers. "Maybe, just maybe, it will turn some of our values around," he says. "We've lost our way."

Barry, who served six months in prison for drug possession after leaving office as mayor, might seem a curious proponent of piety, but his campaign is no oddity. Pressed by voters, legislators around the U.S. are probing for loopholes in Supreme Court rulings that have forbidden mandated school prayers along with "moments of silence" to foster praying and clergy prayers at school graduations. These efforts come, moreover, at a time when the court is re-examining a cornerstone of its rulings on church and state: the so-called Lemon test, which has forbidden virtually all government involvement with religion.

The grass-roots campaign to slip prayer back into school is aimed at a chink in the Supreme Court's rulings: the court has never expressly stated whether voluntary student prayers are permissible. A mail campaign spearheaded by TV evangelist and onetime presidential candidate Pat Robertson has sent every high school principal and attorney general in the nation literature urging that such prayers be allowed as an expression of "free speech" and "equal access to the marketplace of ideas." (His organization does not advocate student prayers on school-wide intercoms, the practice that got Mississippi principal Bishop Knox suspended.)

Anxiety over a breakdown in the nation's moral values is fueling much state legislative activity as well. Georgia just enacted a law to permit moments of silence. Student-led prayers have been approved in Mississippi, Arkansas, Tennessee and Virginia. Similar legislation is under consideration in at least six more states. Congress has caught the fever this year as well. Both the Senate and House passed measures that would strip funds from schools that forbid "voluntary" prayer. Final action on prayer legislation is expected this spring.

The American Civil Liberties Union has vowed to challenge the constitutionality of these new laws. Representative Don Edwards, a California Democrat, argues that student prayer is not really voluntary and amounts to "manipulation by churches and parents." He points to numerous lower-court decisions against such praying.

A pending high-court decision could change the landscape significantly. It revolves around the 1971 Lemon ruling, which bars tax support for salaries and secular textbooks in religious day schools. The decision set up a three-part test to determine whether a government action is an unconstitutional infringement of church-state separation: an action must have a "secular legislative purpose," avoid "excessive government entanglement with religion" and have a "primary effect" that "neither advances nor inhibits religion."