A Loss to Make Up For

Last year, when the U.S. Supreme Court handed down a decision barring the recitation of an official prayer, written by a state board, in New York's public schools, the hue and cry was deafening.

Last week, when the Supreme Court issued a far broader ban on religious observances in schools, the reaction was relatively mild. For one thing the court, apparently flabbergasted by the protests against its 1962 decision, had learned a bit about public relations.

Before the court last week were two separate but related cases:

> In Pennsylvania, a state law required that "at least ten verses from the Holy Bible shall be read, without comment, at the opening of each public school on each school day." Mr. and Mrs. Edward L. Schempp, churchgoing Unitarians and at the time the parents of two high school pupils, sued in 1958 to block enforcement of that law.

> In Baltimore, under a rule adopted by the board of school commissioners back in 1905, the daily opening exercises in the city's public schools included the "reading, without comment, of a chapter in the Holy Bible and/or the use of the Lord's Prayer." Madalyn E. Murray, self-professed atheist and mother of two school-age sons, brought suit to get the rule repealed.

In a single opinion covering both cases, the court held that the Pennsylvania law and the Baltimore rule violated the First Amendment's clause prohibiting "an establishment of religion."* In so ruling, the court in effect declared unconstitutional all similar observances in all public schools in all states.

"The Government Is Neutral." At least 30 states either require or authorize Bible readings in public schools; for about half of all the schoolchildren in the U.S., the school day begins with religious exercises that include Bible verses or the Lord's Prayer or both. Among those who will not be affected by the ruling are the children on whose behalf Mr. and Mrs. Schempp brought their suit: the two youngsters were graduated from Abington Senior High School, near Philadelphia, a few days before the court handed down its decision.

In writing the majority opinion, Justice Tom Clark relied heavily on past judicial decisions. Notable among them was a decision issued nearly a century ago by a state judge, Ohio's Alphonso Taft, whose son William became President and Chief Justice of the U.S. The U.S. system, declared Judge Taft, requires "absolute equality before the law of all religious opinions and sects . . . The Government is neutral."

Double-Barreled Amendment. As in last year's New York prayer case, Justice Potter Stewart was the only dissenter from the majority opinion. Stewart raised a point that troubled many other minds. He noted that the First Amendment is double-barreled. It requires that "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof." Stewart argued that an "insensitive" interpretation of the establishment clause can conflict with the free exercise clause. Involved in the Pennsylvania and Maryland cases, said Stewart, is "a substantial free exercise claim on the part of those who affirmatively desire to have their children's school day open with the reading of passages from the Bible."

A few days later, Justice Byron R. White administered the oath of office to a newly appointed Justice Department official. Quipped White: "I had to borrow this Bible--the only one left in the Supreme Court was Potter Stewart's."

The Disclaimers. Last year's New York prayer decision stirred widespread alarm--not so much for what it said as for what people thought it said. Misled by headlines, many thought that the court had all but ordered an end to all ties between government and religion, even chaplains in the armed services and the motto "In God We Trust" on the currency. Such fears are, to be sure, given some substance by a small but militant fringe that insists upon a total erasure of all traces of religion in government. Last week, for example, the American Civil Liberties Union brought suit in a California state court to get the phrase "under God" eliminated from the Pledge of Allegiance recited by children in the state's public schools.

But the court nevertheless felt burned by last year's misunderstandings, and this time it took pains to forestall sweeping interpretations. Justice Clark pointed approvingly to a 1952 Supreme Court declaration that "we are a religious people whose institutions presuppose a Supreme Being." The court's decision, he said, did not ban from public schools "study of the Bible or of religion, when presented objectively as part of a secular program of education."

In separate concurring opinions, the court's only Roman Catholic and its only Jew strove to reinforce the point that the decision bans prescribed religious observances in public schools--and nothing more. Wrote Justice William J. Brennan Jr.: "I venture to suggest that religious exercises in the public schools present a unique problem. For not every involvement of religion in public life violates the establishment clause." He went on to argue that the decision did not apply to chaplains in the armed services, prayers in legislative bodies, tax exemptions for religious institutions, religious mottoes on currency or the "under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance. Wrote Justice Arthur Goldberg: "Neither the state nor this court can or should ignore the significance of the fact that a vast portion of our people believe in and worship God, and that many of our legal, political and personal values derive historically from religious teachings."

The Reaction. Despite such reassurances, there were inevitable protests. From Rome, three of the U.S.'s five

Roman Catholic cardinals spoke out against the ruling. New York's Francis Cardinal Spellman thought it would "do great harm to our country." Boston's Richard Cardinal Cushing called it "a great tragedy." Los Angeles' James Francis Cardinal Mclntyre said that "our American heritage of philosophy, of religion and of freedom is being abandoned."

Among Protestants, Evangelist Billy Graham pronounced himself "shocked" by the decision. "I don't believe that a small minority should rule the majority of the people." Said California's Protestant Episcopal Bishop James A. Pike: "The result of the decision is not neutrality but an imposition upon the public school system of a particular perspective on reality, namely, secularism by default, which is as much an 'ism' as any other."

On the political front, Delaware's Republican Senator John Williams called the decision "disastrous." South Carolina's Democratic Congressman Robert Ashmore labeled it "unreasonable and wild-eyed." The state superintendent of education announced that South Carolina "will continue to feel free" to let teachers hold devotional exercises in their classrooms. That raised a fascinating point: last week's decision presented an opportunity for Southern states, angered at decisions in racial cases, to thumb their noses at the Supreme Court with little fear of effective reprisal. After all, no federal authority is likely to call out the troops to take the Bible out of a teacher's hand or order children to unclasp theirs.

In any event, the impact of last week's decision was nothing compared to that of 1962. Quite clearly, one reason was the Supreme Court's much more careful disclaimers. But just as clearly, in the interim between 1962 and last week, there had been some meditating on the subject. The top policymaking board of the National Council of Churches may have expressed it best when, anticipating the Supreme Court decision a few days before it was handed down, it said: "Neither true religion nor good education is dependent upon the devotional use of the Bible in the public school program." The board argued that religious teaching really belongs in the homes and the churches, not the public schools.

Some clergymen who felt that the court's decision was unassailable on strict constitutional grounds were nonetheless disturbed by it as a long step toward secularization of U.S. life. Devotional exercises in public schools, though often perfunctory, have helped to bring religion into children's lives, and perhaps helped some youngsters to grow up into more moral adults than they otherwise would have become. Many religious Americans, while accepting the court's decision as law, regarded it as a loss to religion, to morality and to the children--a loss that parents and churches must strive to make up.

* The First Amendment, like the rest of the Bill of Rights, originally applied on to acts of the Federal Government. But over the years the Supreme Court has repeatedly affirmed that the 14th Amendment, adopted in 1868, extended the guarantees of the Bill of Rights to cover states and lesser governmental units.

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