Mixing Politics With Prayer

By GEORGE J. CHURCH

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 creche 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.

On state and local levels, ardent believers have tried various ways to circumvent the 1962 Supreme Court ruling. Some legal scholars think that one of these methods, the move by 19 states to authorize a moment of silence in classrooms, might eventually be approved under the reasoning applied by the Supreme Court majority last week to the Pawtucket creche case (see box). But advocates of school prayer are no longer willing to wait or to settle for private meditation. Says the Rev. Jerry Falwell, leader of the Moral Majority: "We didn't fight for the right to keep silent." At the outset of an election year, and with the assistance of a popular President who has fervently embraced the crusade on the campaign trail, prayer advocates are determined to mount a frontal assault in Congress for a constitutional amendment that would permit school prayer.

The drive began in earnest last Monday as amendment supporters staged a night vigil on the Capitol steps in a rainstorm, praying for prayer. Inside the House chamber no amendment had yet been approved by committee, but 59 Representatives, mostly Republicans, took the floor Monday afternoon to speak in favor of one in a session that rolled on until well past dawn on Tuesday. Many speakers associated the absence of prayer in schools with such social evils as drug abuse and sexual promiscuity. Virginia Republican Frank Wolf charged dramatically that the rate of teen-age suicides "began to climb at approximately the same time that the schools were withdrawn from prayer two decades ago." House Democratic leaders, anxious to do nothing that might stigmatize their party as antireligious, stood aside and let the speakers orate on a matter that technically was not up for consideration. "God is neither a Republican nor a Democrat," said Majority Leader James Wright of Texas. "It is wholly inappropriate for either party to attempt to portray the other as being opposed to prayer."

In the Republican-controlled Senate, the debate was for real as Majority Leader Howard Baker called up not one but two proposed amendments--the draft supported by the White House and another offered by Utah Republican Orrin Hatch--for floor action. Baker wrestled last week to blend them into a consensus proposal that would have some chance of winning the two-thirds majority needed for passage. Any amendment would also require a two-thirds vote in the House, where it has been bottled up in committee, and approval by 38 state legislatures.

Baker sought to allay fears that some children would be forced to say prayers in which they did not believe, or that government officials would become involved in writing prayers. The key passages of the amendment taking shape under Baker's efforts read: "Nothing in this Constitution shall be construed to prohibit individual or group, vocal or silent prayer, in public schools or other public institutions. No person shall be required by the United States or by any state to participate in prayer. Neither the United States nor any state shall compose or mandate the words of any prayer to be said in public schools."

At week's end Baker appeared to be half a dozen votes short of the two-thirds Senate majority required to pass an amendment, and he will not press for a vote until he has rounded them up. That could take several weeks, if it happens at all; opponents are pledging "extended debate," a euphemism for filibuster.

If a prayer amendment ever becomes part of the Constitution, there would be immense practical problems in putting it into effect. Who wouId decide the wording of any vocal prayers that might be said in class? Children? Their parents? If each child were to say whatever prayer he or she might wish, would the result not be an incomprehensible babble?

Falwell offers one idea of how the amendment could be made to work: a teacher would call on a different child each day to lead the class in prayer. For example, on one morning a student might recite a Roman Catholic prayer; on the next, a different student might lead a Jewish prayer. Those who wished to pray along would do so; those who wanted to say a different prayer would offer it silently; those who had no desire to pray at all would meditate quietly or simply daydream. Another alternative might be for groups not affiliated with the schools or other branches of government to compose nondenominational prayers and offer them for classroom recitation. In Framingham, Mass., an organization calling itself the Committee for Democratic Response has already placed on the ballot for local elections April 2 a nonbinding proposal to have students recite words from the Declaration of Independence, recast in prayer form ("We further acknowledge that all men are created equal, and that they are endowed by You, our Creator, with certain unalienable rights...").

The amendment drive divides both the religious and political communities. It is strongly supported by many fundamentalist and Evangelical churches, but opposed by major Jewish organizations and the National Council of Churches, which represents 31 mainline Protestant and Orthodox denominations claiming 40 million members. In the Senate, Republicans are leading the opposition to the amendment as well as the push for it. Two prominent opponents are Lowell Weicker of Connecticut and John Danforth of Missouri, who is an Episcopal priest as well as a Senator.

Washington got a vivid reminder last week of how passions have been inflamed by the issue. Joann Bell and Lucille McCord visited the capital to relate at a press conference what happened to them three years ago in Little Axe, Okla., when they filed suit against a "voluntary" prayer program that they thought was coercive. A week after they filed the complaint, Bell's car was surrounded by an angry crowd and a school cafeteria employee pulled her out of the vehicle, dislocating her arm, she says. McCord said her three sons were humiliated by teachers and beaten up by other children on the school playground. Both families moved to the town of Harrah 20 miles away.

The overwhelming majority of prayer advocates, of course, would be horrified by such tactics. It is their freedom to pray, they insist, that has been taken away by a zealous cadre of secularists, and they are only trying to reclaim it, without coercing anyone. Polls have consistently shown heavy majorities in favor of school prayer; Gallup reported last September that 81% of respondents who had followed the issue supported an amendment that would permit "voluntary" prayer, vs. only 14% opposed. Says Dan Alexander, president of a Mobile, Ala., organization called Save Our Schools: "We've allowed a small, very vocal minority to pick away at our values and our basic rights for a very long time. Now our right to pray is being threatened, and I say that's where we draw the line."

Harvard Constitutional Scholar Laurence Tribe, speaking for many opponents of the amendment, replies that "the premise that prayer is not allowed in schools...is a lie. Official, organized prayer is not allowed, true, but kids can pray if they want"--silently, individually, on the bus, in the lunchroom, during classes. North Carolina Democratic Congressman Charlie Rose wryly notes, "As long as there are math tests, children will pray in school."

Amendment opponents insist that organized, vocal prayer can never be truly voluntary. Children of different faiths, or none, will feel themselves forced by social pressure to join in. Contends Rabbi Balfour Brickner of Manhattan's Stephen Wise Free Synagogue: "If the prayer is spoken, it will be physically coercive, and if silent it will be psychologically coercive." The alternative, opponents contend, is to offer prayers so general as to be meaningless, even offensive to the truly religious. The establishment of a neutered "civil religion" is offensive to many who believe deeply in their own faiths. Says Robert Minor, professor of religious studies at the University of Kansas: "Christians should probably be outraged at prayers directed 'to whom it may concern.'"

Whatever the outcome, school-prayer advocates now have the aggressive national champion they had long lacked: Ronald Reagan. The President's ardent embrace of their cause has raised cynical eyebrows among Democrats like House Speaker Tip O'Neill, who notes that Reagan is hardly a regular churchgoer. In more than three years as President, Reagan has attended worship services only nine times. Apparently referring to the disruption his attendance at a worship service might cause, Reagan said last week of his churchgoing, "I miss it very much. But I represent too much of a threat to too many other people for me to be able to go to church." That does not explain why Reagan has shown no interest in inviting clergymen to conduct services in the White House, as Richard Nixon did, or at Camp David, which was Jimmy Carter's practice.

Reagan's push for a prayer amendment may reflect longstanding conviction, but its timing and strategy at least have been heavily influenced by electoral calculation. Fundamentalist and Evangelical Protestants contributed many ballots to Reagan's 1980 sweep. But some have been grumbling that the President has done little to advance the so-called social issues that concern them most, like antiabortion legislation. Some months ago, White House strategists decided that the outset of the presidential campaign was the right time to placate this "core constituency" and that school prayer was the issue to stress in doing so. Explains one of the President's top political advisers: "It's good politics, frankly, and it does not cost us anything."

Reagan made pleas for school prayer to national TV audiences in his January State of the Union address and the subsequent announcement of his candidacy for reelection. In his speech to the Evangelicals last week, Reagan said, "Hasn't something gone haywire when this great Constitution of ours is invoked to allow Nazis and Ku Klux Klansmen to march on public property and urge the extermination of Jews and the subjugation of blacks, but it supposedly prevents our children from Bible study or the saying of a simple prayer in their schools?"

Even if Reagan's advocacy should help push a school-prayer amendment through Congress, however, years could be required before it could amass enough state ratifications to take effect, if indeed it ever did. At least until then, the deciding voice in church-state relations will continue to be that of the Supreme Court. But the accent in the court's voice seems to be changing too, as evidenced by the praise showered on last week's creche decision by some of the conservative religious groups that have long seen the court as their special bugbear.

The case involved Pawtucket's use of public funds ($1,365 initially, $20 a year now) to buy and then reerect annually a creche as part of a Christmas display that also featured such secular holiday symbols as reindeer and a Santa Claus house. Chief Justice Burger, writing for the court majority, found the Nativity scene to be a "passive" symbol and its presence in the display "no more an advancement or endorsement of religion than...the exhibition of literally hundreds of religious paintings in governmentally supported museums." Said Burger: "We are unable to perceive the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Vicar of Rome or other powerful religious leaders" lurking behind the creche.

More significant than the particulars of the case was some of the majority's reasoning. Far from decreeing "complete separation of church and state," Burger wrote, the Constitution "affirmatively mandates accommodation, not merely tolerance, of all religions, and forbids hostility toward any." Religious conservatives were cheered by the role of Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, Reagan's sole appointee to the court, who wrote a concurring opinion asserting, among other things, that the degree of "political divisiveness" caused by a government practice aiding religion was not in itself any guide toward whether that practice fostered an "excessive entanglement" of church and state. Falwell, who originally viewed the appointment of O'Connor as a "disaster," now says it "is the President's No. 1 contribution to religion in this country."

The idea that the court majority might now be looking for ways to accommodate religion deeply troubled the four Justices who joined in a stinging dissent, written by William Brennan. He accused the majority of a "careless decision" that failed to apply any consistent reasoning at all. Indeed, Brennan wrote, "it seems the Court is willing to alter its analysis from Term to Term to suit its preferred results." By approving Pawtucket's use of public funds, however minuscule, to display a specifically Christian symbol, Brennan asserted, "the Court takes a long step backwards to the days [in 1892] when Justice [David] Brewer could arrogantly declare for the Court that 'this is a Christian nation.' Those days, I had thought, were forever put behind us..." The ruling that should have accomplished that, said Brennan, was the Supreme Court's original school-prayer decision. But as the current attempt to overturn that decision demonstrates, no church-state issue that arouses popular passion ever seems to be settled once and for all. --By George J. Church. Reported by Anne Constable and Neil MacNeil/ Washington, with other bureaus

* The phrase was first used by President Thomas Jefferson in a letter to the Danbury, Conn., Baptist Association on New Year's Day, 1802.

With reporting by Anne Constable, Neil MacNeil