Prayer In Public Schools

The United States of America has a long, rich history in Judeo-Christian prayer used in every sector of government and private sector business. In fact, Christian values affect everything in the US, from how laws are written, the penal code, and even money. “In God We Trust” is stated on every bill in and removed from circulation. The President of the United States, newly appointed justices, and newly elected members of congress all take the official oath of office using, and swearing upon, The Bible. Every time the congress convenes a session, the official chaplain gives an opening prayer. Each day the Supreme Court opens each session with the prayer “God Save the United States and this Honorable Court.” All of these areas share one thing …show more content…
We as humans have a way of proselytizing our beliefs, and here in the US, this is no different. The worry is that “When religion has invaded our public school system, it has singled out…the children in the minority.” (FFRF) The Freedom From Religion Foundation also believes that prayer in school has nothing to do with moral or scholastic decline amongst the student population. They cite Japan’s lowest crime rate among civilized society, where there is ZERO public prayer in schools, as proof that prayer has nothing to do with morality. They go on to say scholastics are not affected by the allowance of prayer, proclaiming, “Institutionalizing school prayer can not raise the SAT scores (only more studying and less praying can do that). It is irrational to charge that the complicated sociological problems facing our ever-changing population stem from a lack of prayer in schools.” (FFRF) All of us have different ideas about what we want our children to be exposed to, and the reason why the Freedom From Religion Foundation exists is to be a healthy check on a sometimes very biased world. Time and time again in their brochure they demonstrate how our founding fathers intended for this nation to be free from “religious discrimination,” and kept free from a state …show more content…
The Establishment Clause states: “Congress shall make no law respecting the establishment of religion, nor prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” These words and the particular phrasing can be traced to both Thomas Jefferson and James Madison’s views on religious freedom, and how consequential it was and is in the very core of The Constitution. This establishment of our religious freedom was highly argued just concerning the wording that was to be used, much less the concept itself. Seven different versions of the First Amendment were debated in committee and on the floors of both the House of Representatives and the Senate before the final wordings were chosen. All of these versions are actually more in depth in protecting the freedoms of the populace from a state-controlled religion. The founders intended religion to be a part of daily life in government (not apart from daily life) and in how laws were made and interpreted. These men were, however, aware of the necessity of the freedom of one to choose what to believe, and for that decision to be protected. There is even legal precedence declaring the “importance of prayer,” as shown in Zorach v. Clauson (Oyez Inc). In fact, the idea of Separation of Church and State is not even in the First Amendment, much less The Constitution of these United States. It comes from a letter written to the Danbury Baptist Association, in which Jefferson