Dannemeyer Unveils School-Prayer Measure

The way William E. Dannemeyer sees it, God ought to have a reserved seat in the nation’s public schools. This week in Congress, he will take the first step in an intensified effort to set that seat aside.

Dannemeyer (R-Fullerton) on Thursday plans to introduce in the House of Representatives a “Community Life Amendment,” a constitutional amendment that would allow states and communities to legalize voluntary school prayer and instruction in the Judeo-Christian ethic, including the Ten Commandments and the Bible’s version of creation.

“America now serves at the altar of man,” Dannemeyer said in remarks prepared for delivery Thursday. He said the philosophy of humanism, setting man above the Creator, “has kicked the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob . . . out of our nation’s school system.”

At best, congressional staff members say, the odds against passage of Dannemeyer’s amendment are tremendous. Even if approved by the required two-thirds vote in both houses of Congress, the measure would have to be ratified by 38 of the 50 state legislatures to become law.

Dannemeyer, however, is undaunted.

“The American public overwhelmingly

wants this thing to happen,” he said in an interview, citing polls that he said have shown that two-thirds of Americans support voluntary prayer in schools.

Even if he is not ultimately successful, the six-term conservative hopes to focus new attention on an issue whose time, he insists, is coming. He said he hopes to take advantage of an arcane House rule to get his controversial measure to the House floor without running the gantlet of a hostile subcommittee. Once there, Dannemeyer aides said, they would attempt to rouse public support and sway members feeling pressure from hometown constituents.

If he gets that far, Dannemeyer for the first time would confront Congress directly with the explosive issue of teaching the biblical doctrine of creation in public schools, said a lobbyist for the American Civil Liberties Union.

No such measure has yet made it to the floor of either house for a vote, and most lawmakers would clearly prefer to avoid the issue.

“This literally rewrites the First Amendment to the Constitution,” said Barry W. Lynn, legislative counsel in the ACLU’s Washington office. The First Amendment bars Congress from making “any law respecting an establishment of religion” or infringing on the right to free speech, a free press and peaceful assembly.

Since 1962, the Supreme Court has, in a series of decisions, interpreted the First Amendment as barring various forms of prayer in public schools. Two years ago, the high court held unconstitutional a state law requiring public schools to teach the biblical doctrine of creation along with scientific theories of evolution.

ACLU national spokeswoman Colleen O’Connor on Tuesday referred to Dannemeyer’s constitutional initiative as “an overt attempt to try to Christianize the school system.”

Lynn added: “I think that some of this effort . . . serves as a way to put people on record” in Congress to make them targets of public pressure. However, he said, “I think it is one that can be defeated.”

The four-paragraph amendment begins: “The right of the people to allow voluntary school prayer and the teaching of the Judeo-Christian ethic in public schools shall not be denied or abridged by the United States.”

It then says the definition of the “Judeo-Christian ethic” shall include “the Ten Commandments, and the creation of the earth as accepted in the Judeo-Christian tradition.”

Dannemeyer’s press secretary, Paul Mero, said the amendment meets a key test of a 1963 Supreme Court decision in that it has a “secular” or non-religious purpose. In this case, Mero said, that purpose is to teach youngsters basic American values embodied in the Declaration of Independence.

He cited the second paragraph of the Declaration, which says that all men “are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

Said Mero: “We can’t very well come out and tell the kids they have unalienable rights if we are unwilling to say there is a Creator, to acknowledge that fact.”

Dannemeyer wants to prevent the House Judiciary Committee from referring his amendment to the subcommittee on civil and constitutional rights, which is dominated by Democrats who have opposed previous Dannemeyer initiatives.

Employing a rarely used House rule, the congressman hopes to persuade a majority of the full Judiciary Committee to sign a letter calling for consideration of the measure at that level.

Dannemeyer is staking his hopes on the fact that 20 members of the 35-member Judiciary Committee last month voted for a voluntary prayer-related amendment tacked on to a vocational education funding bill. The amendment, which passed the House 269 to 135, marked the first House vote on school prayer since 1984. The complete bill is still under congressional consideration.

However, Lynn of the ACLU and others, including several congressional staffers, said the constitutional amendment is much more ambitious and potentially far-reaching.

The vocational education amendment, one staff member said, “was an easy one to vote yes for. I’m sure a lot of members said, ‘I’ll vote yes, but the courts will save us’ ” by ruling the measure unconstitutional.