Mississippi OKs School Prayers Led by Students

Students will be allowed to pray at school as long as the worshiping is something they initiate, under a bill signed Friday by Gov. Kirk Fordice.

The legislation was introduced after a Jackson school principal was suspended for allowing students to read prayers over the intercom.

The school board initially fired Wingfield High School Principal Bishop Knox last November, saying he had violated district policy. The board later gave Knox his job back but suspended him until the end of the school year.

The bill expands a 1979 state law allowing voluntary prayer in classrooms. It allows “non-sectarian and non-proselytizing voluntary benedictions, invocations or prayers, which are initiated and given by a student volunteer.”

The prayers may be said at school or at school-sanctioned events.

In debate during the closing days of the 1994 legislative session, Democratic state Sen. Travis Little said the bill was a response to “liberal decisions” by the U.S. Supreme Court about prayer in schools.

Opponents of the measure say the state should not be forcing religion into the classrooms and that the law should deal only with prayer at events students are not required to attend, such as graduations, assemblies and sporting contests.

The Supreme Court declared school prayer unconstitutional in 1963, but a 1992 U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals decision held that voluntary, student-led and student-initiated prayers are constitutional.