Orange County Voices : COMMENTARY ON SCHOOL PRAYER : Lawmakers Can Better Help Pupils : With so many faiths, a single prayer should not be considered, nor tolerated.

If we are to believe the media hype surrounding the first Republican Congress in decades, the battle cry will be “Bring Back School Prayer!” And most of the members of Congress will be considering bringing back something that never was.

Unless the senators and representatives attended parochial or private elementary or secondary schools, the chances are very good that prayer in school was, at best, an annual event at baccalaureate or graduation--unless they lived and attended school in New York or Baltimore prior to 1962. The issue of prayer in the public schools is not new; the U.S. Supreme Court has been addressing this issue for over 30 years.

In 1962, in a landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision called Engel vs. Vitale, at issue was a New York statute that called for a 22-word regents’ prayer in each classroom. The court held New York’s statute unconstitutional, finding that the daily classroom invocation of God’s blessings was a religious activity.

The highest court in the land did acknowledge that this nation was founded on Christian principles and that 64% of the nation’s population professed church membership. Historically, this ruling on the regents’ prayer is often cited as the benchmark prayer in the schools decision, but it subsequently became the most widely misunderstood of the court’s actions on prayer.

As the most far-reaching decision at the time, it eliminated prayer in the public schools. But it did not preclude the right of any individual to pray silently nor, for that matter, did it outlaw moments of silence, provided they were not thinly veiled attempts to require participation in a schoolwide religious event.

Another landmark decision the following year found the Schempp family suing the Abington School District in Pennsylvania, seeking to void the practice of requiring that “at least 10 verses from the Holy Bible be read, without comment, at the opening of each public school on each school day.” The U.S. Supreme Court ruled this practice unconstitutional in 1963.

Two names often associated with school prayer involve Madalyn Murray O’Hair and her son, William J. Murray III, who contested an historic 1905 action of the Board of School Commissioners of Baltimore City, Md., which provided for the holding of opening exercises in the city’s schools that consisted primarily of the “reading, without comment, of a chapter of the Holy Bible and/or use of the Lord’s Prayer.” In an attempt to ameliorate the conflict, the board authorized students to be excused at the request of the parent. Finding that unacceptable, the Murrays pursued their goal, and the exercises were dropped in 1963.

There are more--thousands of pages of U.S. Supreme Court cases striking down as unconstitutional prayer or other religious activity in the public schools of our nation. Posting the Ten Commandments in Kentucky’s public schools drew a similar fate in 1980, as did voluntary prayer at school assemblies in 1981. In 1985, Alabama’s “one-minute period of silence” statute for “meditation or voluntary prayer” was held to be solely “an effort to return voluntary prayer to the public schools.”

Recent initial comments by a few legislators indicate support for a “generic” prayer acceptable to all organized religions.

In Orange County alone, 78 different denominations are listed in the telephone books, ranging from “mainline” to the newest of faiths. It is difficult to contemplate a gathering of the 78 church leaders whose goal is a prayer acceptable to each congregation. Assuming such agreement is even remotely possible, is it not worth considering what truly major societal problems might be resolved given the same effort?

Prayer is primarily a private and personal communication with one’s Supreme Being, or a corporate experience among a gathering of believers with the same convictions. To foist an impersonal prayer on a class of 35 children from conceivably 35 different churches is a violation of personal rights and should neither be considered nor tolerated.

As a Presbyterian, I would encourage the clarification of the Supreme Court decisions on school prayer--if this issue had not been studied and decided time and time again. The issue of school prayer was addressed by the framers in the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Personally, I would support a moment of silence at the opening of the school day or, for that matter, the beginning of each class, primarily to allow the students “to get their act together.”

Schooling is serious business; education is important, and it just may be that children of all ages would be a bit more ready to learn, following a brief moment to concentrate on who they are and what they’re about.

My nightly prayers always end with “and help me to do my best tomorrow.” Now I may include Congress in those prayers, beseeching my Supreme Being to intervene in their thoughts and encourage them to put their best effort toward solving the real problems faced by our public schools. If they’re stuck for an agenda, have them call me.

Amen.