Prayer-in-School Drive Has Strong Foothold in South : Courts: A family in Mississippi objects to religion in the classroom and files suit. But officials defend their practices.

For 15-year-old Kevin Herdahl, the hardest part of going to school every day is knowing that classmates are talking about him behind his back. But then, getting terms like “devil worshiper” tossed in his face doesn’t make him feel too good either.

“I used to enjoy school,” the blond, athletic ninth-grader said last week. “Now I just go to get it over with.”

Moving to Mississippi is what changed his attitude. Since his family moved to this Bible Belt community from Wisconsin 14 months ago, his mother, Lisa Herdahl, has tangled continually with local officials who are intent on keeping prayer and religious instruction in the public schools.

School-sanctioned prayer, a cause supported by incoming House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.), has been illegal in the United States since the Supreme Court ruled it unconstitutional in 1962. But that hasn’t kept school districts in Mississippi and other parts of the South from allowing it.

In the past year both Mississippi and Alabama have passed laws requiring schools to allow prayer at student events, Georgia has adopted a law requiring a moment of silence and the Virginia Legislature has directed state school officials to adopt guidelines for prayer in the schools.

In the eyes of school-prayer supporters, acts like these place the South at the vanguard of a social movement to restore traditional values to American life. But to people like the Herdahls, the movement spells trouble.

“It’s a constitutional issue,” said Lisa Herdahl, who filed a lawsuit over the issue last month. “I believe that by having prayer in school they are taking away my religious upbringing of my children.”

“Folks around here thought she was an atheist--an atheist or a devil worshiper,” said Danny Lampley, one of her attorneys.

Lawyers for the Washington-based People for the American Way say they believe that flouting of the Supreme Court ban on school-sanctioned prayer is widespread. In areas such as this one, where there is little religious diversity or where no parent wants to make waves by challenging tradition, the practice may never become an issue.

Lisa Herdahl says she understands why people would keep silent. Since she objected to her children participating in the prayers and Bible classes, she said her five children who attend school have been harassed and called names, and some neighbors have shunned her.

“I’ve been in the grocery store and heard people talk about ‘the atheist woman from Wisconsin’ and ‘the woman who wants to change everything,’ ” she said recently as her six children romped through the house playing with Christmas toys.

Kevin Herdahl said he was approached by a friend who said he had heard “from a whole bunch of kids” that Kevin was a devil worshiper. The friend wanted to know the truth before deciding whether to continue associating with him.

Other times, Kevin said, he has heard kids talking among themselves about “Herdahl’s mom.” They would fall silent when he approached, he said. Lisa Herdahl said incidents such as these have caused several of her children--good students--to try to avoid school by pretending to be sick.

“To me that’s not a Christian attitude to have,” she said of the treatment. “As much as people claim to be Christian down here, they don’t behave like it.”

In Pontotoc County, students begin each day with a student-led prayer broadcast over the school intercom system; they also pray in the classroom before going to lunch.

In addition, high school students can get credit for an elective course titled Biblical History of the Middle East, which school superintendent Jerry Horton acknowledges is fancy nomenclature for basically the same Bible studies course he took in the early 1960s.

Elementary school students receive similar Biblical instruction every four days, on a rotating basis with art, music and physical education.

“I went to a Southern Baptist private school for one year when I was in high school,” said Lisa Herdahl, who grew up in San Diego. “We had less religious training in the Southern Baptist school than we have here in public school.”

In her lawsuit, she alleges that religious teaching is also routinely inserted into the school’s regular instruction.

When she complained, she said school officials always turned the discussion around to her faith in God.

“They told me there’s never been a problem because everybody down here believes in God and in prayer and in the Bible,” said Herdahl, who is a Lutheran. “I said that’s not the point, but they would always turn it around.

“This is not about whether I believe in God or not,” she said. “It’s about separation of church and state.”

Horton defends the Bible classes, saying they examine the Bible “from a historical, literary perspective.”

“We believe the Judeo-Christian heritage is the foundation of much of what we have in Western civilization--political, economic and literary--and it’s taught from that perspective.”

The Bible is the primary text because “the Bible has had a tremendous influence on our culture and Western civilization as a whole,” he said.

He cited an example: The phrase “30 pieces of silver” appears from time to time in secular literature. “If a student did not understand the background of that phrase, then he would not understand the literature he was studying.”

Horton conceded that other ancient civilizations also influenced Western culture and that the school system offers no courses in, for example, Greek or Roman history. “We don’t have Greek history,” he said. “We have U.S. history, state history, local history, world history and Biblical history.”

During Bible class, the Herdahl children in elementary school are allowed to take an extra period of music, art or physical education.

But being pulled from class calls attention to them and makes them the target of derision from other students, Lisa Herdahl said. One teacher worsened matters, the lawsuit alleges, by saying in class that her son was leaving because he didn’t believe in God.

Another teacher put earphones on the head of one of Herdahl’s children to keep him from hearing the daily prayer, which also called attention to him and resulted in taunts from his classmates, she alleges.

Once she made an issue of religious teaching, Lisa Herdahl contends, school officials began to ignore her complaints about other issues. An assistant principal at the North Pontotoc Attendance Center--a combined elementary, middle and high school--told her he didn’t want her children at the school, she said.

Horton denies this.

He said the official explained to Lisa Herdahl that prayer and Bible classes were a longstanding tradition, that it was supported by the students and that it was constitutional. “He never said he wished that she wasn’t in the school district. What he said was that this is the way we operate and that if she was looking for something different, she wouldn’t be able to find it here.”

While Horton denies that there has been any harassment, either from teachers or from students, he concedes that religion is an emotional issue in the community.

“She attacked a practice that has gone on in this county for a long, long time,” he said. “People in the county support it, and they don’t want it to be stopped.”

Tumult in Mississippi over the school prayer issue is not new. Shortly after Herdahl moved to Ecru in October, 1993, a firestorm of controversy erupted in a different part of the state over the firing of a school principal for allowing students to read prayers over the school intercom.

His dismissal was later downgraded to a suspension, but not before thousands of protesters--including Gov. Kirk Fordice--rallied at the state Capitol and more than 1,000 students across the state staged school walkouts to protest the punishment.

Fordice said he thought the national airing of the issue could spark a movement toward reversing the Supreme Court ruling banning school-sanctioned prayer.

“This may be just the beginning of rallies all over this country,” he said. “I think it would be the greatest thing in the world for that trend to start right here in Mississippi.”

The law authorizing student-led prayer in the schools passed the Legislature on the heels of the controversy. After the constitutionality of the law was challenged by the American Civil Liberties Union and People for the American Way, a federal judge struck down most of its provisions in September.

The judge said that even though the prayers are student-led, students who did not want to hear them or participate would still be coerced to take part in a “captive audience” situation. He let stand only one provision of the law that allowed prayer at high school graduations because he said it is protected by past court rulings.

The state is appealing the ruling.

In Pontotoc County, school officials watched the controversy unfold with interest but without alarm. They are confident, Horton said, that local practices are constitutional.

“It’s controlled by the students,” he said of the morning devotional. “It’s student-initiated. We feel like it’s protected by the free exercise clause of the First Amendment.”

In the eight years that he has been associated with the school district as a superintendent and teacher, this is the first time anyone has challenged the prayers or Bible classes, he said.

“It’s primarily a homogenous county,” he said. While people here are “primarily Baptist,” he said, there also are Methodists, Presbyterians and other Christian denominations in the county. Students of those denominations all take part in the Bible classes and have not been offended by the teachings, he said.