Christian Groups Craft ‘Religious Equality’ Amendment : Constitution: Proposal to allow student-led prayer is expected to be introduced in Congress soon. Civil libertarians are preparing to fight it.

Poised to catch the second wave of this year’s Republican revolution in Congress, the leaders of eight conservative and Christian evangelical groups have crafted a broad constitutional amendment that would permit student-led prayers in public schools and government aid to parochial schools.

Backers of the proposed amendment predicted that it will gain strong support in Congress because it stops well short of allowing teachers or school officials to lead prayers. They say that their aim is to protect the rights of students and all Americans to express their faith in public.

“This is not a Christian-right amendment. We don’t want to see a return to the pre-1962 situation, with a teacher leading the class in prayer,” said Jay Sekulow, counsel for the American Center for Law and Justice, a religious liberties legal group founded by Christian broadcaster Pat Robertson.

Sekulow referred to the year the Supreme Court ruled official school prayers unconstitutional. After the November elections, some religious conservatives talked of pushing a school prayer amendment through Congress to overturn that decision.

But since then the religious right’s advocates have worked on drafting a more moderate proposal that would protect the freedom of students to pray in small groups or to allow parents to get public stipends, or vouchers, to send their children to religious schools.

Asked Sunday on ABC-TV’s “This Week With David Brinkley” about the school prayer issue, House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) said: “There may well by fall be a religious freedom bill of some kind. I don’t think it will be purely school prayer.”

The Religious Equality Amendment is expected to be introduced in Congress after lawmakers return from their mid-April recess. It almost surely will touch off another highly charged battle because civil liberties advocates have said they will fight any measure that seeks to break down the barriers between church and state.

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The proposed amendment states that government officials and school authorities shall not “abridge the freedom of any person or group, including students in public schools, to engage in prayer or other religious expression in circumstances in which expression of a non-religious character would be permitted.”

Lawyers who worked on the proposal said it would allow student-led prayers in instances where students are authorized to speak their minds, such as a valedictorian at a graduation ceremony. But some religious-rights advocates said the proposal would go further and might allow students to deliver prayers on the school intercom.

A second provision states that officials may not “deny benefits to or otherwise discriminate against any person” because of religion, nor forbid a “public or a ceremonial acknowledgment” of religion.

These provisions, if added to the Constitution, likely would overrule at least half a dozen Supreme Court rulings over the last 20 years that have outlawed most religious activities in public schools as well as public funding for parochial schools.

For example, the justices have said schools may not post the Ten Commandments on the wall, teach “creationism” or organize a daily moment for voluntary prayer. The high court has also barred the use of public funding for textbooks in parochial schools and struck down the use of public school tutors in religious schools.

More recently, the court outlawed a city hall display of a manger scene depicting the birth of Jesus and barred public school officials from inviting a cleric to deliver a prayer at a graduation ceremony.

All these rulings are based on the First Amendment’s provision barring the government from any actions “respecting an establishment of religion.”

However, leaders of the conservative and Christian groups said these decisions go far beyond what the framers of the Constitution intended and instead show a “pervasive and aggressive hostility toward genuine religious expression.” While the right to free speech on most subjects is protected, they said, expressions of religious faith are often excluded from public events.

“We believe that seeking to make the public schools an artificially sanitized religious-free zone is religious segregation,” said Richard D. Land, executive director of the Christian Life Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention.

“I would expect the atheists and agnostics to dislike this,” said the Rev. Louis P. Sheldon, chairman of the California-based Traditional Values Coalition, which has taken a leading role in developing the proposal. “But we do not want our great religious heritages and traditions treated in an apartheid manner.”

Details of the proposed amendment have been kept confidential by its drafters. Some liberal supporters of church-and-state separation predicted that a broad proposal would provoke strong opposition.

“Students are already free to say a prayer silently. I think they want to allow proselytizing in schools and workplaces,” said Leslie Harris, public policy director of People for the American Way. “That will expand the controversy tenfold,” she said.

Last fall, Gingrich designated Rep. Ernest Istook Jr. (R-Okla.) to lead the campaign for a school prayer amendment. But his initial effort, which would have permitted daily prayers led by teachers, drew surprising criticism from conservative Christian groups, including the Christian Coalition based in Virginia Beach, Va., and the Christian Legal Society in Annandale, Va.

Officials of those groups said it would be politically divisive and religiously inappropriate to involve teachers or school officials in delivering prayers. That in turn led the coalition of religious activists to draft the new proposal focusing on the freedom of religious expression.

The leaders of the initiative said they have consulted with House Judiciary Committee Chairman Henry J. Hyde (R-Ill.) and Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Orrin G. Hatch (R-Utah) and anticipate that the two will become key sponsors for the amendment.

A constitutional amendment needs the support of two-thirds of the House and Senate and ratification by three-fourths of the state legislatures.

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The Religious Equality Amendment

Section 1. Neither the United States nor any State shall abridge the freedom of any person or group, including students in public schools, to engage in prayer or other religious expression in circumstances in which expression of a non-religious character would be permitted; nor deny benefits to or otherwise discriminate against any person or group on account of the religious character of their speech, ideas, motivations or identity.

Section 2. Nothing in the Constitution shall be construed to forbid the United States or any State to give public or ceremonial acknowledgment to the religious heritage, beliefs, or traditions of its people.

Section 3. The exercise, by the people, of any freedoms under the First Amendment or under this Amendment shall not constitute an establishment of religion.