Prayers Raised : Students Worldwide Gather at Flagpoles to Worship

As the sun edged over the horizon Wednesday, nearly 200 Los Alamitos High School students gathered under the school’s flagpole as if holding a political rally.

But this wasn’t about politics. Instead, students bowed their heads, held hands and prayed. Teenagers asked for blessings for their teachers, family and friends, joining a worldwide annual prayer celebration dubbed See You at the Pole. The 30-minute open worship at the school’s flagpole--minus the flag because school wasn’t officially open--also included prayers to promote unity among students.

“Although we are mainly Christian, we don’t discriminate against other people who want to join us in glorifying God,” said Ashley Chrisman, 17, chief organizer of the Los Alamitos High prayer, which began at 7 a.m.

Like Chrisman and her campus-based Bible-study group, hundreds of students at schools countywide gathered at campus flagpoles Wednesday, joining some 2.5 million students around the United States and 20 other nations.

The sixth annual event was sponsored by the San Diego-based National Network of Youth Ministry, a Christian organization representing youth ministries of 55 denominations, primarily evangelicals.

At least a dozen bystanders, viewing the event from a distance, shrugged it off as harmless.

“It doesn’t hurt anybody . . . and it doesn’t make a difference,” said one boy playing Hacky Sack with a friend.

“It’s all right. There’s nothing wrong with it,” said Kristina Miloslavic, 15, who was studying at the school’s main quad. “There would have been more people if they did this later on.”

Organizers view the event as a positive way for students to cope with today’s problems.

“Students face anything from hardships at home to the temptations of drugs. We believe there’s one solution to that, a relationship with God,” said Doug Clark, director of field ministries for the National Network of Youth Ministry.

“The beginning of any spiritual movement begins with prayer, and See You at the Pole is a good example of a Christian movement that we try to encourage and support.”

See You at the Pole began at a Dallas high school in 1990 when a group of students gathered spontaneously to pray. By the following year, the student-organized event had become a nationwide observance at high schools. It has since grown to include elementary and middle schools, as well as high schools in countries as diverse as Kenya and Ecuador.

No school district sanctions the event, and all prayers took place before school hours.

Under 1994 federal guidelines, students have the right to engage in individual or group prayer on school grounds, as long as it is non-disruptive and does not infringe on others’ religious beliefs.

American Civil Liberties Union officials say it is in within the students’ First Amendment rights to express their religious beliefs.

“There’s nothing illegal or unconstitutional about the pole activity,” said Carol Sobel, a spokeswoman at the Southern California ACLU. “If the school doesn’t promote it and there are no school officials attending and it’s non-curriculum time, then it doesn’t violate any federal law.”

Officials at the Washington-based advocacy group, Americans United for Separation of Church and State, agreed.

“The only concern we have is [whether] it’s student-initiated, student-run and student-led,” spokesman Robert Boston said.

“In some parts of the country we’ve heard that administrators try to sponsor it or teachers participate. But most of the time we field questions from school administrators and inform them what is legal.”

After the prayers ended, and shortly before class instruction began, school officials ushered children into classrooms.

The event “is good because kids pull together and participate in something positive,” said Jerry Halpin, an assistant principal at Los Alamitos High.

In one prayer at Los Alamitos, students asked that a varsity cheerleader suffering from cancer find relief from her pain.

On the other side of the county, about 150 students gathered at Esperanza High School in Anaheim.

“It’s been well received by students. Students prayed for the needs of their school; for God to reveal himself to people on campus; and for wisdom for the leaders of our country,” said youth pastor Jeff Bell, 36, who is a member of the Evangelical Free Church of Yorba Linda.

The national organizers encourage adults to stay away from the event, but “it’s so exciting for us to see what’s happening on campuses. It’s hard to stay away,” he said.