Guest Post by Matilda
Recently, Matt Gaetz has said he wants a law to make prayer mandatory in schools. He’s just the latest in a long line of fundy lawmakers, pastors, and leaders to want the same, telling us it’s the only solution to every one of the USA’s problems.
I’m comparing that belief in school prayer as the antidote to all that is wrong with American society, to religion in UK schools.
Britain is now an almost secular society in spite of the fact that, since 1947, it’s been law here that there should be a daily act of Christian worship in schools and that religious education (RE) should be part of the core curriculum. The mandatory act of worship still stands, though the teaching of RE is subject to local education boards and faith schools can set their own curricula. I used to observe that the only parents who withdrew their children from Christian teaching were from ethnic minorities who practised another religion. I then saw white British-born parents beginning to exercise their right to withdraw their children because they just found the idea of religious indoctrination abhorrent or totally irrelevant to their lives.
I was told that becoming a teacher was God’s plan for me, and that it would be a great career for sharing my faith. Newly married, hubby and I did just that. We were huge fans of Larry Norman back in the early 1970s. We played his albums repeatedly. I remember that a chill went through us as we heard his line in a song, ‘It’s against the law to pray in schools.’ And we worried slightly, because here in the UK, hubby and I, as teachers, could unashamedly promote our evangelical faith. Perhaps Norman was being prophetic, we would soon be persecuted and have to go into hiding.
In one place I lived, Christian mums held a monthly prayer meeting for Christian teachers in the local schools. In another, our church put out a summer prayer list, where students could fill in the dates of each of their end-of-year exams so we could pray for them on those days. Maybe our church students would be ‘A Good Witness,’ by getting better grades than heathen students and be able to attribute it to the power of prayer for them in school.
For decades I had free range. I told bible stories to 5-7-year-olds, quietly ignoring genocidal bits of the OT. I took assemblies – many schools didn’t have a practising Christian on the staff so were relieved when one offered to do that. Then schools were told they should be part of ‘the wider community,’ and invite local clergy in for morning worship. We rubbed our hands with glee and contacted evangelical speakers, or evangelists visiting the area and got them in so they could promote our brand of Christianity. I took courses that led to me training schools on how to utilize the newest, trendy way to teach RE in their schools. A fundy organisation had managed to draw up an RE curriculum that was very Bible-based, yet acceptable to secular authorities, but it required training, so I did that gleefully too. Being sneaky-for-Jesus was just fine if it got our flavour of faith into schools.
So, I’m wondering how prayer in USA schools would affect society – because it certainly hasn’t in the UK.
Back to those praying mums who told me I was ‘sowing seeds’ with every story. Maybe not now, but even many years on, it might get my hearers to think about their eternal destiny. . . I seriously can’t think of having met anyone who got saved as an adult by recalling what they had to pray for in school or because of what they were taught in mandatory RE classes. I suggest that if you ask many Brits how they’d describe school assemblies, they’d say ‘boring.’ No one’s ever told me they got saved by recalling that teacher many years later, who’d pranced about on stage with sets of two toy fluffy animals boarding the Ark and explained God’s omnibenevolent character to them through his genocide. No one’s ever told me they found The True Meaning Of Christmas when they took part in those many Nativity plays I produced, much as those pretty little (blonde) girls loved those sparkly angel dresses, tinsel, and glitter.
Am I completely off track here, Am I completely misunderstanding USA Christian culture?
I’m just recalling my wasted decades of praying and evangelising openly in UK schools, and, like other evangelistic projects I took part in, they recorded a score of zero converts.
What effect do you think compulsory prayer will have on America’s children? Will it re-Christianise the country as God sends wondrous, miraculous answers to school prayers?
Bruce Gerencser, 67, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 46 years. He and his wife have six grown children and thirteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
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Compulsory prayer in public schools would face a Constitutional challenge immediately. Even if it didn’t, or if it somehow passed the challenge, I don’t think it would do a darned thing. In the US we’re so used to being exposed to if not assaulted with Christian things and Christianity pretty much everywhere already. We’re used to ignoring it. Kids ignore so much already anyway, ignoring that wouldn’t be hard at all. Parents are used to telling their children to tolerate others’ religious actions, to just quietly wait it out, to let them do their thing, and move on. You do you, as the saying goes. As you said, few if any have been converted by your own efforts and that would be no different here. Add to that lots of parents would not at all like their children being faced with that indoctrination and would take action to have them excused from the activity. Meaning their kids could/would literally get up and walk out of the classroom or auditorium when that started. Which has actually happened! And if the school tried to discipline, the parents would sue. Many people are already angry that in some states public school money is being used to fund faith-based education via charter schools and school voucher programs (like in my state of Michigan). They would not at all like any religion being part of the standard public education experience. Parents would say do your religious teaching on your own time, or go to a faith-based school to begin with.
Matilda, your story has an eerie parallel to Bruce’s: You spent a lot of time working to “win” or “save” souls—for what? Thank you for telling us your story.
Mandating prayer in US schools will be more difficult than folks like Matt Gaetz realize. First of all, what kinds of prayers will be said? Even Evangelical Christians wouldn’t be able to agree on that. Then, of course, there are plenty of kids from other religious traditions. Will Muslim or Hindu kids be forced to hear or recite verses from the King James Bible?
Which leads me to another question: Will a teacher or some school official be the only one saying the prayer out loud? Or will kids be forced to say the prayers along with the teacher, as they do with the Pledge of Allegiance? (We did in my Catholic school.) Sone kids may have been brought up to believe that not only is it blasphemous to say prayers that aren’t from their tradition, but also that the prayers have to be said in a particular language or that certain rituals must accompany them. Do folks like Matt Gaetz want to, say, de-program Muslim kids out of saying their prayers in Arabic or Jews from saying theirs in Hebrew?
Oh, and what of kids who are being raised without religion? I suspect there will be more of those as today’s millennials and Gen Xers reject or drift away from religion altogether.
I think that if some right-wing politicians actually mandate prayers in the schools, they will either claim that it’s making us better people when it isn’t or, if the lack of results is too obvious to ignore, they will double down on their efforts, perhaps enlisting an ally going to usher some case to the Supreme Court in order to essentially strike down the First Amendment. Of course, if they do that, they might get more than they bargained for—as those who help to turn their countries into theocracies discover when whoever gains power decides that their ways don’t align with those of the rulers.
And kids will still be kids, no matter how much you make them pray. And they will grow up to be moral or immoral people regardless of whether or not they prayed in schools.
“Am I completely off track here”
I think you are probably right.
I grew up in Australia (in a suburb of Perth), and there was prayer and some religious talk in schools. I seem to recall that we were expected to recite The Lords Prayer every day. And perhaps the Apostle’s creed, but my memory is a bit hazy on that.
As best I can tell, most students learned that adults like to repeat meaningless mumbo-jumbo.
I also remember a time when my brother and I spent a few days staying with a family in Northam (about 60 miles away). I was probably 4-5 years old at the time. And this was a religious family, who insisted on saying grace before meals. Their son, perhaps age 7 or 8, told us his favorite form of grace. It was “Two, four, six, eight; bog in don’t wait”. So I guess the religious atmosphere had not much affected him.
I suspect it is all a matter of familiarity breeds contempt.
As for American evangelicals — I suspect they find it something that they can whine about. And whining is a big part of evangelical culture.
‘…most students learned that adults like to repeat meaningless mumbo-jumbo….’ Even more so here in my welsh county where its schools to teach bi-lingually, even in parts where up to 90% are first language english. When I took assemblies, the Lord’s Prayer and the Grace were always said in welsh with teachers being proud that within weeks of starting school, their pupils had learned both of them by heart….but kids also have to ask to go to the toilet or say please and thank you in welsh….it doesn’t give them deep thoughts about the meaning of life…as x-tians here delusionally think will happen, it’s mumbo-jumbo and nothing more.
You are off track about compulsory prayer in American schools. If I understand our Constitution at all. and I think I do, that would violate the separation of church and state. Indoctrinating vulnerable malleable children is certainly the fever dream of religious zealots and as long as I remember they have tried to do it by various means, often being blocked by the courts. Republican politicians here use religion to manipulate evangelicals with ideas like prayer in school. A closer look at their personal lives strongly suggests many are not devout, and in fact are hypocrites, Gaetz being a prime example.
Prayer in school, like all horizontal prayers, doesn’t do much. The reason they want it is to make evangelical Christianity to be ubiquitous, taken for granted, and a cultural imperative.
When everyone around you is a Christian, you don’t even really question it.
True that Troy. A lie takes on the force of truth when it becomes accepted, and it’s repetition that makes it so. Successful propagandists know this well. That’s the danger in the “Christian Nation” canard we hear right wing politicians repeating. Christians may have been involved but this was never conceived as Christian nation which The Constitution makes very plain. It’s not about what those politicians believe but a “dog whistle” intended for the ears of evangelicals. Religious people are preferred targets of dishonest politicians specifically because of their gullibility and willingness to believe what they are told by authority figures without objective proof, indeed despite contradicting facts. Stolen election believers are the perfect example.
Reciting the Pledge of Allegiance didn’t make my classmates more patriotic. Praying in school won’t make today’s kids more religious.
MJ, you have a point. This is just an attempt to get Christian indoctrination into schools. Does anyone really believe Muslims, Jews, or anyone else will be given equal time? And if a Secular Humanist wants to say something? Nope. It’s Christian or nothing.
This all sounds so familiar, Matilda. It was my teaching life too (at least in its early days), also in the UK. As you say, all to no effect. Thank goodness!
Loved those Larry Norman albums too. The line you quote – ‘The Great American Novel, p56’?
Yes, it was from that song – which, along with ‘I wish we’d all been ready.’ sent a shiver down our spines….supposing Norman was right about the end of the world being about to happen!
Yes, I remember good old school assemblies in the UK, though I left school in 1971 age 18 (ye gods, 50+ years ago!). I was in a segregated school: two identical, old, buildings with girls in one and boys the other, and where everything was done to avoid any possible fraternising (though still didn’t stop the odd pregnancy here and there). The assembly consisted of one hymn, maybe a minute of meaningless prayer, and a bible reading by a pupil (seen as a badge of honour to be asked). Few pupils went to church, I’d guess around 90% would have said they believed in god, but only because they didn’t really give it much thought. Truth be told the main point of assemblies for the pupils was hearing the sports results being read out, especially if you featured. What a waste of valuable school time, though the cameradarie aspect is perhaps the baby in the bath water.
Matilda, thank you for telling your story here. I think a lot of us can relate to the belief that we were supposed to indoctrinate others for Jesus.
Gaetz and all the other politicians making mouth noises about mandatory prayers in public schools are just performing for their Christian base supporters. It’s pretty well-known that mandatory sectarian prayers in public schools are not Constitutional, but far right Christians love to pontificate how the US has gone to hell in the proverbial hand basket because for the past 50-something years Christians have been unable to force students to participate in mandatory mouth noises to a specific deity. Corollary to Aldean’s sing “Try That in a Small Town” would be “Try That in a Metropolitan Suburb” like the one where I live – our Hindu, Jewish,,Jainist, Muslim, nonreligious, and Buddhist neighbors would not take kindly to their children being forced to participate in Christian prayers. I’d get out my popcorn and watch the next school board meeting where that’s proposed around here!
No, Gaetz and other politicians like him are just performing for votes. If these politicians are that ignorant and believe they can make mandatory sectarian prayers happen, it won’t take long for knowledgeable folks to set them straight.
hmm, and which version of christianity is going to be the “right” one to give prayers? Catholics? Calvinists? Anabaptists? Mormons? Shades of the Philadelphia Bible Riots again.
Whose version rules? The one with the biggest God wins. It is written. Can I hear an Amen?
I keep asking these cultists to show up and demonstrate who has the bigger god. I’d even provide all of the altars they need to demonstrat. Alas, no one has taken me up on my offer.
If my experience in Queens, New York, in the 1950s is any indication, prayer in school was at best a distraction, at worst, a total waste of time. The prayer was carefully drafted by a committee of clergy to be inoffensive; that district was religiously diverse: many Protestant churches, plus Catholics and Jews. Some teachers insisted we recite the prayer with our hands flat and fingers extended (like in the photo above) other teachers insisted we recite it with our fingers interleaved. Confusing. (No, I cannot remember the words) When the prayer was dropped several years later we did not suddenly become robbers or arsonists. Years later we lived in a different district where many of the children went to the local Parochial school; those youngsters behaved just the same as the children in the first neighborhood. they just wore ugly uniforms! (it takes effort to design clothes that fit poorly, are made poorly, and make slender children look emaciated and chubby ones look obese. blame my grandfather, a tailor, for teaching me about fit and quality) The answer to our ills of society would be better addressed by looking at the way individuals are mistreated by the society itself. Tenements and mansions, redlining and inequality do not make individuals hopeful about their future.
Several years ago, I got into a conversation with a “conservative” (Republican) pastor. I said that I couldn’t believe that the Republicans had become so liberal. He ask what I meant by that. I replied by asking what could be more liberal than putting the government in charge of children’s religious indoctrination.
I poured salt into the wound by asking what could be more liberal than sticking the government’s nose into a woman’s uterus.
Maybe someone could re-interpret Matt’s bill for me, but… OK, edited for brevity:
“Every person who…causes to be subjected, any citizen of the United States or other person within the jurisdiction thereof to any limitation the ability of that person to engage in personal prayer in public elementary and secondary schools shall be liable to the party injured in an action at law, suit in equity, or other proper proceeding for redress…”
Doesn’t this mean that, for example, a group of Muslim US citizens could walk into any public school and start praying?