school prayer

The issue regarding the constitutionality of mandatory school prayer in schools in hinged on the separation between the church and the state that has been decreed by the constitution . On one side , there are those who argue that prayer in public school classrooms should be declared unconstitutional because it involves excessive entanglement ' which is prohibited under the doctrine of separation of church and state (Clark 35 . The other view is based more on the argument that such act is permissible because even the Pledge of allegiance contains the phrase under God (Clark 35

' It is humbly submitted in this position , however , that the more correct view remains to be that prayer in classrooms should be tolerated as long as it is not mandatory

In arriving at a better understanding of this issue , it is first important to define the constitutional issue at hand . The phrase separation of Church and State , is actually from a letter that was written by one of the founding fathers , Thomas Jefferson , to a group that called themselves the Danbury Baptists (Busher 13 . In the letter Thomas Jefferson wrote that , I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof , thus building a wall of separation between Church and State ' This was of course in reference to the First Amendment of the United States Constitution (Whitsitt 186

The basic precept of this doctrine is founded on a firm belief that religion and state should be separate . It covers a very wide spectrum as mentioned in the previous sections of this discussion , ranging from the secularization or elimination of the church to theocracy wherein the state works in tandem with a religion in to govern over the acts of people (Bradley 199

The problem is that while the church and state do maintain that there is indeed a necessity to abide by the doctrine of the separation of church and state there is no clear way of delineating the boundaries between the spheres of these two institutions (Bradley 199 . There are still certain acts that require entanglement between the church and the state because of the duty of the government to cater to the welfare of its people who invariably belong to some form of religion , in most cases One of these instances is when prayer is allowed in public school classrooms

To argue that prayer is unconstitutional would be to deny the people the right to their rich American history . The first settlers were Pilgrims and even the first thanksgiving meal , though not seemingly a prayer by conventional means , was actually an act of thanking the almighty God for all the blessings (Bradley 199 . If prayer is to be considered as a religious affirmation that is offensive to the constitution then other forms such as the pledge of allegiance and the In God We Trust declaration on the dollar bill must also...