A Rhode Island high school has agreed to alter a decades-old auditorium banner, after complaints about its religious content led to an inquiry by the ACLU. The text is a prayer to "Our Heavenly Father", which school officials are now attempting to modify. Interestingly, this prayer itself was an attempt at compromise in the 1950s once it became clear that the practice of the day – beginning the school day with a recitation of The Lord's Prayer – was inappropriate.
“Growing up, we literally said the Lord’s Prayer in school, which obviously is a Christian prayer,” said the Rev. Donald Anderson, a Baptist pastor who graduated from Cranston West in 1966 and now heads the Rhode Island State Council of Churches. The prayer at the center of the storm, Anderson said, “was a move to accommodate a broader community than the prayer that was being said.”
“Looking back from 2010, it doesn’t feel that way at all,” Anderson said, but “this prayer [was] a move to be more inclusive.”
Anderson now supports the idea of removing the current banner to an off-campus location as a historical artifact.
