In his column this week, Charles Haynes takes on one element of the issue that is consuming the church-state landscape these days, one I emphasized in my year-end religious liberty wrap up: from Newt Gingrich to Rick Perry, pandering politicians are playing up Americans' fears that religion (especially Christianity) is under attack by a growing secularism. That notion is of course completely untrue, as Haynes explains, focusing on religion in schools.
When politicians demonize the courts for banning God from schools, they count on public confusion about the First Amendment distinction between government speech promoting religion, which the establishment clause prohibits, and student speech promoting religion, which the free-exercise and free-speech clauses protect.
The U.S. Supreme Court has never ruled that kids can't pray in school. What the Court has done — and continues to do — is to strike down school-sponsored prayers and devotional exercises as violations of religious liberty.
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If state-sponsored religious practices are what …candidates mean when they call for “prayer in school,” then why don't they just say so — and stop telling voters that kids “can't pray in schools”?
