Prayer in Public Schools
It never was removed
by Michael Donahoe
Prayer in our public schools can be a popular topic among some Christian people. They will blame many problems on the issue of prayer in public schools being removed.
The fact of the matter is that prayer itself was never removed, nor was God removed from our schools. Any person can pray in school. Prayer is talking to God directly and can be done silently and privately. No one can actually take prayer out of school, just as God cannot be removed because God lives within us.
Many people seem to get confused about praying and having a standardized prayer led by school staff. A standardized prayer has been taken out of public schools, as well it should have been.
Another fact is that our public schools are not Christian schools. No set prayer can be established in public schools. There are many different faiths and beliefs within the public school system and no particular religion can be preferred over another.
In this regard, one of the goals of Christian Nationalism is to defund public schools and promote private Christian schools. They can then do what they want apart from government regulation, such as public prayer, teaching Christian principles, segregate the schools and exclude those who are LGBTQ.
The thing is, if standardized prayer is put back in public schools, there will need to be a leader for not only Christian prayer, but Muslim prayer, Hindu prayer and any other religions way of prayer. That is the only fair way of having standardized prayer in our public schools, although it would still be offensive to atheists and those who follow no religion. The best way is to leave any type of standardized prayer out of the public school system.
If prayer by any and all religions actually happened in public schools, I can already hear the complaints from the Christian world calling it unfair and against their rights. It seems that many Christian people think Christianity is the only viable way of life and no one else should have a say.
The United States was basically founded on freedom, and especially freedom of religion. We should remember that everyone has the freedom to follow any religion they choose, or freedom to follow no religion. Yet, we do not have the freedom to force any religion on anyone.
