Barry W. Lynn - God and Government: Twenty-Five Years of Fighting for Equality, Secularism, and Freedom of Conscience

NEVER USE THIS LINE WHEN DISCUSSING CHURCH AND STATE ISSUES: AS LONG AS THERE ARE MATH TESTS, THERE WILL BE PRAYER IN SCHOOLS

In 1962 and 1963, the United States Supreme Court invalidated, first, the daily recitation in New York public schools of a prayer written by the New York State Board of Regents, and then the recitation of the Lord's Prayer (at least a better crafted theological work, by my standards) in Pennsylvania and Maryland schools. President John F. Kennedy urged respect for the rule of law, even though there was an enormous outcry by many religious groups about the Court having kicked God out of public school, a fairly dramatic conclusion for those believers in an otherwise omnipotent deity.

The anti-Supreme Court sentiment, though, boiled over into consistent efforts from 1963 until 1999 to have Congress pass a proposed constitutional amendment allowing public school prayer out to states for ratification. This process would require a two-thirds vote of both the House and Senate and then the approval of three-quarters of the states legislatures.

During the 1980s, when I worked for the American Civil Liberties Union, there was a tremendous push to pass such a measure in the Senate. Indeed, during my first day of employment there, I was sent out for an interview with CNN, in the middle of a massive rainstorm. I'm sure the image projected to the network's more conservative viewers was clearly: Look at that idiot from the ACLUhe doesn't even know enough to come in out of the rain!

That proposal was ultimately defeatedliberal Republicans and a plurality of Democrats voted no. Even Mr. Conservative, Arizona senator Barry Goldwater, was opposed, arguing that it would be impossible to come up with appropriate language in a state that had Christians and numerous Native American communities side by side.

What follows are my first two columns for Church and State magazine after my selection as Executive Director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, both about the central constitutional fear in 1992that new momentum in Congress and a waffling newly elected President Bill Clintonwould propel a prayer measure to the even more conservative quilt of state legislatures.

RELIGIOUS FREEDOM AND CHURCH-STATE SEPARATION: KEEPING OUR BALANCE

Once, when my daughter was seven years old, she happened to begin a sentence at the family dinner with the phrase: When I prayed at lunch today

Nearly dropping my forkful of spaghetti, I thought: This is a school day and she is in a public school. Visions of protest, and perhaps litigation, danced in my head. I was so surprised, I didn't allow her to finish the sentence before my interrogation began.

Did the teacher tell you what to say?

No, she replied.

Undaunted, I continued. Well, did somebody in the lunch room tell you this was the time to pray?

Again, the answer was no.

Well, I queried, why did you pray?

She gave me one of those looks that I see more regularly now that she is a teenager and announced: You knowto thank God for the food.

Pretty good answer.

Somehow, my daughter hadn't gotten the misinformation promoted by the Religious Right that God had been expelled from public schools because she expected God to hear her just fine. On the other hand, her religious education at home and church was apparently sufficient that she didn't need a government to tell her how or when to practice her faith.

WELCOME TO WASHINGTON, PRESIDENT CLINTON

The Washington newspapers are filled these day with tales of the coming of Bill Clinton. There is speculation about everything from his cabinet appointments to how the open house at the White House can avoid becoming a duplicate of Andrew Jackson's inaugural open house, where rowdy crowds forced him to escape through a window.