Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, November 17, 1994 TAG: 9411170126
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: THE WASHINGTON POST
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: Medium
Prospects for a school-prayer amendment have improved with this month's Republican victory in the mid-term elections, but many legal experts who follow church-state issues say passage remains unlikely because the constitutional hurdle is so high.
The debate will be affected greatly by what sorts of proposals come to the floor of Congress. Critical questions involve the nature of the prayer, and how involved teachers or other government officials would be in choosing the language of the recitation.
The efforts for a constitutional amendment, reignited by a call by House Speaker-to-be Newt Gingrich of Georgia for a vote early next year, began in 1962 when the Supreme Court ruled school prayer a violation of the required separation of church and state.
``The Supreme Court has made God unconstitutional,'' the late Sen. Sam Ervin, D-N.C., was reported as declaring after the justices rejected a daily prayer in New York schools. Despite the efforts of Ervin and others, when a proposed constitutional amendment for school prayer first came to the Senate floor in 1966, it fell nine votes short. Two subsequent floor votes also failed.
As congress members have worked in vain for decades to reverse the effects of the ruling, the court has reaffirmed its stance in Engel vs. Vitale.
The court has forbidden ``moments of silence'' laws for daily prayer and, most recently in 1992, struck down prayer at high-school graduations.
A constitutional amendment requires the approval of two-thirds majorities in both chambers of Congress, then it must gain the support of legislatures in three-quarters of the states.
Many moderate Republicans are wary of requiring school prayer. Sen. James Jeffords, R-Vt., who would lead an education subcommittee, opposes a constitutional amendment. Sen. Nancy Kassebaum, R-Kan., who offered an alternative to a school-prayer provision by Sen. Jesse Helms, R-N.C., said she wanted to avoid ``heavy-handed and unreasonable penalties on the students of our country.'' The rejected Helms provision proposed to cut off federal funds to schools that did not allow prayer.
Kassebaum noted that the court has not forbidden students from participating in personal and undisruptive prayer during school hours.
``As long as there are math tests, there will be silent prayer in the classroom,'' said Elliot Mincberg, of People for the American Way, a liberal organization that opposes organized prayer because it could favor some types of prayer over others.
Brent Walker, general counsel for the Baptist Joint Commission on Public Affairs, said Wednesday that many members who may personally favor school prayer ``wouldn't want to take such a drastic step as amending the Constitution.''
``Government ought not to be in the business of saying when and where and what our kids can pray,'' he said.
Rep. Ernest J. Istook, R-Okla., taking the lead for House Republicans on prayer, has proposed an amendment: ``Nothing in this Constitution shall be construed to prohibit individual or group prayer in public schools or other public institutions. No person shall be required by the United States or by any state to participate in prayer. Neither the United States nor any state shall compose the words of any prayer to be said in public schools.''
Walker, however, asserted that even if teachers did not write the prayers, and students were not required to participate, ``it would violate the [Constitution] to put the teacher even in a facilitating role and would violate the consciences of the students who were forced to get up and leave'' because they did not want to participate.
by CNB