Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, August 23, 1995 TAG: 9508250001
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-11 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: JAMES W. WATKINS
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
It seems we have been bamboozled again by the religious right's rumor mill. Here is the history on it. Every few months since 1991, we hear a short mention in the media regarding ``charges'' that a student's right to pray has been violated by a school official. The specific outcomes of these charges rarely seem to surface. This spaced repetition of charges results in a new but wrong-headed piece of ``common knowledge'' that public-school officials are prone to violate a student's right to pray.
Cases in point. In 1991, Pat Robertson's ``700 Club'' aired reports regarding a dispute over prayer at a public school in Metropolis, Ill. Robertson erroneously reported that two students were arrested. CBN's public relations vice president, Gene Kapp, continues to insist that students were arrested, when police reports clearly show that no arrests took place.
In December 1992, Pat Robertson told another version of this same tale. It supposedly took place at a public elementary school in Kingsville, Texas. The victim was a 5-year-old child named Shannon. After intensive investigation by both school officials and Scott Stanford, editor of the Kingsville Record, it was concluded that nothing remotely resembling Robertson's story had occurred - no student named Shannon could even be found.
Whether it's Metropolis, Ill.; Kingsville, Tenn.; Norman, Okla.; Blue River, Ore.; St. Louis, Mo.; or the latest version overheard at the supermarket, upon investigation, the story is either a total fabrication or edited in such a way as to make it seem that public-school officials are generally hostile to students praying. In most cases, school officials are simply caught between overly aggressive ``religious'' students, egged on by outside adults, and other parents and students who do not want to be evangelized while at school.
The truth is that with all the heat generated by the religious right with this anti-prayer mythology, when asked by informed investigators, they are unable to produce one bona fide instance of a student's right to pray being violated by a public-school official anywhere in the country. And even if some school official somewhere did act stupidly, it would hardly prove that public education is an aggressively anti-religious institution, as the religious right repeatedly claims.
Nothing in any law in the United States prohibits children from praying in school. Our Constitution explicitly protects the rights of all citizens, including students, to voluntarily pray, or not to pray, anywhere they wish and to what deity they wish. No citizen (student) can lawfully be denied the right of private, voluntary prayer in any public school in the land.
So what is all the fuss about? Why do these myths continue to circulate? It's very simple. The religious right expands its power base by convincing people that religion is under attack by various elements of the established American social order. The educational establishment is a major such element and, thus, one of their prime targets. Anything that can be made to sound bad about public education, true or not, is not only welcomed in the circles of the religious right, but elaborated, exaggerated and passed on.
Ultimately, the religious right wants to take over and dismantle public education, replacing it with a system of fundamentalist-oriented, publicly financed religious schools under its control.
Robert Simonds, president of Citizens for Excellence in Education and a religious right leader, reveals his attitude when he writes, ``As the church watches from the sidelines, the ungodly elect atheists and homosexuals to school boards and legislatures to enact policies and laws that destroy our Christian children and discriminate against Christian families.''
Simonds' description does not fit the experience of most citizens constructively involved in public education. In fact, an American School Board Journal survey reveals that the typical public school board member is a white, married male between 41 and 50 years of age. He is a college graduate, has children of school age, works in a professional or managerial role, earns between $40,000 and $49,000 annually, and is a registered Republican, describing his views on education as ``conservative.''
Public school boards are hardly the preserve of an atheist counterculture that Simonds would have us believe. But his kind of radical rhetoric, while not generally believed, can generate a small cadre of dedicated precinct workers, which is all that is needed to overwhelm a local school board race.
Elements of the religious right have been working at the local level for several years now. Nationwide, Simonds claims that as of the November 1994 election, his 1,685 chapters have assisted in the election of 10,111 sympathetic school board members.
In short, the religious right has gained a foothold on school boards all over the country. They have gained the requisite political experience, and they are planning a major effort to gain additional school board seats as elections are held this November and in 1996.
James W. Watkins, of Kirtland, Ohio, is pastor of Old South Church, United Church of Christ, and is an author, educator and community activist.
by CNB