“And when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward in full. But when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father." - Jesus.
That's from Matthew, Chapter 6, in your trusty Bible. It's not from Paul's commentary, and obscure verse from a chapter that outlaws the eating of shrimp, it's straight from the mouth of Jesus himself. I was about 13 when I first noticed that verse. If Jesus told people that it was better to pray in private, why the whole push for prayer in school?
Of course, by then I knew that the issue was already rife with misinformation. Any kid can pray any time they feel like it, provided they aren't disrupting the class (i.e., during lessons on evolution, you can't sit there shouting "Dear God, please kill this evil teacher and send her to hell where demons will torture her in the lake of fire for all time" so loudly that no one can hear what she's saying). The rule is just that the school can't organize or sponsor the prayer. It seemed to me that the "prayer in school" fight was just people fighting to get the government to recognize that THEIR religion was the RIGHT one.
Now and then, you DO hear stories about kids being told not to pray, or that it isn't allowed. This is because certain groups have been VERY successful in spreading the myth that school is not allowed. Apparently, even the governor of Texas is misinformed by it.
Well, perhaps he is, anyway. When someone goes on TV and says that prayer is not allowed in school, there are two possible reasons:
1. The person is misinformed. For most people, this is understandable, since there's so much misinformation out there (though for a governor of Texas to be so badly misinformed about something like this, which comes up a lot, is inexcusable).
2. The person is trying to play to people's base fears and prejudices in order to rile them up.
When a school lunch aide tells a kid not to bow his head before eating his chicken nuggets (despite the fact that praying to SOMEONE before eating those things is probably wise), it's probably the former.
But the people who are telling that lunch aide that prayer is not allowed - politicians, TV preachers, radio talk show hosts, and other noisemakers - should really know better. And I tend to assume that they DO know better.
History rarely smiles on politicians who get elected by playing up to people's fears and prejudices (and as a historian, you'd think Newt Gingrich would know this).
