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An Anecdote for Our Time

Bill Tope

    I have a not-so-amusing anecdote reflective of the controversy over the possible reinstatement of prayer in the public schools. When I was in second grade at Burbank Elementary School in Roxana, Illinois, more than just a few years ago, it was common practice to begin the day or mark holidays or other special occasions with a communal prayer, under the tutelage of our teacher.
    Miss X, after a while, apparently tired of leading the prayers herself, so she enlisted the help of the students; each day, in their turn, a new student would say the prayer. This involved standing before the class, bowing one’s head and murmuring whatever was deemed heartfelt and appropriate. I remember dreading taking my turn, as I was not at that point a religious person; I was afraid I’d mispronounce “Jesus” or otherwise run afoul of the powers that be, and be struck down by a bolt of lightning from a wrathful God.
    I remember that the little girls in class were good at saying prayers; they seemed to be really in their element, as they spoke to God from the second grade classroom. One day a student with a rather unusual name—I discovered years later, in high school, that she was Jewish—was summoned to the front of the class. She was reluctant to go. I soon discovered why.
    She said that public prayers at her place of worship were mostly enacted by a cantor and in her home by her father, but that if Miss X insisted, she would lead us in as prayer to Jahweh; the teacher stopped her in her tracks. In America, she intoned, people prayed to Jesus Christ. The little girl replied that her religion didn’t embrace the veneration of Christ (she used little girl words, of course). Miss X’s lips formed a tight, unhappy line and she said that if the girl couldn’t “get with the program” she would get a failing grade for the day. Fearful—and humiliated—the child burst into tears. She was summarily dismissed, told to take her seat again. Another kid was chosen to lead the prayer, which she did.
    This story is only anecdotal but imagine it playing out across a nation which is much more diverse, ethnically and religiously, than it was sixty years ago. The point is that students were compelled to participate in religious protocols, regardless of their own religious bent, and were embarassed, even punished if they failed to comply. If prayers in a public school setting are to be tolerated, even encouraged, then who is to decide which prayer, which religion, which deity is to be honored? Are Islam, Sikhism and Judaism to be regarded as on par with Christianity? Justices Alito and Thomas aside, our government is not religious in character, it is secular.
    Those high school football players in the Seattle area school may or may not have been pressured to join in Coach Kennedy’s prayers. But have we a right to subject them to even potential mental strong arming? I say, no, we do not. Fortunately, later in my second grade year, during the summer break, the Supreme Court disallowed so-called “voluntary prayer” in the public schools, just in time for my third grade term. Thank God.

This appeared 7/30/22 in the Telegraph (Alton, Illinois newspaper).

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