School Prayer

Archive Report

Reagan's Prayer Amendment

Widspread Support for Voluntary Prayer

Eight out of every 10 Americans believe public school students should be allowed to engage in voluntary prayer, a belief incorporated into the 1980 Republican Party platform and championed by President Reagan in the form of a proposed constitutional amendment.1 The amendment is scheduled to come to a vote in the Senate this fall.2 Its effect, says Reagan, would be to “remove the bar to school prayer established by the Supreme Court and allow prayer back in our schools.”

The simplicity of Reagan's pitch belies the controversy that has accompanied the school prayer issue for two decades. Teachers and school administrators, the people who would carry out the amendment's intent, tend to oppose it.3 Most mainline Protestant churches object. ...

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