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"Welcome to the game," said high school student Marian Ward over the loudspeaker before a Friday night football game last September in Santa Fe, a suburb of Galveston, Texas.The daughter of a Baptist pastor then offered this prayer:

Lord, thank you for this evening. Thank you for all the prayers that were lifted up this week for me. I pray that you watch over each and every person here tonight, especially those involved in the game, that they will demonstrate good sportsmanship, Lord, and that we'll have safety. Just be with the fans, that they will exemplify good behavior as well, Lord. And just be with each and every one of us as we go home to our respective places tonight. In Jesus' name I pray. Amen.

The U.S. Supreme Court is expected to rule, in Doe v. Santa Fe later this year, whether that brief prayer violates the constitutional ban on the establishment of religion. An appeal has landed in the high court's lap because of an ill-reasoned ruling of the Federal Appeals Court, Fifth Circuit, banning pregame prayer. Judge E. Grady Jolly, in his lone dissent, said the ruling "achieves the jurisprudentially rare result of offending not only one, but three provisions within the First Amendment." Indeed, that opinion was an unholy end run around the rights to free speech and unfettered religious expression, and the ban on established religion.In the Santa Fe Independent School District, administrators designated a specific time slot for one student to speak publicly before weekly football games. Each spring, the student body selected the student by secret ballot. The individual student had free rein to speak briefly on the school's public-address system.In its majority opinion, the federal appeals court objected to this procedure on several grounds: Because the school's policy was highly restrictive, it was not truly a public forum for free speech. Because the policy allowed prayer that was sectarian and proselytizing in its content, the school was endorsing "a particular form of religion." In addition, the ruling found that a football game is a constitutionally inappropriate place for students to pray because it is "hardly the sober type of annual event that can be appropriately solemnized with prayer."

American lawmakers and judges have interpreted the religion clause of the First Amendment for more than 200 years, evolving standards that generally have allowed a high level of religious freedom. But the application of standards established a generation ago, as in Lemon v. Kurtzman (1971), has put the court into the highly arbitrary, hairsplitting, and unending business of setting boundaries for public religious expression.Our public education system persists as the nation's foremost battleground for First Amendment cases involving religion. Much of the focus has shifted to what is constitutionally allowable for students to do with their religion in public. Students in public schools may meet with other students for prayer and Bible study, carry Ten Commandments textbook covers, wear WWJD bracelets, organize Christian clubs on campus, and hand out religious literature, among other things. Teachers and other employees of public schools, in contrast, may not use their roles to advance a religious cause or to sponsor worship.The pregame-prayer case looks at whether public student prayer before a sporting event violates the establishment clause. The original purpose of the establishment clause is to protect churches from the state (establishment historically undermined the church's freedom to speak freely and prophetically), not the reverse. The establishment clause can be misinterpreted easily. The ban on state religion must not be employed to make public speech (including prayer) inoffensive to everyone. It is not a tool to protect the sensitive feelings of atheists or adherents of minority faiths.Finally, the establishment clause does not give the state license to permit only "Golden Rule" civil religion, to censor specific religious convictions while blessing those with more tepid or tolerant belief systems.

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May 22 2000, Vol. 44, No. 6