Response to Bible-Prayer Ban

A DRAG ON HOME AND CHURCH—The Supreme Court ruling against prayer and Bible reading … marks a sad departure from this nation’s heritage under God. Far from putting the government in a position of neutrality toward religion, this ruling is another step in creating an atmosphere of hostility to religion. Rather than serving to protect against the establishment of religion, it opens the door for the full establishment of secularisim as a negative form of religion.… If this interpretation of the First Amendment is allowed to stand, it will make it far more difficult for the home and church to put fibre and build character into the lives of our children in this time of national peril and, thus, will have grave consequences.—Robert A. Cook, president, National Association of Evangelicals.

MORE, NOT LESS—I am shocked at the Supreme Court’s decision. Prayers and Bible reading have been a part of American public school life since the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock. Now a Supreme Court in 1963 says our fathers were wrong all these years.… At a time when moral decadence is evident on every hand, when race tension is mounting, when the threat of communism is growing, when terrifying new weapons of destruction are being created, we need more religion, not less.—Billy Graham, evangelist.

ENCOURAGEMENT TO RELIGION—Public school religious exercises have tended toward an officially enforced religion which violates the rights of persons of minority faiths.… This decision is not a blow at religion.… It is an encouragement to religion since it takes religious leadership out of the hands of public officials where it does not properly belong and restores it to the church, synagogue and home where it does properly belong.—Glenn L. Archer, executive director of Protestants and Other Americans United.

OUT-MANEUVERING OURSELVES—I take my stand with the dissent, with Justice Stewart. I believe that eventually and overwhelmingly the American people will dissent. Is it not possible that in an effort to support separation of church and state we may maneuver ourselves into the position of supporting irreligion against religion? Separation should not be exclusion. Our Founding Fathers did not write exclusion into the Constitution. This republic was not so founded. It has not survived and grown great by excluding religion from public education. The distinguished Jewish rabbi, Dr. William F. Rosenblum, of Temple Israel in New York City, once said that the minorities should recognize the fact that majorities also have rights.—Daniel A. Poling, editor, Christian Herald.

TWO BASIC ERRORS—The decision carries forward the two basic errors of the New York prayer case last year, namely, a misinterpretation of the meaning of the words “establishment of religion” and the application of the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to state laws on the subject of prayers in public schools.—Sen. A. Willis Robertson (D-Va.).

DILUTED AND DEPARTED—The more we attempt, as Christians or Americans, to insist on common denominator religious exercises or instruction in the public schools, the greater risk we run of diluting our faith and contributing to a vague religiosity which identifies religion with patriotism and becomes a national folk religion.… The decision … opens an era in which Christianity is kept separate from the state in a way that was foreign and would have been repugnant to the minds of our ancestors at the time when the Constitution was written and ever since. It signalizes the fact that the United States of America, like many other nations, is past the place where underlying Christian culture and beliefs are assumed in its life.—Franklin Clark Fry, president, Lutheran World Federation.

ECCLESIASTICAL DEFEATISM—When the newspapers … headlined … “Presbyterians oppose prayer in the public schools” the United Presbyterian Church confessed to the world a policy of defeatism.… Now the United Presbyterian Church is reluctant to declare: “Blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord” (Ps. 33:12).—Jacob J. Vellenga, minister, Brunswick United Presbyterian Church, Gary, Indiana.

PREDICTED CHURCH COUNTERACTION—The court ruling penalized the religious people who are very definitely in the majority in the United States.… The decision will encourage a new movement among Protestants and Catholics for parochial education simply to protect their children from a growing secularism which now seems to have invaded the courts.—Fred Pierce Corson, president, World Methodist Council.

DOOR NOT COMPLETELY SHUT?—It seems to me that where pupils decided on the issue by democratic process, and the majority feel that they would like to do something, there would be nothing wrong with that under this present decision.—James G. Stockard, chairman, School Board of Arlington County, Virginia.

HERE AND THERE—Arthur Lichtenberger, presiding bishop of the Protestant Episcopal Church: “The Court’s action is not hostile to religion”; General Board of the National Council of Churches: “Neither true religion nor good education is dependent upon the devotional use of the Bible in the public school program”; Patrick A. O’Boyle, Roman Catholic Arch bishop of Washington, D. C.: “disappointing”; Strom Thurmond, Senator (D-S. C.): “another major triumph for the forces of secularism and atheism which are bent on throwing God completely out of our national life”; Leonard J. Kerpelman, attorney for William J. Murray III: “insignificant compared with the other cases decided by the Supreme Court today”; Albert G. Minda, president of the Central Conference of American Rabbis: “We are gratified”; Jesse Anderson, South Carolina superintendent of education: “South Carolina will continue to feel free to do in each school or classroom the normal thing which the teacher feels should be done”; Carl McIntire, president, International Council of Christian Churches: “All Christians [should] work immediately for an amendment to the Constitution which will permit the reading of the Bible and the Lord’s Prayer”; The Washington Post: “not a prohibition of prayer but a protection of prayer”; The Evening Star (Washington, D. C.): “Will the baccalaureate service and Christmas carols be the next to go? Don’t bet against it.”

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