From personal experience I’ve seen how open pray has affected people, it can be pretty powerful. I seen them moved by it, so I think it should be fine for those who are moved to pray aloud.
This isn’t a question about the efficacy of prayer. It is rather a question of internal system cohesion which concerns me here. If such a clear direction is open to outright rejection what make it rejectable?
What caused Jesus to give a direction that nobody who claims to follow Jesus is interested in following?
Hi Xanderman,
I assume you mean by a clear direction the following:
I would agree that the instruction was clear, but we read also, that it “was His custom†to go “on the day of the sabbaths into the synagogue†which was communal prayer. Therefore we must decide whether we are going to rule the one against the other or accept that both are right in their individual context, which would mean that both personal and communal prayer is advised.
Shalom
That the passage I was thinking about.
So we have directions to pray in private and we also have a practice of emulating Jesus’ custom by going to the synagogue, or now perhaps its equivalent, once a week and on holy days. Seems mighty fine.
How do we get from there to the current concern about prayer in school?
Mucius:
I believe I agree with what you’ve said so far, but this does raise one more question- how does it change things to take into account that we’re talking about children? While I realize that an adults acts of faith and worship should be self-driven and not imposed, the rules for child-rearing seem to be somewhat different. Is there any place for religion in the life of a child too young to come to it on their own? If not, how DO they come to it on their own? If so, then it seems we need to counter your principals, at least for the young (though, I’m not meaning to suggest that school is the place to do that).
that’s the way it is in most schools already. so i really don’t see why it’s a problem or an issue.
If prayer is allowed in schools then that should include all types of prayer not just limited to the christian style of prayer. What about young Islamics/Muslims? are they not supposed to face Mecca and pray several times a day? This should be allowed if Christians get to pray the way they want to then others should get to have their payer ceremonies allowed.
So then we will have a bunch of different prayers going on at all different times in the schools and during those hours no one is allowed to learn because you can’t disrespect religion and allow a child to not have the same education time as the other kids. If you keep them longer in school based upon their prayer habits well , look at it from kids perspective they are going to be punished for their beliefs by keeping them longer.
The question is; Do we respect religion to the detriment of educational time or do we put education first and keep religion at home in private where it does not steal time from others.
I respect all religions but, I respect education more. keep your beliefs out of other peoples time do not force them to wait for you.
Of course most kids really kind of like that prayer time to close their eyes and snore when they reach certain ages 
That’s very true Kriswest, that didn’t really occur to me 
I agree, education should be the most important aspect in this case.
Bob, that’s all very nice and fair, I agree, but I’m still kind of constipated when it comes to talking about religion.
While your story is all very nice, it doesn’t work all that much for me. I can’t fathom things the way you do, and I also can’t sit and wait for the Holy Spirit to suddenly fall in my lap. You may have had a beneficial divine force steering towards the plenitude of sharing faith in God, but Augustine reckons that doesn’t happen to everybody. And, until I feel it on my own skin, he is proven correct. Notice the vulgar way I talk about spiritual matters, involving crude metaphors like “skin”.
The way I see it on this side of the Carpathians is that there is no relaxation. We are so thoroughly divorced and separated from God, that we need do superhuman efforts even to acknowledge His personna. He is so aloof that insuperable distances separate us. We have lost that stance where we could draw nigh and bask in the iridescent radiance of his grace.
Virtuous religiosity is like a musical instrument, a difficult one. It’s hard to strike the right chord, it’s an ordeal to learn to play, your fingers hurt, and once you’ve got the hang of it you’ve got to practice ad infinitum. You also need to want to play, to want it badly, otherwise you’re going to be a flop, thoroughly stigmatised by the reminder of your mediocrity. That’s why I’m not keen on forcing children to pray in school. Better leave them fall astray for a while and make them get a sense of what depravation means, than inculcate in them the counterfeit belief in a worthless puppet God.
I just wanted to say that I disagree with making prayer a school activity. I agree with Muncious on this one, and I think most here will eventually agree that for prayer to be meaningful it must come from an inward need and not from being educated into it.
7:00 am prayer session? It will not do.
That said, the qualification that must go with that is that no one, regardless of their location, be it a school or a strip bar, should be denied the ability to pray as he or she desires, if that desire is real and is a needed discharge of will and feeling.
This is an interesting subject in the face of the integration occuring in some european countries which are now trying to decide the limits of religious expression. Should people pray in schools? That is a good question, but the one facing democracies is: How many prayers should one perform?
I mean, that if your child class is made of 1/4 christians, 1/4 muslims, 1/4 jews and 1/4 Buddhists, should you have four forms of prayers at 7:00 am? But suppose we do it more efficiently, which is the western way anyway, and make the prayer so general that it covers all four, and all other possible, faiths? Before you laugh, consider the example of AA. What prayer do we have when all is said and done? Probably the empty and hypocritical drivel Jesus was critical of. “Dear Higher Power who art in what I consider most perfect…”
This is all to say that while some have correctly pointed to the passage true meaning, even with that meaning, Daybreaks point is not lessened but in fact improved.
Hi Mucius Scevola,
Sorry about the late answer, my notebook overheated and I had to go out and buy a new one – which has advantages 
I can perfectly understand what you are saying, but I think that the feeling on your own skin is quite possible, although we tend to be aligned to external inspiration and distrust the “inner voiceâ€. Religious and irreligious people alike fail to understand that they are both in the extremes and that the balanced, unprejudiced approach helps us further. I had luck, being aligned to the more artistic approach and understanding the value of narration and storytelling, learning that liturgy is often enactment of traditions.
Both the believers and the sceptics are caught up in the need for a rational explanation for what they regard as religious content, whereas firstly it is often difficult to identify what has no “religious†content, and secondly, it is not rational. However, rationality isn’t the measure of all things, although we need rationality. It is a polarised view of reality that throws us onto the one side or the other – and makes us bed mates with people we thought were opposed to our opinions. In reality, we tend to be all opposed to Unity – or Alaha: God.
You see, that is where people were going wrong when Jesus appeared on the scene. The Pharisees despised the Sadducees and yet they combined to combat the divine unifying influence in Jesus. The Zealots despised them even more, but it was a Zealot that was released and a true “bar Abbas†who was crucified. The paradox in the story is that the followers, once they had been freed from their paralysis, realised that even the death of a truly “anointed One†was unifying and the teaching of the substitutive sacrifice received a new dimension.
Again, these superhuman efforts are precisely where we go wrong. The example for this is the superhuman Elijah, who walked for days to Horeb after destroying hundreds of heathen priests with his own hands, only to be asked, “What do you want here?†He went out on the mountain and was confronted with the storm, the earthquake and the fire, but God wasn’t in all these. Finally he heard a faint whisper … God isn’t aloof as much as out of sight, but it is our eyes that have the biggest problems.
“Happy the clean in heart - because they shall see God.†To be clean in heart means to be free from the polarised view we have adopted. We have to go back to the door of childhood and unlearn much of what society has taught us. We need to unlearn our prejudices, unlearn even those things that have given us recognition within society – “let the dead bury the deadâ€. We need to unlearn our pious attempts at righteousness, unlearn our “witness†and learn to be meek and humble in heart. In this way, the children are the right people to address with this message, and we can help them overcome – even if we haven’t made it.
The problem with what you propose is that the children do not remain untouched. And it isn’t even a question of becoming a member of the church or not. I agree for example that some Christianity is so far off from what Jesus is recorded as saying in the Gospels, that it would be unimportant whether the children become Christians or Atheists. That is why it can be a worthwhile exercise just to make children aware of the contradiction in some prayer – and believe me, children see such contradiction intuitively and faster than adults.
Shalom
The bottom line on this issue is simple:
As an American right guaranteed by the Constitution, and superior to that, the right of the individual to willfully choose, prayer is a personal issue, not a political one.
Making it political obfuscates the inherent principle: individual choice.
^^that’s what i was trying to say, i guess, i’m just not good enough with words to use “obfuscate” off the top of my head.
Regardless the merits of allowing or disallowing school prayer, Mas correctly observes that such an activity is a personal issue. Kriswest is correct in observing that prayer in school involves group participation. Time granted one student for personal reasons affects each and every other student as well. The issue revolves around the accomodation of disparate desires and decisions by each individual in a collective situation. If prayer is to be meaningful, then each individual must be acknowledged and allowed - including those who would use the time to take a nap.
What needs to be decided is whether education is the appropriate venue for establishing what is social reinforcement of religious practices.
Last I checked brother tentative, this was supposed to be a democracy.
Which by virtue of it’s nature means that if a sizeable portion of the population feel it is necessary to allow two minutes of silence at the beginning of a school day for focusing, napping, praying, drooling … then that time should be alloted, and used to each individuals need.
Period.
Anything else, becomes another mask for the socio-fascist police states.
Hi Mas,
Are you calling me a socio-fascist? 
I won’t belabor this, but a part of a democracy is respecting the rights of minorities as well. Since schools are about education, and a minority may be interested in getting an education as opposed to say, drooling, then that “democracy” probably ought to remember why we have schools. But this is quibbling. If a student wishes to pray silently they will anyway. It is in creating an obligatory set-aside time that is more the doings of a socio-fascist police state…
After reading this thread who here can honestly say that segregation of willfull advent is a bad thing? Why not have schools that are sectioned off so that people can tend their religious duties as appropriate where they do not disrupt other people?
Christians are by far the most lax in their religion. There are many tenets that are ignored for sake of secular belief. In most cases religions request that their followers in a sense revolve their life around it! Christians should hang out and do and study Christianly things and Muslims likewise.
In so many terms the mixing of people of differnet religions TOO much will only yeild in raising tension and/or cause religious fervor to weaken in lieu of peace. Because of this, people no longer have a place to go that gives them peace, and therefore give up due to the onslaught of secular fanaticism.
Ah but, only allowing two minutes is a western aproach to religious needs, what about those religions that require longer times for prayer or multiple times? If I was still in school I would claim my religion required 15 minutes out of every hour to pray, to deny me that would be a violation of allowing prayer in school.
Once you open that pandora box it is really hard to draw the line and close it. Better to deny all then make allowances because, allowances always need to increase it seems. It is that inch mile thing that humans love to do.
Kids have recess breaks during the day, they can utilize that time for prayer if they so choose. Mandating an allotted time detracts from the time that could be spent learning, which is what I pay taxes for. Even though my kid is out of school, I gladly pay for other kids educational needs but, not their religious needs, that is their parents duty.
I see that 2 minutes spreading to an hour. I know that is going to happen when the first court case gets won. Some parents or kids will take a school to court claiming their allotted prayer time is not enough for their religion, it will happen. Count on it. It is like smoking, best to never start then you won’t have to fight to quit.
Here is a really fundamental question. Is it really possible to not offend someone? By either allowing or restricting their religion, you in essence offend someone. Where in the consitution does it give the right to not be offended? The constitution does protect the freedom of practice… this does include gubermint employees. Just because they serve a public office does not mean they cannot practice their faith! This has gotten way out of hand!
They need to just flat out say… the Constitution does not apply to the government. We can restriction any Constitutional right you have if we deem in to be offensive to another being. And right now brother… some peoples lives are offensive an therefore there will be a regulary scheduled beheading at 3pm every friday evening!
This whole subject should be relegated to public opinion. Not a retro grade judge who usurps power that was not granted them.
I would say that based on Public Vote a religion may take national lime light and be regarded for primary consideration. So long as the tenets of the constitution are not broken. Faculty lead prayer is not against the constitution… neither at sporting events or locker rooms. Those who wish to no participate can simple abstain and take that moment to silently allow those to practice their religion! The requiring of a whole congregation of faithful to yield to the absolute few for sake of their inconsideration is the REAL abreechment of the Constitution of the United States of America! Because their rights to the free excercise of their Religion has just been DENIED! Allowing people to pray in public, government, or private is in no way an abridgement to anothers freedom of NO religion!
Well pray during recess or breaks or the five minutes between classes then, go for it. But do not take away from the education time. There is simply not enough hours in the school day for such things, Kids have too much to learn and really not enough time to do it in so the kids have homework, a hell of a lot more now then when I went to school. The “faithful” can be faithful during their already existing breaks.