Friday is graduation day for our seniors. As ceremonies go, it is brief (being a small school and having a streamlined program helps), consisting of an opening prayer, various speeches, a few awards, the diploma handoffs and a benediction. Since we are a private school affiliated with the Episcopal Church, the presence of the prayers is not a big deal. They are usually non-denominational, and have been offered by rabbis and ministers.
Back in the day, I attended a public high school on Long Island. I recently found the program for our graduation ceremony. In keeping with the demographics of the area, a rabbi offered the opening prayer, a Presbyterian the benediction, and the school choir (of which I was a member, thank you) sang, “The Lord Bless You and Keep You.” If anyone objected to the religious nature of these three items, word never came my way.
But what should happen if a member of the community objects to such prayers, as happened in Russell County last week and may happen in Shelby County this week? Are religious prayers appropriate for public-school graduation ceremonies?
Here we tread on the treacherous ground of separation of church and state. In the Russell County case, US District Court Judge Joseph McKinley agreed with the student plaintiff, ruling that the graduation prayer at Russell County High School was an endorsement of religion by a state institution. McKinley issued a temporary restraining order against the prayer.
The reaction in the rural, predominantly conservative Christian county was predictable. There were irate churchgoers and ministers berating the judge’s decision and the student, declaring that prayer belongs in the schools. The student graduation speaker discussed her relationship to God and her religion, and a group of students stood up and recited part of the Lord’s Prayer as a kind of protest.
In other words, they missed the point entirely.
Meanwhile, in Shelby County, a student has not. Hot on the heels of the Russell County case, he or she filed a complaint through the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), requesting that the graduation ceremony omit the customary prayers. The school board has not yet decided its course of action, but a Christian group is organizing a prayer vigil by the district offices to sway the board’s deliberations.
That same group, Reclaim our Culture, Kentuckiana, has lately devoted itself to battling the adult entertainment industry in Louisville and elsewhere in the state.
I confess to having mixed reactions to all this debate. High school graduation is a big event in the States, representing for many young people and their families a coming-of-age ceremony. In other words, it is a Big Deal, and offering prayers of hope, congratulations and safety seems appropriate. It is not as if the prayers are demanding that the graduates all immediately convert to a given religion.
At the same time, there is the Constitutional restriction against the State endorsing one particular religion. In the case of public schools, they are an arm of the State, and should be careful not to transgress the boundaries of the First Amendment. One would assume, then, that school boards would ensure any graduation prayers be as non-denominational as possible.
Keeping the religious focus of the prayers broad only works of course if all the parties involved recognize that prayers are appropriate. Both the Russell and Shelby County cases involve plaintiffs who found the presence of any prayers offensive. Now we have two different issue: is the presence of a prayer, regardless of religious stripe, an imposition of a State-endorsed religion? And, should one person essentially derail an important, established event at the last minute merely because he or she objects to a segment of that event?
The courts, and Judge McKinley, err on the cautious side regarding the first issue. Each establishment case is different from another, so some judicial decisions find in favor of religious content in State-supported events and situations. Others do not. It all boils down to intent: are prayers intended to endorse religion, or to celebrate and bless events? In the case of Russell County, a very homogeneous community, there was no question of endorsement, since the prayer-giver — who was always a student — would essentially be preaching to the choir. Clearly, the prayers were meant to celebrate and bless the graduation event.
In a homogenous setting, such prayers do not create a problem, even if they infringe on the First Amendment, since one clearly not convert someone who is already a member of your religious tradition. But rural Russell County, and the more suburban/exurban Shelby County, are running into the overall demographic trend of the US — we are no longer a homogeneous society, if in fact we ever were. That mix of religious backgrounds, or lack of religious identity, demands flexibility and sensitivity, a quality small towns and counties often lack.
The Russell County students and the protestors there missed the point of Judge McKinley’s ruling. So does ROCK, in its efforts to retain prayer in the Shelby County ceremonies. The courts are not trying to eliminate religion or prayer. The legal system is trying to prevent a gradual erosion of the separation between religion and government, to avoid a hypothetical situation in which one particular religion manages to become part of the country’s legal canon.
If a community is 100% Christian, it may not recognize that a Christian prayer actually violates the First Amendment, as it endorses one particular faith. Once that homogeneity ends, however, that unwitting endorsement now infringes on the rights of a fellow citizen. The rights of the majority do not outweigh the rights of the few, or the one. Legally and morally, if the majority actually accepts the “American way” the Christian right so often invokes as a mantra, they are required to acknowledge the rights of that minority segment of the populace. It sucks, it’s inconvenient, but that is how the nation has operated for the last two centuries. No amount of prayer vigils is going to trump the success of the Constitution in keeping this heterogeneous, contentious nation of ours in one piece for 230 years (well, except for those four years back in the mid 1800s …).
The protesting students were using the Lord’s Prayer as a snark against that one brave soul who decided to exercise his legal rights as a US citizen, using religion to attack a civil guarantee of protection against religious intolerance. Oh, the irony! The student speaker was overly defensive and yes, condescending toward the plaintiff and the prayer injunction. She, too, misses the point. A community needs to honor all its citizens. Pardon the phrase, but it’s a Christian duty as well as a democratic one. Religion cannot be put to a vote; the majority cannot rule. That’s what the First Amendment seeks to prevent.
For those who want to include some sort of religious moment in civil ceremonies, here’s a simple solution: a moment of silence. The World Council of Churches uses silent worshop as a way to avoid sectarian wrangling, and we Quakers have used it for 300+ years. Let each person offer a personal prayer for the graduates, invoking whatever deity he or she wishes. Such prayers would be more heartfelt and sincere than merely listening to someone else doing all the work. And who knows, a shotgun approach to prayer might be more effective spiritually than appealing to one deity in one mode of prayer.
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