The Marietta Daily Journal, with plenty of help from some of its ill-informed readers like Chad Williams (letters, 4 Oct), is perpetuating big lies about school prayer. The cartoon in today’s paper (6 Oct), showing the teacher promising not to tell on students who want to pray, continues this misinformation.

There is no reason at all to believe that more praying by anyone in any schools would reduce the horrific violence that occurs there—rarely. The recent incidents did not even involve violence by anyone who worked at or attended the schools—it came from outsiders, men unlikely to have known or cared whether anyone was praying in the school. The murderer of the Amish girls was not only religious, he even apparently blamed God for his misery and indirectly for his actions.

Mr. Williams’s profound lack of understanding is shown not only by his reference to the need for self-realization by Madalyn Murray O’Hair—who died over ten years ago—but more by his inability to reason logically. He implies that a majority vote in favor of forced government prayer would make it right and make it effective. He apparently does not understand that our Constitution and the First Amendment protect individual liberties against majorities and governments.

Mr. Williams may be willing to change his religious beliefs and practices based on a majority vote, but none of the rest of us need accept this. No American court has ever ruled, or even been asked to rule, that anyone, whether a sixth grader, a teacher, or a principal, cannot pray in school. The only restrictions have been to prohibit government agents from deciding religious matters for students, leading others in prayer, or endorsing a religious belief.

[Ed: Letter published in Marietta Daily Journal on 10/12/06]

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