No School Prayer
I belong to a listserve that connects present students and graduates of the healing school I attended. This connection is dynamic and wonderful, and I’ve both given and received support through it. People post stuff, and it circulates among us; it’s often as thought-provoking as it is supportive.
Recently one of the healers posted a speech that was supposedly from a father whose daughter died in the Columbine shooting. This father urged that prayer be re-instated in school. Here is the response I posted on the listserve.
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Dear Fellow Healer:
Thank you for posting this passionate speech for us to read.
While I certainly do regret the moral relativism and spiritual desiccation of our current culture, I for one am very glad that my three children do not have to pray in school. I am a deeply spiritual person who prays several times a day. I have encouraged my children to form personal relationships with the Divine, and to pray regularly, since they were toddlers. I am doing that all over again with my 3 year old.
However, I most explicitly do not want my children praying in a state-sponsored way in their school. The notion of folded hands, bent head, and silent prayer is a Christian one, and I am a Jew. Jews davven. We stand and rock and chant when we pray. That is not the only way we pray, but it is at the heart of what makes us Jews, and what differentiates us from other religions. I do not want my children to pray as Christians because they are not Christians. Mandating state-sponsored prayer in school is not a way to create unity, but a way to intensify feelings of alienation in people who do not belong to the prevailing religion, which is Christianity.
It is my understanding that Muslims pray by kneeling on a prayer rug. I took a year of Arabic in college and this is what was taught to me at that time.
I have a keen understanding of the differences between Christianity and Judaism because I was born and raised Christian and converted to Judaism as a matter of choice. I have made a profound, lifelong study of religions–and their historical excesses, prejudices, and intolerances–and it has helped me to be very, very grateful for the extent to which religion is kept out of secular institutions such as schools in America.
I do not believe that praying in school could have prevented the shootings at Columbine. To my mind, that is a fantasy with which a bereaved father is comforting himself: “If only….”
It would perhaps be useful in schools for students to begin each day with a moment of centering themselves and considering what their purpose is for that day. Even with that broad a definition, I have serious concerns about individual teachers hijacking that moment to press their personal religious agendas.
But thank you again for posting this; it gave me much food for thought.
Traci L. Slatton