Difference of Opinion; Supreme Court Decision on Prayer in Schools; WNYC

Difference of opinion, a transcribed feature of your city-station. Each week of this time, two guests with opposing views give their ideas on a subject of current controversy. The guests are authorities in their fields, and the opinions they express are, of course, their own. Today's edition of Difference of Opinion centers around the Supreme Court decision to outlaw a prayer in the public schools. Here now is our moderator, Ruth Fox. On June 25th, the United States Supreme Court ruled that the use of the New York State Regions prayer in the public schools was unconstitutional. Also, the State Education Department has barred the use of any denominational spoken prayer in the public schools. Now this decision has aroused great controversy, both pro and con, and that's the subject for our program today. Speaking on the pro side, we have Reverend Edward Egan, Minister of the Roslyn Methodist Church, Roslyn New York. And speaking on the con side, we have Dr. Kenneth Wilson, Executive Editor of the Christian Herald. Dr. Wilson, you just stated in its decision on the New York Regions prayer, the Supreme Court made the only ruling it could make under the circumstances.

The implications of the decision are what disturbed me. Would you please explain? At the outset, I wish to dissociate myself from those emotional critics who have called the Supreme Court anti-god or even anti-prayer. I think we can assume that the seven justices involved are not anti-god, and we can certainly assume they are not anti-prayer. After all, every session of the Supreme Court is itself opened with the prayer, God saved the United States in this honorable court. And the prayer is not only an official prayer, but is an established prayer in the sense that the marshal of the court who utters it is there by praying on government time. The court was doing its best to safeguard the constitutional rights of certain citizens who, for reasons of their own, to which they are fully entitled, did not wish their children to be put in the position of listening to the voluntary recitation of a prayer in the public school. The legal issue before the court was a very narrow one, namely that this was an official prayer handed down by a board which was an agent of government, and thereby constituted an establishment of religion as the First Amendment uses the word.

It's not necessary to doubt the integrity of the court or of those who brought the suit to be concerned about the implications of the decision. It is not even necessary to doubt the inevitability of the decision in order to be concerned about the implications. Every decision of the Supreme Court grows out of very concrete and specific circumstances. This decision had to do with the use of a particular prayer in a particular school district in a particular community of New York State. But see what happens. A Supreme Court judgment once made has implications beyond the case which produced it. This one, for example, implies, of course, that other communities in New York State may not use the region's prayer. Swallowing a few of our concerns, let's lean over backward and say so far so good. Let's say that the Board of Regents is a unit of government, and that it had no right to prescribe a prayer for use in the schools even though that prayer struck a common denominator which was simply the existence of God.

Let's, for the sake of a discussion, admit to all this and agree that for this state and this circumstance under these conditions, the Supreme Court made the only ruling it could make. But the implications of such a decision do not stop at the boundaries of this particular circumstance any more than they stop at the state border. They go on and out to influence every other evaluation of the relationship of church and state everywhere in this country. I think that's what the shouting is all about. Not about this limited focus, narrow judgment, but about what this judgment is going to mean in the long run. Justice Douglas, you remember in his concurring opinion, probed these implications and for many of us painfully probed them.

To say that this court decision has nothing to do with in God we trust on our coins or government paid chaplains in our armed forces and so on. Maybe legally and technically true, but it is not the whole truth. Does anyone suppose that an unofficial prayer will fare any better in a court test than this official prayer? I wish that I could think so. I think it would be a tragedy if all references to God were to be eliminated from the American civil scene. These are a part of our heritage. Like it or not, faith in God is intertwined with the destiny of America. It is not too much to say we would not have one without the other. All right, thank you, Dr. Wilson and now Reverend Egan. You said, I am of the conviction that far from restricting it the recent Supreme Court decision strongly reinforces the cause of religious freedom. Would you care to elaborate? Yes, freedom of religion has found renewed support in the decision of the Supreme Court of the United States State of June 25, 1962.

This decision ruled against the use of, in public schools, of the 22-word prayer composed by the Regents of New York State. The decision was based on the establishment clause of the First Amendment to the Constitution. This reads, Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof. And it goes on, or abridging the freedom of speech or of the press, or the right of the people peaceably to assemble and to petition the government for our redress of grievances. Then the 14th Amendment makes these provisions applicable to state governments. And this decision is the subject of our discussion here today. It is my position that, as I said before, far from restricting religious freedom, this decision reinforces it. It should be remembered that prayer is an integral part of the Christian life and the freedom of Christians and all other religious persons to pray and worship individually or collectively as wisely been protected by this Supreme Court decision. Hours is a pluralistic society, embodying many religious and non-religious groups.

Infringement upon the freedom of any one person or group is at least potential infringement upon the freedom of all. The reasoning of the majority opinion in which Justice Hugo L. Black was joined by four of the five remaining justices, traces carefully the historic development of the establishment clause and the First Amendment. From the stifling religious conformity of Europe, which the colonists sought to escape, and from the religious governmental structures which, ironically enough, they in turn established in the colonies, the framers of the Constitution and the authors of the Bill of Rights learned well the lesson that if man is to be free, the institutions of religion and the agencies of government must be kept legally separate. Going far beyond the majority opinion in his concurring opinion, Justice William O. Douglas points out the far reaching implications of the decision, especially as they may apply to the use of federal tax funds for religious purposes. He wrote, the point for decision is whether the government can constitutionally finance a religious exercise, the long range of facts of this opinion remain yet to be seen.

The crux of the issue, however, and the implications of this decision for religious freedom are summed up in this sentence from the majority opinion. The establishment clause thus stands as an expression of principle on the part of the founding fathers, the fathers of our Constitution that religion is too personal, too sacred, too holy, to permit its unhallowed perversion by a civil magistrate. The statement endorsed by 31 Protestant leaders from 12 denominations places in proper perspective the Supreme Court ruling forbidding any government official from writing or prescribing prayers for use in public schools. That statement reads, we are in agreement with the Supreme Court that it is neither sacrilegious nor anti-religious, to say that each separate government in this country should stay out of the business of writing or sanctioning official prayers and leave that purely religious function to the people themselves and to those the people choose to look to for religious guidance. We call upon the American people to study this decision prayerfully and without political emotion.

We believe the courts ruling against officially written and officially prescribed prayers protects the integrity of the religious conscience and the proper function of religious and governmental institutions. In this Supreme Court decision, the cause of religious freedom has been strongly reinforced. All right. Thank you, Reverend Egan. Dr. Wilson, would you like to take up some of his points? Well, we have been urged to study this decision and frankly, the more I study it, the more it bothers me. I think that everything that the majority decision says is something to which I would subscribe. We certainly are all concerned about religious freedom in this country and that is what we want. Nobody is trying to tear it down. But freedom, of course, has two sides. There is freedom from and then freedom for. We want to be free from dictation, but it seems to me that there is an element in this decision which gets over into the other side too.

Perhaps infringing upon the freedom of those who wish to subscribe to this prayer, to pray it. All right. Would you like to say something now? I think we are in agreement that the Supreme Court handed down the only decision that it could in this very narrowly defined case. In the first amendment, we must note that there are two clauses pertaining to religion, the establishment clause that Congress and the states, the other 14th amendment shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, and the free exercise clause. The decision of the court was on the basis of the establishment clause and precludes public officials from prescribing prayers, writing prayers, handing them down for others to use, with special reference to the captive audience that we have in our public schools.

It does not address itself to private citizens, but to public officials, and it is in this sense of restricting the activities of public officials that freedom of religion is preserved. Well, I think it is going to be very interesting to see what happens if a suit is brought over the use of, as I said, an unofficial prayer, and I am not hopeful about what the outcome of that would be. But this idea of public officials and a captive audience, it is the implications of this kind of thing that bothers me too. For example, in the military academies of the three services, there is compulsory chapel service. There are chaplains there who are in charge, and students are required to attend these chapels.

Here again, you have the captive audience, here you have the government footing the bill. Now, again, whether that is defensible or not, or whether many of the other practices of this intertwining of church and state are defensible, we have them, and they're a part of the American system. This, I think, has implications for these other areas. I think that we might point out here about the prayer. I suppose our audience knows what the prayer was. It's Almighty God, we acknowledge our independence upon thee, and we beg thy blessings upon us, our parents, our teachers, and our country, which is a prayer that was acceptable to everyone.

And it's been stated that children recited this prayer voluntarily. Dr. Egan, I'd like to ask you this. When a teacher tells a class to recite a prayer, how voluntary is this on the part of the children? Don't children as a rule obey their teachers? From my own experience in school, I tried to obey the teachers, and I think that this is what we're speaking of, when we say a captive audience, that we have a situation of a person in authority, and while there may not be overt coercion, one is certainly not going to jeopardize his position with that authority figure by failing to comply or by withdrawing, as was permissible after the question was raised, by withdrawing from an exercise in which a large majority of the people participate. It was also stated that if the children wanted to, they could leave the room, and I happen to be the mother of two children, and I have learned that children as a rule won't belong to a group and to be accepted.

Do you think the average child would really exercise his choice in this matter? My feeling is that not only would a child not exercise his option here, but that most adults would not either. Dr. Wilson, I'd like to ask you this. Your implications say that this decision can be carried far. Could it be carried in the public functions affecting adults, and let's say in the buildings that perhaps are dependent upon government financial support? I would think that's very possible. I don't think that these changes could be affected on the basis, probably, of this particular decision, but every decision builds up a background of usefulness toward other decisions. We have so many ways in which government and religion are already involved with each other, that if you begin trying to separate them, it would be not only a big task, but it seems to me it's a road down which generally we are not prepared to go.

May I say just one other thing at that point? We talk about the wall of separation between church and state, and I think that most of us favor this. But the question is, how high should this wall be built? Now, logically, if you're going to have complete separation, you're going to eliminate a lot of things that we take for granted. The date, today's date, or the date of this year, 1962, which is a religious statement, are we prepared to give that up? What about taking an oath on the Bible and so on? We have been told that these things have nothing to do with this decision.

It's as Douglass apparently thought they did have something to do with it, or that at least the implications were there. Yes, you can take up there. Take exception to something that was said a moment ago to the effect that the prayer was acceptable to most people. Now, it certainly was not acceptable to... I've been reading the wrong thing. This was the assumption of the reasons, but it was not acceptable to the people who brought the complaint. Well, that's true. And the prayer is not acceptable to me either. Someone has pointed out that it is a 22-word prayer, and one third of the words are personal pronouns in the first person. It is so watered down, it is so lacking in being specific that it really doesn't speak to me. And the problem, it seems to me, is that in having this said over and over and over again in the public schools, is that this is apt to be accepted as a substitute for a vital and living faith, Christian faith, Jewish faith, or whatever religious affiliation the person happens to have.

It's apt to become an inoculation and prevent a deepening of religious faith rather than fostering it. The prayer is objectionable to me also. Because it really doesn't say anything, you mean? Yes, because it is non-Christian and it is sub-Christian. How much do you think, let's turn to you, Dr. Wilson, how much do you really think this prayer meant to a child reciting it every morning? Or is that the point? Well, that is certainly part of the point, and I can only think back to my days when I was in public schools in Pennsylvania, where at that time 10 verses of Scripture were required to be read every day, and the Lord's Prayer prayed. Now, as far as I know, this didn't influence my life one way or the other, but we also used the pledge of allegiance to the flag, and I'm not sure that this made any great change in my life.

But the one thing that either of these procedures did, it indicated to me that someone felt that this sort of thing was important. Dr. Egan or Reverend Egan, in this country a person may be a non-believer if he wants to, and he may want to raise his children the same way. Does he have the same right under the Constitution as the vast majority of believers? Many people have complained that this helps the minority at the expense of the vast majority of people. Absolutely. A citizen of this country has the same rights, regardless of his church affiliation or his religious belief, and it is clear that this is what the founding fathers intended in their composition of the First Amendment. They were not speaking, and this has been the position of one prominent churchman in our country, they were not speaking against the separation of sects and denominations, excluding them from government, but of an establishment of religion of religion in general.

This is not the business of governmental officials as the majority opinion states. This was debated in the Congress in 1789, two years before the Bill of Rights was adopted, and three times the Senate failed to accept, refused terminology for this First Amendment, referring to one religious sect or society in preference. So the founding fathers were concerned about the rights of all persons, with liberty and justice for all, and the pledge of allegiance to the flag. Not to just believers, but to all persons.

Yes, but the pledge of allegiance also says, under God, and presumably those who don't believe in God are being, their freedom is being infringed upon there, but certainly we're concerned with the rights of minority. I think one of the things we're forgetting in our zeal for the minority is that the majority has some rights, too. This country is, in my theology, is under God, and unbelievers are under God, regardless of whether or not this is articulated, individually or in a group recitation. And I'm a little bit disturbed by those people who have said that we have shut God out of the schools. If that is their feeling, then their God is too small. They do not conceive of a God who is the very ground of being, and within which nations rise and fall within which public schools are operated. But this does not need to be said for it to be true.

I agree with Mr. Egan in the sense that we have got into the habit of feeling that if we put a motto on something on our stamps or on our stamp cancellations that we have dealt with the problem, if we say in God we trust, then this is so, which is not necessarily the case at all. The problem is not in having a form, however, but in failing to fill the form with something meaningful. Dr. Wilson, do you think now they've been saying prayers in schools for a long, long time in the United States of America? Do you think that this decision implies that the nation is becoming more secular or not? Well, that's a hard question to answer. I don't believe that of itself this would be so. Perhaps actually we are becoming more aware of other people, and in a sense more religious as Mr. Egan has said. Go ahead. Every time you start to say something I do, I'll be quiet a minute.

It isn't a business of a country in the sense of duly constituted governments to be either secular or religious, either sacred or profane. Is this not what the First Amendment is saying, that it is not the business of government or of government officials to mess around in religious affairs? It is the non-secular, the sacred. But silence of itself is a kind of comment, of course. Somebody has said that silence is not always gold, and sometimes it's just plain yellow. Well, this kind of idea might apply in a different sort of way to silence on religion. I think that this ruling in itself is a rather small thing. But when Justice Black gave the majority opinion, he quoted James Madison, who was the author of the First Amendment, as saying, it is proper to take alarm at the first experiment on our liberties. And Justice Black used this quotation to bolster his rejection of the Regent's Prayer. I'd like to use the same quotation to express concern at the implications of that rejection.

It is proper to take alarm at the first experiment on our liberties, and I am taking alarm. And we should justly take alarm at any infringement of our liberties. And the founding fathers were taking such alarm when they reacted to such things as a statement adopted by the town council in Milford, Connecticut, in 1636, 160 years before the Bill of Rights. Point number one of this resolution was the earth is the lords and the fullness thereof. Point number two was the earth was created for the saints and point number three was we are the saints. This is the sort of thing that can happen when religious establishment is permitted to take over a government. Of course, all is not lost when we have even the privilege of a discussion of this sort. This was not a decision of government, which is untouchable.

And everybody has been having his own day in court following this decision. And I'd like to ask this before the program ends from both of you. In Hicksville, Long Island, a silent prayer suggested for use in the public schools was distributed to children and high school and college students at Trinity Lutheran Church. The prayer is printed on a bookmark and contains a contemporary symbol of the Trinity in prayer on one side and instructions for its use on the other. And the children are to say this silent prayer at the beginning of school. Dr. Egan, do you think this sort of thing will help this situation? You certainly cannot not outlaw silence. Knowing some of the heat that has been gendered on Long Island, I don't think that this will help the situation. I also do not think that it is the prerogative of the church, whether it be the Lutheran Church or any other, to prescribe exactly what shall be done in the public schools.

Yet if a child wishes to pray, a teacher certainly cannot prevent this. I don't want to give you an ammunition, Dr. Wilson, but when I was in grade school in Kansas, I recall hiding a new testament behind my history book and reading it during school hours. This, I think, does not come under the purview of the present decision. It might not have been a wise thing to do when my grades in history might have suffered because of it. But when it is done voluntarily by the student, it is quite a different thing from its being prescribed by some official in government. Dr. Wilson, do you have anything to say rather quickly? Well, I think we would both agree that if this decision results in more prayer in the church and in the home that this is all to the good, and President Kennedy suggested that this is certainly a way we can all deal with this decision. But still, there are certain landmarks that of themselves bind us to our history on the one side and to our destiny and the other, and I hope that we don't destroy them.

And our time is up, gentlemen. May I thank you, Dr. Kenneth Wilson, and you Reverend Edward Egan for appearing to discuss this topic today. This is your moderator Ruth Fox, wishing you a very pleasant good afternoon. Thank you, Miss Fox. Our difference of opinion broadcast has brought you the pros and cons of the Supreme Court decision to outlaw prayer in the public schools. The pro view was upheld by Reverend Edward Egan, Minister of the Rosland Methodist Church of Rosland, New York, speaking against that decision with Dr. Kenneth Wilson, executive editor of the Christian Herald. The opinions expressed with those of the guests themselves and not necessarily those of this station. How do you feel about the Supreme Court decision? Let us know. Send your cards and letters to difference of opinion, WNYC, New York 7. If you have any ideas for future broadcasts, send them along too.

And join us again next week at the same time for another stimulating discussion in difference of opinion.