What has the court really said about prayer and worship in public schools?
Although the Court has declared itself on this subject in a number of cases, I believe that Abington Township School District v. Schempp 374 U.S. 203 (1963) is most important of all and can be used to summarize the Court’s decisions on the subject. The Court has said that state-required or state-mandated prayer in the public schools is a violation of the Establishment Clause. But, in Schempp, it went out of its way to say that the teaching of religion, so long as it is done in an objective, nonproselytizing way, is not only constitutionally permissible, but a good idea. The Court recognized that an education would not be complete without recognizing the role religion has played in people’s lives, for good or ill, and that the public schools would be negligent if they did not include it in their academic instruction. The Court did not explicitly say, but certainly implied, that prayer by individual students, so long as it was completely voluntary, i.e., not encouraged or guided by publi
