Vol. 9 No. 10 (October 1999) pp. 462-464.
SCHOOL PRAYER AND DISCRIMINATION: THE CIVIL RIGHTS OF RELIGIOUS MINORITIES
AND DISSENTERS by Frank S. Ravitch. Boston: Northeastern University Press,
1999. 273 pp. Cloth $50.00.
Reviewed by Gregg Ivers, Department of Government, American University.
In 1974, I was twelve years old and in the seventh grade. For as long
as I could remember, we began our school day with announcements over the
intercom, read by a carefully selected and academically distinguished
student. The announcements, in turn, were followed by a Bible verse from the
New Testament and a prayer composed by the principal. Sometimes the
principal offered the prayer, and sometimes the student did. I was a regular
visitor to the principal's office but not much of a student, so I was never
asked to read the announcements. Thankfully, that also meant I never found
myself having to read from the Bible or offer a prayer composed by our
principal.
I often wondered what I would have done. My family is Jewish, but,
in those days, we were not the least bit observant. The only time I ever
went to synagogue was to attend by friends' bar and bat mitzvahs. Even
there, I felt weird. Here I was, from a Jewish background, and I had no idea
what was going on. Ironically, I felt less uncomfortable during school as we
went through the morning Bible and prayer rituals. Most of the class was
Jewish, many were Catholic, some were Greek Orthodox, so it wasn't as if I
was an outsider in a Christian environment. Protestants were not in the
majority. Besides, no one really paid attention. Homeroom was a time to
discuss after school plans, gossip about who was going steady and who was
about to get dumped, and play paper football. Religion was the last thing on
anybody's mind.
Then one day our intercom church services suddenly stopped. To this
day, I have no idea why. Perhaps a parent brought some pressure to bear
behind the scenes. Perhaps a teacher complained. Perhaps a county-level
administrator got wind of what was happening and order our morning exercises
halted. But here we were: a Deep South elementary school twelve years behind
the curve in complying with ENGEL v. VITALE (1962) and ABINGTON v. SCHEMPP
(1963), the Supreme Court's historic decisions banning state-sponsored prayer
and Bible reading in the public schools. I don't recall any great sense of
liberation on the part of students after our daily dose of religion ceased.
For the most part, we made light of it. After all, there is something funny
to most twelve and thirteen year-old boys when their buddies are reading from
the New Testament the day before their bar mitzvahs. The attitude was closer
to, "Hey, the joke's on you!"
In SCHOOL PRAYER AND DISCRIMINATION, Frank Ravitch has written a clear,
careful and sensitive account of a problem that, even twenty-five years
later, will not go away. Schools and, in some cases, entire school districts
continue to flout the Court's decisions on school
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prayer. In some cases, state legislatures have passed laws that encourage
schools to offer or permit on-site religious exercises; in other cases,
schools, buffered by local public opinion, act in renegade fashion by
disavowing the Court's decisions as Acts against God and press ahead with
intercom prayer, prayer before football games, student-led prayers at
assemblies and graduations, and so on. Anyone who follows this issue is
familiar with the emotionally intense nature of this conflict and the
frequency of clashes between those want the schools in the business of
promoting religion and those who do not.
Ravitch centers his book around three major points. First, he argues
that schools that continue to support and engage in religious exercises are
violating the civil as well as First Amendment rights of religious
minorities. Second, he addresses the social and political dynamics of why
this form of religious discrimination continues to persist and, in some
instances, has become more widespread. Third, he offers a model statute
designed to prohibit state-sponsored religious exercises. The statute draws
from the 1964 Civil Rights Act, the law of sexual harassment, as defined by
the Court's rulings and EEOC guidelines, and the Equal Access Act, a 1984
congressional law that permits student-led religious clubs to meet in schools
after the school day has ended.
Ravitch makes a good point when he says that much of the current debate
over boundaries of school prayer and religious expression in the schools is
of little use in containing unconstitutional religious exercises. The vast
majority of schools and school districts know the law and they comply with
it. Lawyers who represent schools who are accused of violating their
students' rights by not permitting on-site religious exercises find this
litigation a tremendous drain on their resources. Schools face many more
important challenges than trying to ensure that students receive a daily dose
of God's word. Moreover, the public school population, even in smaller
localities, has become more and more religiously diverse. Trying to devise a
prayer or agree on a religious reading is impossible in many places.
It is in schools where the population is more homogenous and Christian
fundamentalist that the religious rebirth finds its greatest support.
Ravitch offers persuasive and extensive documentation of the critical role
that the Christian Right has had in influencing the agenda of school boards,
P.T.A.s and, in some cases, state legislatures. In place to support the
political victories of the Christian Right is extremely sophisticated and
well-financed litigation support. Ravitch points out the success that the
American Center for Law and Justice, a Pat Robertson creation, has had in
defending the political gains of Christian advocacy groups in court. Indeed,
the influx of conservative religious groups into the litigation arena has had
a tremendous impact on the dynamics of the church-state debate.
I believe that political scientists can benefit greatly from Ravitch's
discussion of the religious equality guarantee as a civil rights issue.
Introducing this angle into a classroom discussion on the Establishment
Clause will require students to move away from the typical practice of
analyzing past decisions and applying them to substitution hypotheticals and
conceptualize the problem in a different way. For example, most students are
not aware that many Christians oppose state-sponsored religion in the public
schools. Groups such as the Baptist Joint Committee, the American Baptists
Churches and the National Council of Churches have consistently opposed
school prayer and
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Bible reading in the public schools for the last thirty-five years because
they believe that such exercises water down religion in the name of politics
and reduce religion's independence from the state. That stands in contrast
to the position of most reform and conservative Jewish organizations, which
believe that the American experiment with religious disestablishment has
helped protect their status as equals in the religious milieu, even though
they constitute distinct minorities. Ravitch's thorough discussion of the
political and social context of the dynamics of church-state law and
litigation might also freshen the minds of political scientists who study the
relationship between law and the courts but don't spend enough time reading
or thinking about how either really work in the real world.
Ravitch's approach might also serve to remind students and their
professors of James Madison's similar approach to religious equality. In
FEDERALIST No. 51, Madison wrote "in a free government the security for civil
rights must be the same as that for religious rights. It consists in the one
case in the multiplicity of interests, and in the other the multiplicity of
sects." Madison viewed religious disestablishment as both a mechanism for
civil and religious piece. Madison's take on the Establishment Clause he
later drafted is the subject of much disagreement, but few students of the
subject dispute that an equal protection guarantee was an implicit assumption
of the no-establishment principle. As Ravitch notes, so much time is taken
up in the literature with what I like to call "chicken little" arguments
about the Court's Establishment Clause decisions that few even pay attention
to the importance that Madison gave to the equality dimension of religious
freedom.
The model statute that Ravitch offers to deal with religious discrimination
is certainly intriguing, but I'm afraid it won't be of much use to most
political scientists. This is not a criticism; indeed, Ravitch is a law
professor who has written a book for a legal audience. Political scientists
who teach constitutional law might well borrow Ravitch's ideas for a class
hypothetical, but it would take an awfully sophisticated undergraduate
audience to comprehend all that is involved here. I get to teach some
awfully bright students, but I don't have one who is ready to take on the
nuances of Section 1983 remedies and the concept of vicarious liability for
constitutional violations.
In sum, Frank Ravitch has written a fine book, one that offers a fair
and thorough treatment of a difficult and vexing political and constitutional
issue. It deserves a wide and attentive audience.
REFERENCES
ABINGTON TOWNSHIP, SCHOOL DISTRICT OF V. SCHEMPP, 374 U.S. 203 (1963).
ENGEL V. VITALE, 370 U.S. 421 (1962).