Prayer in schools?

When I attended state schools in Derby from the mid-1950s to the late-1960s, every school day began with an act of Christian worship which included a hymn, a Bible reading, and prayers always concluding with the Lord’s Prayer. All this was a requirement of the 1944 Education Act. I gather things are somewhat different today. Most British schools don’t feel comfortable any more “doing God”, let alone Jesus.

That’s the reverse of what’s happened in the USA. It’s all very different over there where such things are decided not by legislation but by the Constitution as interpreted by the US Supreme Court. Let’s start with the Constitution. The First Amendment to the Constitution states that “Congress shall make no law respecting the establishment of religion.” From the 1960s through to 2000, the Supreme Court interpreted that prohibition on a nationally-prescribed religion to declare unconstitutional a host of Christian practices in public (i.e. state-run) schools.

It started in 1962 when the Supreme Court banned prayers in all public schools composed by the school authorities. The following year, the Court added the reciting of the Lord’s Prayer and Bible reading to the list of constitutionally forbidden things in public schools. (Private schools could – and still can – do what they like.) The 1960s was a period of political liberalism in the United States – under presidents Kennedy and Johnson – and the Supreme Court was likewise of a liberal hue. Indeed, the US Supreme Court at this time was probably at its most liberal, dominated by three very liberal justices – Earl Warren (the Chief Justice), Hugo Black and William Douglas.