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"We're probably the most suppressed newspaper in America," says Dan Rodden, whose Caleb Campaign publishes Issues and Answers. "In the schools today there is definitely a religious and philosophical bent that is anti- Christian. Little children, by the time they're in second grade, know that God is illegal." The issue of prayer in the classroom arouses even greater passions. If public schools allow teachers to lead students in prayer, it looks very much like an endorsement of religion, and it is hard to imagine that a child would not feel pressured into joining in. Particularly in deeply religious communities, atheist and agnostic families are often afraid to protest. "In many areas no one complains when the church starts creeping into public life," says Jay Jacobson, executive director of the Arkansas affiliate of the ACLU. "We get calls at the beginning of the school year against a generic prayer at football games, but no one is willing to file an official complaint. The Bill of Rights is not self-enforcing."
The fears may not be unfounded. Two Little Axe, Okla., families that brought suit against morning prayers in school in 1981 became targets of relentless harassment. The children were repeatedly asked by teachers why they didn't believe in God, and one youngster found an upside-down cross hung on his locker. One evening while members of one of the families were at a football game, their house was fire bombed and burned down.
But on the other hand, when fifth-grader Monette Rethford, in Norman, Okla., is told that she cannot get together with other students on school property to pray or read the Bible, it looks very much like a restriction of her freedom to worship. To publicize their own fervor, tens of thousands of students gathered around their school flagpoles to pray last Sept. 11. "I don't want a government church or a teacher opening class with prayer," says Jay Sekulow of Christian Advocates Serving Evangelism, a conservative organization specializing in church-state litigation. "But the First Amendment protects individual speech, even religious speech, and even on public property."
The popular compromise proposal of recent years is a moment of silence. Douglas Laycock, associate dean of the University of Texas School of Law, who favors strict government neutrality toward religion, finds it hard to believe that it could be unconstitutional merely to tell a classroom of kids to keep quiet for a minute. He says, however, that "it's beastly hard to implement it in a fair way. Teachers do deliver messages, and the children do have understandings."
There are still other religion cases pending before the court, and in light of its recent rulings, no one can predict which way the Justices will decide. Many accommodationists were encouraged last year when the court, by an 8-to-1 vote, approved a federal law that allows voluntary student religious clubs to meet in public schools after hours on the same basis as other noncurricular student clubs.