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The turnabout culminates a quarter-century of legislative and legal maneuvering. The 1963 Supreme Court decision and its broad-brush enforcement by school administrators infuriated conservative Christians, who gradually developed enough clout to force Congress to make a change. The resulting Equal Access Act of 1984 required any federally funded secondary school to permit religious meetings if the schools allowed other clubs not related to curriculum, such as public-service Key Clubs. The crucial rule was that the prayer clubs had to be voluntary, student-run and not convened during class time.
Early drafts of the act were specifically pro-Christian. Ultimately, however, its argument was stated in pure civil-libertarian terms: prayers that would be coercive if required of all students during class are protected free speech if they are just one more after-school activity. Nevertheless, recalls Marc Stern, a staff lawyer with the American Jewish Congress, "there was great fear that this would serve as the base for very intrusive and aggressive proselytizing." Accordingly, Stern's group and other organizations challenged the law--only to see it sustained, 8 to 1, by the Supreme Court in 1990. Bill Clinton apparently agreed with the court. The President remains opposed to compulsory school prayer. But in a July 1995 speech he announced that "nothing in the First Amendment converts our public schools into religion-free zones or requires all religious expression to be left at the schoolhouse door." A month later Clinton had the Department of Education issue a memo to public school superintendents that appeared to expand Equal Access Act protections to include public-address announcements of religious gatherings and meetings at lunchtime and recess.
Evangelicals had already seized the moment. Within a year of the 1990 court decision, prayer clubs bloomed spontaneously on a thousand high school campuses. Fast on their heels came adult organizations dedicated to encouraging more. Proffitt's Tennessee-based organization, First Priority, founded in 1995, coordinates interchurch groups in 162 cities working with clubs in 3,000 schools. The San Diego-based National Network of Youth Ministries has launched "Challenge 2000," which pledges to bring the Christian gospel "to every kid on every secondary campus in every community in our nation by the year 2000." It also promotes a phenomenon called "See You at the Pole," encouraging Christian students countrywide to gather around their school flagpoles on the third Wednesday of each September; last year, 3 million students participated. Adult groups provide club handbooks, workshops for student leaders and ongoing advice. Network of Youth Ministries leader Paul Fleischmann stresses that the resulting clubs are "adult supported," not adult-run. "If we went away," he says, "they'd still do it."