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Nevertheless, the Jewish committee's Stern concedes that "there's been much less controversy than one might have expected from the hysterical predictions we made." Americans United director Barry Lynn notes that "in most school districts, students are spontaneously forming clubs and acting upon their own and not outsiders' religious agendas." A.C.L.U. lobbyist Terri Schroeder also supports the Equal Access Act, pointing out that the First Amendment's Free Exercise clause protecting religious expression is as vital as its Establishment Clause, which prohibits government from promoting a creed. The civil libertarians' acceptance of the clubs owes something to their use as a defense against what they consider a truly bad idea: Istook's school-prayer amendment. Says Lynn: "Most reasonable people say, 'If so many kids are praying legally in the public schools now, why would you possibly want to amend the Constitution?'"
For now, the prospects for prayer clubs seem unlimited. In fact, the tragic shooting of eight prayer-club members last December in West Paducah, Ky., by 14-year-old Michael Carneal provided the cause with martyrs and produced a hero in prayer-club president Ben Strong, who persuaded Carneal to lay down his gun. Strong recalls that the club's daily meetings used to draw only 35 to 60 students out of Heath High School's 600. "People didn't really look down on us, but I don't know if it was cool to be a Christian," he says. Now 100 to 150 teens attend. Strong has since toured three states extolling the value of Christian clubs. "It woke a lot of kids up," he says. "That's true everywhere I've spoken. This is a national thing."
--Reported by Richard N. Ostling/Minneapolis and Niagara Falls