Oh Lord

[Christians4LessGvt]

[Xavier_Onassis]

No one cares if children pray in school. They care only when they are LED in prayer in a public school.

[Plane]

Why is that distinction important?

[Xavier_Onassis]

Well, DUH!

Because if a teacher leads the child in prayer, he is violating the clause that says that the government may not abet the establishment of religion.
Suppose the teacher is a Muslim: do you want him to teach your kids to grovel to Mecca with his butt in the air?

Any kid that wants to pray by himself has every right to do so, quietly and to himself.  Prayers led by adults or other children and condoned by the school should not be allowed.

[Plane]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/2014/05/05/breaking-supreme-court-upholds-legislative-prayer-in-town-of-greece-v-galloway/


  I am not too worried that a variety of clerics will lead prayers, the simplest solution would be to invite them all in proportion to their  congregations strength in the population. The Muslim prayer would not need to be the type that requires prostration, Muslims also pray standing .

   Why not have a registered atheist lead the atheist version of spiritual discourse for an equal time? Adjusted for proportional representation of course.

[Plane]

The American Humanist Association announced that it is launching a program training people in the giving of secular invocations. So did the Freedom from Religion Foundation, but with very different aims in mind: the AHA wants to show that unbelievers can fully join in and be an equal part of the civic ideals traditionally symbolized by invocations, while the FFRF is more intent on upsetting the applecart and creating enough discomfort with the whole idea of such a ceremony to cause its discontinuance.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/2014/05/05/walter-olson-secular-right-on-the-city-council-prayer-decision/

The problem that both of these organizations will have is that the number of their committed partisans, who are willing to endure the stultification of the average town council meeting in order to annoy some of their fellow citizens with an ersatz invocation, is infinitesimal in comparison with the number of committed Christians who value any opportunity to proclaim the Word publicly. In fact, reading between the lines of the opinion, it seems that is what happened in Town of Greece: two Jews and a Wiccan signed up to give invocations, found that everyone listened politely and unresponsively, and got bored with the whole thing.

   This looks like a problem solved to me.

[Xavier_Onassis]

What happens in a town council meeting in a podunk town in NY  does not have much to do with prayer in schools.