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WisconsinChristianNews.com
Volume 26, Issue 1
Do Our Schools Have a Prayer?
By Jerry Newcombe, D.Min. April 2025
would go on later to serve as the Chief Justice, wrote this about the founders and the First Amend- ment: “The true meaning of the Establishment Clause can only be seen in its history...The Framers in- tended the Establishment Clause to prohibit the designation of any church as a ‘national’ one. The Clause was also designed to stop the Federal Gov- ernment from asserting a preference for one reli- gious denomination or sect over others.” Rehnquist gave an example from the very same men who wrote the First Amendment: “George Washington himself, at the request of the very Congress which passed the Bill of Rights, proclaimed a day of ‘public thanks- giving and prayer, to be observed by ac- knowledging with grateful hearts the many and signal favors of Almighty God.’ History must judge whether it was the Father of his Country in 1789, or a majority of the Court today, which has strayed from the meaning of the Establishment Clause.” Thankfully, since Rehnquist wrote those words in 1985 in the case of Wallace v. Jaf- fre, there have been more “originalists” rul- ing on the high court — adding needed balance to the treatment of Christian expression in the public arena. Nonetheless, the battle for religious liberty is far from over. As to the current battle, NBC observes: “Whatever happens in the Oklahoma case, more religious rights cases touching upon the establishment clause are on the horizon. Litigation is already un- derway over a law in Louisiana that would require public schools to display the Ten Commandments. A federal judge blocked the measure.” Thomas Jefferson is often invoked as effectively the “patron saint” of secularism in the public arena. But even that is a misreading of history. For exam- ple, Jefferson wrote, “In the holy cause of freedom… heaven has rewarded us.” And he added, “that it may flow through all times…is my fervent prayer to heaven.” The founders of America never intended to banish God from the public arena, including the public schools. Dr. Jerry Newcombe is the executive director of Providence Forum, a division of Coral Ridge Ministries, where Jerry also serves as senior producer and an on- air contributor. He has written/co-written 33 books, including (with D. James Kennedy), “What If Jesus Had Never Been Born?” and (with Dr. Peter Lillback), “George Washington’s Sacred Fire.”
Meanwhile, one of the great legal scholars at Har- vard in the 1800s was Joseph Story, who went on to serve as a Justice on the Supreme Court. In 1851, Story wrote a commentary on the Constitu- tion. Story wrote: “Probably at the time of the adoption of the Constitution, and of the amendment to it now under consideration [the First Amendment], the general if not the universal sentiment in America
There’s a battle right now related to religion and Oklahoma schools. Oklahoma Superintendent Ryan Walters is in favor of greater religious expres- sion in the public schools of that state. Others in the “The Sooner State,” including the state attorney general and some confused clergy, oppose what Walters is attempting to do. Walters wants school children to have access to the Bible and the Ten Commandments in school. Walters said in reference to Engel v. Vitale, the 1962 Supreme Court decision that threw out school prayer as unconstitutional: “I think they were dead wrong on that. Indi- viduals have the right to express their reli- gious beliefs. That does not stop in a school building,” Walter also said, “What I’m trying to make sure is our kids understand American his- tory.” The opposition is claiming that, in effect, Walters wants to “establish religion” in the schools.
was, that Christianity ought to receive encourage- ment from the State so far as was not incompatible with the private rights of conscience and the free- dom of religious worship.” He added, “An attempt to level all religions, and to make it a matter of state policy to hold all in utter indifference, would have created universal disap- probation, if not universal indignation.” Justice Story continued, “The real object of the First Amendment was not to countenance, much less to advance, Mahometanism [Islam] or Judaism or infidelity by prostrating Christianity; but to ex- clude all rivalry among Christian sects, and to pre- vent any national ecclesiastical establishment which should give to a hierarchy the exclusive pa- tronage of the national government.”
But what does our history show?
The First Amendment begins, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” Histori- cally, this was understood to mean that there would be no established Church at the federal level in the United States. Even at the time the First Amendment to the Con- stitution was adopted in 1791, prohibiting a federal church, a handful of states had their own estab- lished churches at the state level, and saw no con- flict between that and the First Amendment. The last of these to wither away was that of Massachu- setts in 1833.
In other words, ac- cording to a great legal scholar writing fairly close to the founding era, the purpose of the First Amendment was not to banish God from the public arena. Jumping ahead to the twentieth century, an- other associate justice of the Supreme Court, William Rehnquist, who
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