Organization: City University of New York/ University Computer Center
Date: Wednesday, 8 Apr 1992 08:31:26 EDT
From: <SECBH@CUNYVM.BITNET>
Newsgroups: talk.religion.misc
Subject:    Myth #1 About Church and State

_Church and State_ magazine, a publication of Americans United for
Separation of Church and State, recently did an article entitled
"Myths and Mischief" which consisted of eleven myths based on
distortions or half-truths centering the issue of separation of
church and state in the U.S.

                            MYTH
*Begin excerpt:

Madalyn Murray O'Hair, an atheist, single-handedly removed God,
the Bible and prayer from public schools in 1962.
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Atheist leader Madalyn Murray O'Hair played no role in the Supreme
Court's school prayer decision in 1962.

In the Engel v. Vitale case, the U. S. Supreme Court ruled 8 -1 against
New York's "Regents' Prayer", a "non-denonminational" prayer state
education officials had composed for public schoolchildren to recite.
The prayer was challenged by a group of parents fron New Hyde Park --
some atheists, some believers.  O'Hair was not involved at all in
the case.

One year later, a case originated by Philadelphia-area Unitarian
Ed Schempp challenging mandatory Bible reading in Pennsylvania schools
reached the Supreme Court.  At the same time, Murray O'Hair was
challenging a similar practice as well as the recitation of the Lord's
Prayer in Maryland public schools.  The Supreme Court consolidated
the cases and in 1963 ruled 8 - 1 that government-sponsored Bible
reading or other religious devotions in public schools are unconstitu-
tional.

The Engel and Abingdon v. Schempp cases were a result of the changing
religious landscape of the United States.  As religious minorities
grew more confident of their rightful place in American society
they came to resent the de facto Protestant flavor in many public
schools.  Litigation was inevitable.  The high court's rulings
striking down mandatory prayer and Bible reading in public schools
would have occured if Murray O'Hair had never been born.
The controversial Texas atheist serves as a convenient villain for
Religious Right propagandists who hate religious liberty and
church-state separation.

It is also important to remenber that neither of these rulings removed
prayer or Bible reading from public schools.  Voluntary religious
exercises in public schools have always been legal.  The rulings
of the early 60's simply prevented the government, through the public
schools, from intervening in sensitive religious matters.  Voluntary
student-initiated religious exercises were reaffirmed by the Supreme
Court in 1990, when the justices upheld the Equal Access Act, which
permits students to form religious clubs at public high schools under
certain conditions.

The rulings from the 1960s are also not hostile toward religion, as
the justices took pains to point out.  In the Abingdon decision
Justice Tom Clark wrote for the court majority, "(I)t might well
be said that one's education is not complete without a study
of comparative religion or the history of religion and its
relationship to the advancement of civilization.  It certainly may be
said that the Bible is worthy of study for its literary and
historic qualities.  Nothing we have said here indicates that such
study of the Bible or of religion, when presented objectively as
part of a secular program of education, may not be effected consistently
with the First Amendment."

*End of excerpt.
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 Jack Carroll      "The struggle of man against power is the struggle of
<SECBH@CUNYVM>      memory against forgetting."
                                                    Milan Kundera