Banner Graphic, Volume 10, Number 193, Greencastle, Putnam County, 18 April 1980 — Page 6

The Putnam County Banner Graphic, April 18,1980

Religion in schools: Every day the court's decision is ignored

By DIANE HENRY c. 1980 N.Y. Times News Service NEW YORK Early two decades ago it seemed that the Supreme Court settled the question of religion in the schools once and for all when it ruled that Bible reading and praying aloud in public schools violated the Constitution. That ruling may have settled the issue for once, but certainly not for all. Every day across America the court’s decision is being ignored, according to experts on both sides of the issue. Martha Rountree, president of the Leadership Foundation, a group fighting to restore prayer in the schools, has one theory: "There are millions of people from all over the country who believe God should be put back in the schools, that moral standards are declining and the kids have just gone haywire. 1 don’t know anyone who has ever been hurt by saying a prayer in school. ” Rep. Philip M. Crane of Illinois, until recently a Republican candidate for the presidency who is one of the leaders in the school-prayer movement, said prayer is part of a broader concern by today’s parents that children are missing "basic moral values” and failing to learn essentials. “People want to reconstruct what used to exist in the schools, and part of that is school prayer,” he said. And Robert A. Destro, general counsel for the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights argues that “if you exclude only religion from school, you’re teaching that maybe there’s something wrong with religion. That’s not neutral.” The vitality of the effort to circumvent the Supreme Court’s decision was dramatized this winter when Massachusetts passed a law allowing public-school students and teachers to voluntarily offer prayer in class while those who did not wish to participate were permitted to do so. But last month the state’s Supreme Judicial Court ruled the law unconstitutional.

Conference honors seven

Methodists discuss rural needs

INDIANAPOLIS (AP) - The church must continue to support cooperative, rural ministeries as “a way of doing ministry, ”an Arkansas bishop urged at the United Methodist Rural Fellowship Thursday.

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4 Although most major religious organizations, including the National Council of Churches and the U S. Catholic Conference, oppose such legislation and concur with the Supreme Court, there are people across the country who appear ready to carry on the struggle for some time. Edd Doerr, director of education relations for a Washington-based group called Americans United for Separation of Church and State, said the Arizona, Kentucky, Florida and Michigan legislatures were considering bills similar to the one in Massachusetts. There are no recent national surveys on observance of prayer, but in 1973 Richard Dierenfield, head of the education department at Macalester College in Minnesota, polled school superintendents. Of the 830 who responded, 10 percent said prayer was offered in morning assemblies despite the Supreme Court ban. In the South the figure was 27.7 percent, com-

Also, seven persons were cited for their service to the town and county and the bishops elected new officers in the third day of the quadrennial convention. “Are we fostering the concept

in the training of pastors that will instill the desire to team up to do what is needed in a geographical area to reflect a living, present Christ?” Bishop Kenneth W. Hicks asked. “Are we willing to shift from seeing

pared with less than 1 percent in the East. Dierenfield said he thought the figures today would probably be higher. “Prayer is creeping back into public schools rather sporadically,” he said. “We can’t identify it exactly, but it seems to me they’re trying it more and more.” Leo Pfeffer, special counsel to the American Jewish Congress, a group leading the opposition to prayer in the schools, said the issue is “chronic, persistent, and it heats up every time it gets into the paper,” as it did during the controversy in Massachusetts. One ardent supporter of class prayer is Katherine Jolley, who has been teaching history to youngsters in Washington for 31 years. “I’ve found the best way to solve discipline problems with children is to make them repeat a little prayer after me,” she said recently. “I know I’m not I’m not supposed to,” she continued, “but there are so many evil things I’ve seen in the schools, violence and drugs. When I see a fight about to start, I think it helps to get them to just sit and be calm for a minute. Sometimes I make them say the ‘Our Father’ prayer after me. Sometimes I say just think of the Supreme Being and how much more beautiful it is to live and love.” About a dozen states, including only Connecticut in the metropolitan New York area, have laws that provide for a period of silent meditation in public schools, and the laws have not been challenged. In Connecticut, according to both religious and school officials, the silentmeditation law, passed in 1975, has not caused any controversy in recent years. According to a State Education Department spokesman, there is so little interest in the law that the department does not bother to monitor observance of the law. Mark Rohrbaugh, president of the Christian Conference of Connecticut, said he had never heard any controversy over the issue and assumed meditation was observed only

neighboring churches and pastors as competitors and begin to be collaborators in mission and ministry?” The issue concerning the rural church is whether “we dare to relinquish or let flounder those centers which have and are producing outreach and personnel, which are offering a presence of the Christian gospel and which have and are providing an ever-present flow of vitality for the vigor of ouor world presence as a church,” he said. Citations of merit were presented to Glenn Biddle, Plainfield, Ind., outgoing UMRF president; Doyce W. Gunter, Tremont, Miss., ouotgoing membership secretary; Arthelia Brooks, Hardin, Ky., outgoing treasurer; Gail Williams, Houston, Texas, outgoing recording secretary; John Graham, Holly Springs, Miss., former pastor, district superintendent, seminary professor and national church executive. Life memberships were presented to Hicks and the Rev. Ralph Nichols, who died in 1979 while serving as director of church and community ministry in the National Division, Board of Global Ministries. William F. Appleby, Louisville, Miss., was elected as president, and Harold W. McSwain, Columbus, Ohio, was elected as vice president. The new secretary is Alan Wood, Danielson, Conn., and the treasurer is David Hollingsworth, Berea, Ky. The membership secretary is Rene Bideaux, Hayesville, N.C., and the secretary of special recognition and gifts is Kathy Fadick, Waldron, Ark. The denomination’s Hispanic caucus, asking if the United Methodist Church’s principle of racial inclusiveness “really counts when it comes to action,”, renewed its criticism of a board restructuring which will mean demotion for an Hispanic staff member. The caucus, MARCHA, charged the Board of Discipleship with “lack of sensitivity” for its plan to exclude Hispanics at the execuitive level in a proposed restructuring of its staff. In the restructure, subject to General Conference approval, there would be no divisions, and it has been announced that the directors for the newly constituted departments would not include Rev. Roberto Escamilla, associate general for the Division of Evangelism, Worship and Stewardship He would thus go to a lower level.

church

Crusade ' ..... v M ■ America seeks religion to justify what's coming

c. 1980 N.Y. Times YOU can smell a new crusade coming. All the opinion polls show that Americans are frustrated over Afghanistan and enraged over Iran. In order to focus their emotions, they will almost certainly reach for religion to justify the actions our country feels it must take to counteract our enemies. Such actions will be understandable and, from diplomatic and military points of view, may be necessary. But as a Christian believer and historian of religion, I’d like to wage a little crusade against turning everything into a crusade. The public often forgets that most of the wars of our time have dimensions of crusades. Most vivid is the way the Islamic world can turn any military venture in a “jihad,” a holy war. As the reasoning goes, if “religiocification” gives them so much power, won’t it do the same for us? Yes, to turn a war into a religious crusade does give power. It also removes any chances for diplomacy, reason, conciliation or early peace. If God is behind the armies, and if the clergy are blessing the cannon, no one can be satisfied until all the infidel blood has been spilled and all his children killed. Let the gush emunium (“Bloc of the Faithful”) in Israel use the Bible to justify West Bank settlements and disturb even the Israeli majority. Let the people of Northern Ireland, if they must, name their parties Protestant and Catholic. Let African nations continue their tragic divisions along tribal (and thus partly religious) lines. We have seen Egyptian Copts versus Moslems, Indian Hindu peoples versus Islamic peoples, and everyone versus everyone in Lebanon bear religious party names. Let those be the divisions elsewhere, where

casually if at all. However, a check with several school superintendents in Fairfield County and other areas of the state shows that the moment of meditation is widely observed in the mornings as class is about to begin and there were no reports of concern or displeasure about the law from parents or stndontc New Jersey’s Legislature passed a silentmeditation law in 1978, but it was pocket-vetoed by Gov. Brendan Byrne. School-prayer observance is a constant issue in the courts. In New York State, parents of children in a suburban Albany school sued their school district for refusing to allow prayer before classes begin. The lawyers for the parents in that case, now before a United States District Court in Syracuse, are with the Wisconsin-based Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights. A California court concluded it was unconstitutional to have any kind of religious gathering on school property during nonschool hours. In 1978 the same issue came up in a Buffalo high school, and a federal appellate court said children could not pray in the public schools. However, in 1965 a federal court in Michigan had said prayer before or after school was permissible. In St. Louis a federal appeals court is being asked to decide whether Christmas carols can be sung in public schools. The same issue has also been taken to a federal court in Texas. In Chattanooga a federal judge is considering a case involving Bible studies in the school. The Tennessee case followed a decision in which the Federal court said Bible study was permissible as long as it was totally neutral. The question before the court is whether the current plans for Bible study are purely objective. Last July the Mississippi Legislature passed a school prayer law making it lawful for teachers to “permit voluntary participation of students or others in prayer.” The Mississippi

things are bad enough. But must we vivify the idea of a Crusade again? Evidently we must. On April 29 the religious right wing is hoping to draw a million people to Washington to influence the politicians with clout and prayer. The marchers want “a day of humiliation and prayer.” Most such days in the past have called for humbling by the t ve called for ebling by the praying people themseves, but the stated program for April 29 concentrates on the idea of repenting for those Americans who are not “right” enough. Dr. James Kennedy, a popular Florida minister who gives encouragement to the event, has spelled out some of these sins. Among them is the fact that peace-minded Americans have permitted the nation to grow weak. The Russians could wipe out 80 percent of us on a first nuclear strike, says Kennedy, but we could kill only up to 5 percent of them with such a strike. We must repent before God until we can become powerful enough to kill more. That is a sample of the crusading spirit. The history books on my shelves give plenty of examples of the bad old days. We are taught to think of the real Crusaders as splendid nobles with gold crosses on red flags, riding white horses for grand and Christian causes. But religious fury and righteous anger only made them more vicious. Raymond of Agiles breathed their spirit when he told how Christian zealots cut off the heads of the enemies when they felt merciful. Otherwise they tortured the foe in flames and piled high the parts of their bodies. In Jerusalem “men rode in blood up to their knees. ” Did the good Christian grieve over the misery? He was crusading: “Indeed, it was a just and splendid judgment of God, that this place should be

Civil Liberties Union filed suit against th« Rankin County school board when it found acase where prayer was being broadcast overthe school loudspeaker system and a teacher called any child refusing to participate a “devil.” The state temporarily rescinded the law, but the issue is now before the United States District Court of Appeals. In North Dakota a federal court recently: declared unconstitutional a state law requiring the posting of the Ten Comandments on schoot walls. Aside from the legal battle, the school! board in Grand Forks ran into problems with; the law when Roman Catholics and Protestants fought over which denomination’s version, would be posted. In the King James version the; First Commandment says “Thou shalt have no other gods before me,” while in the Douay version it says, “Thou shalt not have strange gods, before me." The Grand Forks board resolved the dispute by writing another version, which said: “You shall have no other gods. ” In Kentucky, a law calling for the Ten Commandments to be posted in schools at private expense has been challenged in the State Supreme Court. On a national legislative level. Congress has turned back proposals for school prayer nearly every year since the Supreme Court’s ruling. Most recently Sen. Jesse Helms , R-N.C., and and Crane sponsored a constitutional amendment now before the House Judiciary Committee that would deny the Supreme Court jurisdiction over prayer in schools and leave such decisions to state courts. No hearings have been held on the proposal and many experts, including Crane, doubt that it will be passed. Some proponents remain en-. thusiastic about the bill’s prospects. Mrs. Rountree of the Leadership Foundation,! noting that the bill passed the Senate 51 to 40.. said she expects it to go to President Carter.! The president has said he opposes prayer in. public schools.

filled with the blood of the unbelievers.” In our own century, Americans turned World War I into a crusade against the demonic Hun. The clergy fell into line and even led the calls for counter-atrocity. It was the Young Men’s Christian Association that produced literature calling for Christianizing “every phase of a righteous war.” People felt squeamish about the bayonet. The YMCA solved that in one of its booklets. The YMCA secretary would tell fainthearted recruits: “I would not enter this work till I could see Jesus himself...running a bayonet through an enemy’s body.” The Christian stabber of German bellies could see the heavens opened and find Jesus, the righteous one, coming in glory to his side in the trenches. The distance between the crusading spirit and the Sermon on the Mount is clear. Still, religious people often convince themselves that “we” need an ideology to counter the one “they” have, that “our God is better’n their God, and we’ll show’em for Him.” That there is power in true repentance, that sometimes one must do what one must do—then say one’s prayers—without claiming God as the fellow wrathful one, as fellow-killer, are notions that vanish when we call on the clergy to make war righteous. Or, worse, when the clergy call on the rest of us to mount the crusade from under their pulpits. CLINT, Texas (AP) A new world record for a non-stop oral reading of the entire Bible is claimed by some teen-agers in this little west Texas town of 825 people. An ecumenical group of 28 Methodist, Roman Catholic, Baptist and other youths read the book in relays in a total of 64 hours. 29 minutes and 34 seconds

Warner tapes plea to Liberia INDIANAPOLIS (AP) - Methodist bishop Bennie Warner says he understands the mood in his country, wracked by a bloody coup, is calming But he still fears for those Liberians who have been arrested. Warner said Thursday night he knew nothing about the three and a civilian who were publicly executed in Monrovia, Liberia, after a court martial convicted them of looting. “I don’t know what the fate of those under arrest will be, but I am concerned about them,” said Warner, contacted at his Indianapolis hotel room. “I understand things are calming down, and I hope that is so.” ■,> Warner was vice-president under the government of President William Tolbert, who was assassinated this weekend. He escaped the tragedy because he was attending a meeting of Methodist bishops in Nashville, Ind. He said he would return to his country, but he didn’t know when. Earlier Thursday he taped a plea to his countrymen, asking them to work together and show humanity be those who were arrested. “We can all get get together to rebuild and reconstruct this country,” Warner said in the taped message. In his message, scheduled for broadcast Thursday night by the British Broadcasting Corp., Warner said, “Recent events iR Liberia as we have heard them gives us great concern over those who are now under detention. Let this new government be a government of peace and of justice, not of vengence and hate and bloodthirst,” Warner said. The bishop asked “since the worst has been done, the expresident has been killed,” the prisoners be released and all charges against them be dropped. “We can all get get together to rebuild and reconstruct this country,” Warner said. Warner stressed unity was essential to building a strong country. “Please listen to this appeal and plea because not one seg- ‘ ment can build a country alone,” he said. “I think all of us have contribution to make.’: Warner reprimanded the new • administration for burying theassassinated president “in acommon grave, without any ceremony, worse than an infidel.” Earlier in the day Warner, who is in Indianapolis attending the United Methodists General : Conference, thanked the church • for its support during the coup.