Should Prayer Be Allowed in Public Schools?

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Our position restrains the actions of schools and public employees, not students. The principles of religious freedom allow for students to engage in voluntary religious expression. Students have the right to pray individually or in groups or to discuss their religious views with their peers so long as it does not become disruptive. Students have the right to distribute religious literature to their schoolmates and a school may confine distribution of all literature to a particular table at particular times. Teaching only about one religion and its holy text(s) in public school classrooms creates the impression that the school endorses that particular religious message. Therefore, every effort should be made to balance an academic exploration about one religious text, such as the Bible, with study about other scripture and religious traditions.

But government-prescribed prayer is a completely different issue. Whenever a government imposes or even favors religious beliefs on a religiously diverse nation, religious freedom suffers. To lose religious freedom would be to throw away one of the cornerstones of our nation and to do irreparable harm both to religion in this nation and to the nation itself.