I’m getting a lot of grief from readers about one line in my column. For example, from a reader:

You write: Don’t many of the same people who claim that you have free-speech rights in public schools also insist that you don’t have the right to pray in them? Come on now. I realize this is just a throwaway line, but freedom from
government imposition of religion is right there in the First Amendment
too. It’s not like anyone is saying you can’t pray privately in school.

Me: I’m open to the criticism I could have been less glib here — and I certainly would have been if given different space constraints. But I stand by what I wrote. There have been a slew of books on the “war on Christianity” in recent years. I’ve read a few of them. Some of them are certainly overstated in parts, but they’re very good at collecting a whole lot of anecdotal evidence that even private religiosity in schools is under assault in many parts of the public schools system.

For example, David Limbaugh’s bestselling Persecution is one long indictment of this campaign. In one case, a teacher disciplined a fourth-grader for saying grace before eating his lunch in the cafeteria. In another incident a teacher confiscated Bibles from some students as they entered the classroom. Throwing the books into a trash, he calls them “garbage.” My guess is if the kids were carrying anti-Bush posters instead of Bibles and if the kid saying grace had been denouncing the war in Iraq, these stories would have gotten just a bit more ink.

Update: Several reader have made this point:

Subject: I’m sure others have pointed this out
But your emailer about freedom of religion must have stopped reading too soon. Right after freedom from government imposition the founders added “…or prohibiting the free exercise thereof” something that always get forgotten in these situations.