Is a Prayer Amendment Coming?

The Prayer Amendment doesn’t have a prayer of getting through Congress, says Prof. Rice, until the clergy as a whole realizes its importance and gets behind it

It is time to reconsider the Prayer Amendment. The school prayer decisions of 1962 and 1963 outlawed the recitation of the Regents’ Prayer and the Lord’s Prayer, and the recitation of the Bible, in public schools. The rulings occasioned an attempt to rectify them by amending the Constitution. The effort foundered, mainly on the obstruction of Chairman Emanuel Celler of the House Judiciary Committee and the resistance of many articulate clergy. Since the collapse of the amendment drive last year, there have occurred the Johnson landslide and, on November 30, 1964, the Supreme Court’s refusal to review a decision of the highest court of New York which had upheld the inclusion of the words “under God” in the pledge of allegiance. The former increased the anti-amendment forces in Congress and the latter eased the public mind by indicating the Court does not intend to erase, literally, all religious acknowledgments by government, such as the words in the pledge, the inscription “In God We Trust” on coins, prayers in legislative halls, etc.

CE

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Charles E. Rice

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The Prayer Amendment doesn’t have a prayer of getting through Congress, says Prof. Rice, until the clergy as a whole realizes its importance and gets behind it

It is time to reconsider the Prayer Amendment. The school prayer decisions of 1962 and 1963 outlawed the recitation of the Regents’ Prayer and the Lord’s Prayer, and the recitation of the Bible, in public schools. The rulings occasioned an attempt to rectify them by amending the Constitution. The effort foundered, mainly on the obstruction of Chairman Emanuel Celler of the House Judiciary Committee and the resistance of many articulate clergy. Since the collapse of the amendment drive last year, there have occurred the Johnson landslide and, on November 30, 1964, the Supreme Court’s refusal to review a decision of the highest court of New York which had upheld the inclusion of the words “under God” in the pledge of allegiance. The former increased the anti-amendment forces in Congress and the latter eased the public mind by indicating the Court does not intend to erase, literally, all religious acknowledgments by government, such as the words in the pledge, the inscription “In God We Trust” on coins, prayers in legislative halls, etc.