Praying in Public

IN THE SUMMER of 1962, the Supreme Court of the United States ruled that the simple prayer recited in the schools of Hyde Park, Long Island, breached the Sacred Wall of Separation between Church and State. Since then, prayers have been hounded out of most public schools of this land, though some school districts remain obdurate.

When the schools of Long Island opened in September 1962, a teacher named Annette Yvonne Cecile Courtemanche—now Mrs. Russell Kirk—informed her students that thereafter they might not pray at the beginning of the school day. Few of those pupils had displayed much enthusiasm for public prayer previously; but at this news they waxed indignant. “Not pray? Who says we can’t pray?” For some few weeks the students conducted their own opening prayer, their teacher being forbidden to lead them; but gradually this defiance of Official Secularism waned and presently vanished altogether.

RK

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Russell Kirk

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IN THE SUMMER of 1962, the Supreme Court of the United States ruled that the simple prayer recited in the schools of Hyde Park, Long Island, breached the Sacred Wall of Separation between Church and State. Since then, prayers have been hounded out of most public schools of this land, though some school districts remain obdurate.

When the schools of Long Island opened in September 1962, a teacher named Annette Yvonne Cecile Courtemanche—now Mrs. Russell Kirk—informed her students that thereafter they might not pray at the beginning of the school day. Few of those pupils had displayed much enthusiasm for public prayer previously; but at this news they waxed indignant. “Not pray? Who says we can’t pray?” For some few weeks the students conducted their own opening prayer, their teacher being forbidden to lead them; but gradually this defiance of Official Secularism waned and presently vanished altogether.