Our Nation -- and world -- battle religious intolerance

In the United States, the courts need to send a message that they won't allow schools promote religion under the guise of student free speech.

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By ROBYN E. BLUMNER

© St. Petersburg Times, published April 2, 2000

In an act of quiet defiance, Leslie Adler, a student in the Duval County school system who had helped challenge prayer at graduation, remained seated as a Christian prayer was said at her high school graduation ceremony. That's when a classmate leaned over and barked, "Stand up, you stupid b--."

Leslie's experience is not an aberration. In fact, it's typical. America may claim to be the land of religious freedom and pluralism, but in many places it isn't safe to test that theory.

After Wayne and Sue Willis, a Jewish family in Troy, Ala., complained about their 14-year-old son Paul being punished for disruptive behavior by having to write an essay on "Why Jesus Loves Me," Paul and his brother were harassed with "Jew Boy" taunts and swastikas on their lockers.

When Lisa Herdahl went to court to stop Bible study and prayers over the intercom at the public schools in Pontotoc County, Miss., where her five children attended school, her children were so seriously harassed and she received so many threatening phone calls that federal marshals were called out to provide protection. And Joann Bell, a member of the Nazarene church, was beaten by school personnel and had her house firebombed after she brought suit to stop teacher-led prayer meetings at a school in Little Axe, Okla. She received her own obituary in the mail.

"I thought I just had to go to the School Board and tell them that this is wrong, that it's unconstitutional to prefer one religion over another," Bell said. "In fact, they told me that they have ways of getting rid of people like me."

This fearsome reality -- that explosive religious discord percolates just under the surface in some parts of this country -- is what the justices of the U.S. Supreme Court need to understand as they ponder the latest church-state case.

The question raised by the case of Santa Fe Independent School District vs. Doe, argued before the court Wednesday, is whether student-initiated, student-led prayers piped over the loudspeaker at public school football games are a violation of church-state separation or an exercise of student free speech. The question might sound narrowly academic, but its answer is deeply consequential for religious minorities. That fact was made apparent by the rare instance of the plaintiffs, who are Catholic and Mormon, being allowed to file the suit anonymously out of fear of reprisal.

The Santa Fe school district in rural Texas was used to imposing evangelical Christianity on students. Reported incidents include fourth-graders being denied lunch until they prayed and teachers encouraging students to attend revivals. In 1995, exploiting what it saw as a loophole in the law of church-state separation, the district established a policy allowing students to elect a colleague to give a devotional before home football games.

The idea for this religion-by-majority-vote scheme came as a way to squirm around the Supreme Court's clear ruling in the 1992 case of Lee vs. Weisman, in which the court barred a religious authority from leading invocations at graduation ceremonies. A conservative federal appellate court, looking for a way to defeat the spirit of Weisman, ruled that students could still offer prayers at graduation even if clergy couldn't. That's when the American Center for Law and Justice, Pat Robertson's legal arm, jumped into action. It sent letters to school boards across the country suggesting they adopt student-initiated prayer and call it student free speech. The organization promised to help represent school boards sued as a result.

Of course, this wink-nudge ruse had nothing to do with student free speech and everything to do with the majority wanting to exercise the privileges of power, one of which has historically included religious domination.

We may look at the religious wars suffered in places such as Ireland, Israel, Bosnia and Nigeria and feel somehow better, more advanced. We're not. The people of the United States are just like people everywhere. The unique thing that keeps our faithful living in peaceful coexistence is the organizational structure we live under -- the First Amendment's religion clauses, promising religious freedom and that government will stay out of the matter entirely. But those guarantees, designed to protect religious minorities, aren't self-executing. When local school boards refuse to respect them, the courts have to step in.

While things have calmed down for Lisa Herdahl and her children, she says they are still subject to prayers at school events such as football games. When the prayers start, "I feel obligated to bow my head," Herdahl says. "It makes prayer uncomfortable and prayer shouldn't be uncomfortable."

Something nine justices need to understand.

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