Pray amid the spirit not the law

Government must respect and adhere to our constitutional right of religious freedom and stay out of the prayer lives of Americans. Yet “bringing back prayer to our schools” is priority #5 on the incoming president’s to-do list.  

But prayer never left public schools and claiming it has is not true.

Students and teachers can and always could choose to pray alone or in a group providing there’s no disruption, but state sponsorship of prayer was found to be unconstitutional (Engel v. Vitale).

Are we at the point in America when the government brings back state sponsored Christian prayer in public schools and also sanctions how and when to pray, notwithstanding the religious belief or non-belief of students and teachers? 

Would this not be an affront to everyone, including Christians, and to the very idea of religious freedom on which America was founded?

State-sanctioned prayer can be coercive, robbing us of free will. Simply reciting religious words isn’t the beginning of a Christian revival, it’s the beginning of a Christian nationalist movement on a crusade to stay dominant.

Jesus declared, “Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites.” 

Those who wish to legislate prayer onto Americans are acting like modern day Pharisees.

Can the government legislate an inseparable relationship between you and God?

It is difficult to intimately know God by reciting state-sponsored prayer in schools and at the same time being surveilled by the Ten Commandments that loom like sinner-seeking drones.

You knowing God and God knowing you exists through personal evangelism and self edification, not through governmental laws enacted by politicians that violate the First Amendment’s establishment clause and intrude on an individual’s religious freedom, nor through the psychological manipulation and self-serving influence of extremist Christian pastors and politicians who believe that America should be governed as a theocracy based on biblical dogma.

A law that implements state-sponsored prayer in public schools is not the way to achieve righteous living, rather it’s antithetical to the New Testament revelation that Jesus is ‘the way’ and through faith in Christ believers were freed from religious laws.

When questioned by the unctuous Pharisees regarding the payment of taxes to Caesar, Jesus said “Give to Caesar what is Caesar’s and to God what is God’s.” Caesar represented the civil authority that collected taxes and the coins used as currency displayed his image. 

I submit that Jesus espoused the separation of church and state.

State sponsored prayer in public schools is not the panacea some Christian pastors prophesize it to be. In addition, it jades free choice and undermines the New Testament revelation that Christians are under grace and no longer under the law and instead of producing Christ-centered Christians, state-sanctioned prayer may produce a “brave new world” of assembly line disciples conditioned and naively devoted more to Caesar than to God.  

If politicians and Christian leaders want Americans to follow the teachings of Jesus Christ, the best way to accomplish that is for those politicians and religious leaders to let everyone see the love of Christ in them through their actions and treatment of others.

Christians should neither bow nor genuflect at the altar of state sponsored prayer.