Archive for the ‘Prayer in School’ Category
Under Cover Investigation on Prayer in Schools
My friend Tom, has an old beat up van that he had no idea what to do with. At least he didn’t until he was inspired by Glenn Beck to start a ministry and he turned his van into a church van. Then last week I got a bright idea. I could borrow his van to do an under cover investigation of prayer in public schools. Public Schools like to say that while they don’t support public prayer, they are perfectly happy to allow students a few moments of silent prayer or meditation in the morning. God forbid, that little Mohammad or Cynthia who has two mommies be scandalized by some good old fashioned religion.
My experience though has been that public schools actively discourage prayer. With that in mind, we painted over the windows of the van to provide students with a quiet relaxing place where they could pray. I put on some dark sunglasses so that nobody would recognize me from the blog and I took the church van to 10 local school parking lots. I would wait for a student who was looking lonely or isolated and I’d encourage him or to climb in the back of the van and pray. It became pretty clear to me pretty quickly by the horrified reaction of screaming children, that their parents who taught them that prayer was something to fear.
I could have lived with this, but the reaction of the schools themselves was even worse. Not only did they not encourage students to pray, I got the police called on my 8 times, I got 2 large security guards chasing me around a parking lot, and I got maced twice. Is this the kind of attitude that we accept in our public schools towards prayer? No wonder Glenn Beck says we’ve lost our way. Something must be done.
