The Best Alternative To School Prayer

When I was growing up, each of my school days (every one of them spent in public schools) began with the Pledge of Allegiance and the Lord's Prayer. However, I never came across a class that might have helped me understand religion better --- my own, of which there was little to nothing, or anybody else's, of which there seemed to be a lot more. Today, the picture is a little different. The Pledge of Allegiance is in; the Lord's Prayer is out; and most kids still study little to nothing about religion.

What's wrong with this picture? For a lot of my Christian friends, what's wrong is that prayer is no longer in it. And they've been hopping mad about the situation for years. I myself still wonder what the big deal was, and is. When I said the Lord's Prayer daily as a kid, it meant nothing, because I had no faith to go with it. When I "got religion" later on, I said it all the time, out loud in the company of Christians, and silently most everywhere else. Is anybody really worse off since the Supreme Court finally told us where to put it?

What's really wrong with the picture is the third element in it, not the second. Too many kids --- and adults --- are functionally illiterate about religion, and our public schools could help by teaching at least our kids and grandkids something about the many religions currently represented in our increasingly pluralistic society. Teaching about religion is something far different from indoctrinating people into a particular faith tradition.

When I ask educational bureaucrats about this, the reaction I usually get is the kind I would expect if I had suggested that the schools advocate legalizing drugs or permitting concealed handguns in the classroom. You would think that religious beliefs can hurt us as badly as pot and bullets can. Actually, there is some validity to this otherwise bizarre view: not knowing enough about other peoples' religions can get us killed just as surely as drugs and guns do.

There is another image associated with the study of religions that I frequently encountered during my years as a college, university, and seminary faculty member. Many students shared with me their hesitance to read about religious traditions different from their own, on the ground that exposure to them could weaken their personal faith. Other religions, they seemed to think, are something like infectious diseases to which we ought to avoid as much exposure as possible. There is a fetching quality about this metaphor. It also suggests that the best way to avoid catching a religion's unhealthy viruses is to expose ourselves gradually to its healthy ones.

I admit that if I were an educational bureaucrat, I would have to acknowledge some very good reasons for caution about introducing the study of religion in our schools. The number of the reasons is roughly approximate to the number of frenzied Christians still tapping on heavily guarded school doors to slip the Lord's Prayer through. If we ever do implement religious studies as a substitute for prohibited prayer, as the Supreme Court encouraged us to do, we can be sure that these folks will create one ruckus after another in the interest of seeing to it that the studies are done "right." That is, their way: monotheism, the 10 Commandments, the Sermon on the Mount, with heavy dollops of creationism in biology classes, and let the rest of the religious world go by.

One thing that school systems do know something about, though, is handling ruckuses. Fending off true believers who would co-opt the study of religion for their own narrow proselytizing purposes should be no more difficult than keeping at bay all those who won't give up on putting prayer back "were it belongs." The worst reason for not offering courses on religion in our schools is the one I read about just recently: " The only thing that teaching about religion will accomplish is just stirring up conflict." Has this guy been to a school board meeting lately?

It is easy to understand and appreciate why parents and religious leaders might worry about kids' learning something about the world's religions on school grounds Some kids will come home less trusting of what they have been told to believe about their own, and of the people doing the telling. As the cliché says, a little learning can be a dangerous thing. A lot of learning, though, especially about religion, can make the world safer and more joy-filled. And that's something that will make the worry worth it.