Prayer in Schools and “In God We Trust”: Where Religion Meets Government

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The First Amendment opens with sixteen words that created America’s approach to religious freedom: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” These two clauses – the Establishment Clause and Free Exercise Clause – set up a careful balance. Government cannot impose or endorse religion, but it must also protect everyone’s right to practice their faith.

This tension plays out in American public life. Two of the most visible battlegrounds are prayer in public schools and the national motto “In God We Trust.” These issues bring constitutional principles into classrooms, sports fields, and everyday life, forcing citizens and courts to decide where religion and government should meet.

The Constitutional Framework

Understanding school prayer and national motto debates requires grasping the legal principles that shape them. The First Amendment’s Religion Clauses provide the framework for navigating this complex terrain.

The Religion Clauses Work Together

The first two clauses of the First Amendment work together to secure religious liberty. They’re not opposing forces but two sides of the same coin. One prevents government from imposing religion from outside, while the other protects individual religious practice from government interference.

The Establishment Clause: No Government Religion

The Establishment Clause forbids government from creating a national religion, officially favoring one faith over another, or becoming excessively entangled in religious matters. Its roots lie in the experiences of those who fled Europe to escape persecution by state-established churches, where rulers often dictated their subjects’ religious practices.

Many American colonies had their own established churches – the Anglican Church in southern colonies and the Puritan-led Congregational Church in New England. The Constitution’s framers knew the strife that state-sponsored religion had caused in Europe and the colonies.

The First Amendment originally applied only to the federal government. It begins “Congress shall make no law…” States remained free to maintain their own established churches, and some did into the 1830s.

This changed after the Civil War with the Fourteenth Amendment. Through legal doctrine called “incorporation,” the Supreme Court gradually applied Bill of Rights protections, including the Establishment Clause, to states. In the landmark case Everson v. Board of Education (1947), the Court officially declared that Establishment Clause restrictions on federal government also applied to state and local governments. This decision made all subsequent legal challenges to religion in public schools possible.

The Free Exercise Clause: Protecting Personal Faith

The Free Exercise Clause protects individual rights to religious beliefs and, within limits, religious practices. The Supreme Court has consistently distinguished between religious belief and religious action. Freedom to believe is absolute – government cannot compel or punish anyone for holding any religious belief or none at all.

Freedom to act on those beliefs, however, is not absolute. While government cannot target religious practices for suppression, it can enforce “valid and neutral laws of general applicability” that may incidentally burden religious practice.

In the 19th-century case Reynolds v. United States, the Court held that while government could not outlaw Mormon belief in polygamy, it could enforce a general law criminalizing the practice. More recently, in Employment Division v. Smith (1990), the Court ruled that a state could deny unemployment benefits to Native American counselors fired for using peyote in a religious ceremony, because the state’s drug law was neutral and applied to everyone.

However, if a law specifically targets a religious practice, it faces “strict scrutiny” – a high legal standard requiring government to prove the law serves a “compelling interest” and is the “least burdensome” way to achieve it.

The “Wall of Separation” Metaphor

Perhaps no phrase is more associated with the Religion Clauses than “separation of church and state.” Yet these words don’t appear anywhere in the Constitution. The metaphor’s power stems from its deep historical roots and formal adoption by the Supreme Court.

From Roger Williams to Thomas Jefferson

The concept first emerged from Roger Williams, a radical theologian and founder of Rhode Island in the 1630s. Williams, banished from Massachusetts Bay Colony for his “dangerous opinions,” envisioned government limited to civil matters with no authority in the spiritual realm. He argued for a “wall or hedge of separation” between the “garden of the church” and the “wilderness of the world.”

For Williams, this wall primarily protected the church’s purity from corrupting political influence, guaranteeing what he called “soul freedom” for every individual. His government in Providence, Rhode Island, was a revolutionary experiment where people of all faiths – and no faith – could live without government interference in matters of conscience.

Over 150 years later, Thomas Jefferson famously used the metaphor in an 1802 letter to the Danbury Baptist Association in Connecticut. The Baptists, a religious minority, were concerned about their religious liberties. Jefferson reassured them that the First Amendment built “a wall of separation between Church & State.” Jefferson’s use cemented the phrase in American political vocabulary as shorthand for Establishment Clause principles.

Legal Interpretation and Ongoing Debate

The Supreme Court officially embraced Jefferson’s metaphor in the 20th century. In the 1947 Everson case, Justice Hugo Black wrote that the Establishment Clause’s “wall of separation… must be kept high and impregnable.” This interpretation became the foundation for decades of law that strictly limited government involvement with religion.

However, the meaning, scope, and legitimacy of this “wall” have always been intensely debated. For some, the wall is the essential guardian of religious freedom, ensuring government neutrality and preventing marginalization of religious minorities. For others, the wall is a “myth” that has been misinterpreted and used to improperly exclude religion from public life, creating state-imposed disadvantage for people of faith.

This fundamental disagreement over the proper relationship between church and state drives the specific legal battles over prayer in schools and the national motto.

Prayer in Public Schools: From Banned to Accommodated

Few issues illustrate the tension between Establishment and Free Exercise Clauses more clearly than prayer in public schools. For over sixty years, the Supreme Court has navigated this contentious issue, with decisions sparking massive public debate and reflecting broader shifts in American culture and constitutional law.

The legal landscape has evolved from strict prohibition of any school-sponsored religious activity to more recent accommodation of private religious expression by school employees.

The Landmark Rulings: Banning School Prayer

Modern school prayer law began in the early 1960s with two landmark Supreme Court decisions that fundamentally reshaped religion’s role in American public education.

Engel v. Vitale (1962): No State-Written Prayers

The first major case, Engel v. Vitale, concerned a New York State Board of Regents policy authorizing public schools to begin each day with a short, state-composed prayer. The prayer was denominationally neutral: “Almighty God, we acknowledge our dependence upon Thee, and we beg Thy blessings upon us, our parents, our teachers and our Country.” Participation was voluntary – students could remain silent or leave the room with parental permission.

In a 6-1 decision, the Supreme Court declared the practice unconstitutional. Justice Hugo Black wrote that it is “no part of the business of government to compose official prayers for any group of the American people to recite as a part of a religious program carried on by government.”

The Court reasoned that the Establishment Clause is violated whenever government promotes religious beliefs, regardless of whether the prayer is neutral or participation is voluntary. The mere act of a state agency writing and prescribing prayer was sufficient breach of the “wall of separation.” The Court recognized that even subtle, indirect coercion can exist in school settings, where children may feel pressured to conform to teacher-led activities.

Public reaction to Engel was immediate and overwhelming. It’s widely considered one of the most unpopular decisions in Court history, provoking what one scholar called a “public furor… without equal.” A Gallup poll found that 79% of Americans disapproved. The Court was flooded with negative mail, and there were widespread calls for impeaching justices, defying the ruling, and passing a constitutional amendment to permit school prayer.

This backlash revealed a deep cultural divide between the Court’s constitutional interpretation and many Americans’ beliefs.

Abington v. Schempp (1963): No Mandatory Bible Reading

Just one year after Engel, the Court confronted a similar issue in Abington School District v. Schempp. This case challenged a Pennsylvania law requiring public schools to begin each day with reading at least ten Bible verses, followed by reciting the Lord’s Prayer. As in Engel, students could be excused with written parental request.

The Schempp family, who were Unitarians, argued that some doctrines from literal Bible reading contradicted their religious beliefs.

In an 8-1 decision, the Court found the Pennsylvania law unconstitutional, reaffirming and extending Engel’s logic. The Court rejected the school district’s argument that Bible readings served a secular purpose of promoting morality, finding instead that they were inherently “devotional and religious” exercises.

This case established a new test for evaluating Establishment Clause violations. To be constitutional, the Court said, a law must have a “secular legislative purpose and a primary effect that neither advances nor inhibits religion.” This two-part test became a cornerstone of church-state law and direct precursor to the more formal Lemon test.

Importantly, the Court in Abington drew a crucial distinction. It didn’t ban the Bible from public schools entirely. Justice Tom Clark clarified that the ruling didn’t prohibit “study of the Bible or of religion, when presented objectively as part of a secular program of education.”

This distinction remains key today: public schools are forbidden from teaching religion (indoctrination) but permitted to teach about religion (education).

The Lemon Test Era

For the next half-century, the legal framework established in Engel and Abington was refined, most notably through creation of the Lemon test. However, this test proved controversial and was gradually abandoned in favor of a new approach that culminated in a major shift in 2022.

Rise and Fall of the Lemon Test

In Lemon v. Kurtzman (1971), a case concerning state aid to religious schools, the Supreme Court formalized Abington principles into a three-prong test. To pass constitutional muster under the Lemon test, government action had to:

1. Have a secular legislative purpose
2. Have a principal or primary effect that neither advances nor inhibits religion
3. Not result in “excessive government entanglement” with religion

For decades, the Lemon test was the dominant, though frequently criticized, standard for Establishment Clause cases. Critics, including several Supreme Court justices, found it “vague,” “abstract, and ahistorical” and difficult to apply consistently. As a result, the Court sometimes supplemented or bypassed Lemon in favor of other analyses, such as the “endorsement test” (asking if a reasonable observer would perceive government as endorsing religion) or the “coercion test” (asking if government is coercing religious participation).

Kennedy v. Bremerton (2022): The Coach’s Prayer

The gradual erosion of the Lemon test culminated in the 2022 case Kennedy v. Bremerton School District, which signaled a significant shift in the Court’s approach to religion in schools.

The case involved Joseph Kennedy, an assistant high school football coach in Washington state who knelt at the 50-yard line after games to offer brief, quiet prayers. Over time, some students began joining him. The school district, concerned that a reasonable observer would see the coach’s actions as school endorsement of religion and thus an Establishment Clause violation, asked him to stop. When Kennedy refused, the district placed him on paid leave, and he didn’t reapply for his position.

In a 6-3 decision, the Supreme Court sided with Coach Kennedy. The majority opinion, written by Justice Neil Gorsuch, held that the school district’s actions violated Kennedy’s rights under both Free Exercise and Free Speech Clauses.

The Court’s decision rested on crucial reframing of the facts. It characterized Kennedy’s prayer not as government speech performed as part of official duties, but as “private” and “personal” religious observance that occurred during a post-game period when he was free to attend to personal matters and students were otherwise occupied.

Most significantly, the Court used Kennedy to explicitly and formally abandon the Lemon test. Justice Gorsuch wrote that the Court’s Establishment Clause decisions would no longer be guided by Lemon or its related endorsement test, but would instead be interpreted by “reference to historical practices and understandings.”

Major School Prayer Cases

Analyzing the Kennedy Decision

The Kennedy ruling represents more than just a victory for one coach – it marks a profound change in how the Supreme Court analyzes the Religion Clauses. The decision’s impact stems from several key shifts in legal reasoning.

First, the outcome hinged almost entirely on which narrative of facts the Court chose to accept. The majority adopted the narrative of a solitary individual engaging in quiet, personal prayer, separate from official duties. In contrast, the dissenting opinion, authored by Justice Sonia Sotomayor, focused on broader context, pointing out that Kennedy’s practice had evolved from leading students in prayer, that he conducted prayers publicly on the 50-yard line, and that students felt implicit pressure to join him to stay in his good graces.

The stark difference between these two accounts demonstrates that framing of “facts” in such cases can determine legal outcomes. The decision was arguably sealed the moment the majority defined Kennedy’s actions as purely private.

Second, the Court rejected the long-held view that Establishment and Free Exercise Clauses are often in “tension.” Instead, the majority argued that the two clauses have “complementary” purposes and should be read in harmony. In this view, protecting an individual’s free exercise of religion (like Kennedy’s prayer) cannot logically create an unconstitutional establishment of religion. This approach seeks to prevent the Establishment Clause from being used as a “heckler’s veto” to suppress private religious speech in public spaces.

Third, the decision narrowed the definition of what constitutes “coercion” in school environments. The Engel and Abington courts recognized the inherent, indirect social pressure on students in public school settings. The Kennedy majority, however, dismissed concerns about such subtle pressure as speculative, finding no evidence of direct or explicit coercion of students to participate in prayers. This shift effectively raises the bar for students who feel pressured by religious activities, potentially requiring them to prove overt compulsion rather than relying on inherent power dynamics of student-teacher relationships.

Finally, the Court’s new standard of “historical practices and understandings” creates its own challenges. While intended to provide more concrete anchor than the abstract Lemon test, the Kennedy opinion offered little detail on how this historical analysis should be conducted. History is not a single, clear narrative. It’s debatable which historical period should be the benchmark – the time of the Founding, when public education was nascent, or the 19th and 20th centuries, when the modern public school system developed. This ambiguity may lead to new legal battles fought on contested grounds of historical interpretation rather than legal principle.

Prayer in Schools Today: Current Rules

In the wake of Kennedy, the legal landscape for prayer in schools is governed by a core distinction: student-initiated, private religious expression is broadly protected, while school-sponsored or government-endorsed religious activity remains prohibited.

According to updated guidance from the U.S. Department of Education, public school students retain robust rights to religious expression. They may:

• Pray individually or in groups during non-instructional time, such as lunch or recess, as long as it’s not disruptive
• Read religious texts, say blessings before meals, and discuss their faith with peers
• Organize student-led religious clubs and prayer groups, which must be given the same access to school facilities as other non-curricular clubs
• Express their religious beliefs in homework and class assignments, so long as it’s relevant to the subject and judged by normal academic standards

The rights of school employees are more constrained. While acting in official capacities, teachers, coaches, and other staff may not lead students in prayer, devotional readings, or other religious activities. They cannot use their position of authority to proselytize or to encourage or discourage prayer.

The Kennedy ruling affirmed that employees may engage in their own private, non-disruptive prayer during the workday when not actively instructing or supervising students, but schools can take measures to ensure students don’t feel pressured to join.

Advocacy groups remain deeply engaged in this issue. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) maintains that while it vigorously defends a student’s right to voluntary prayer, it opposes any school-sponsored religious activity that is coercive or makes students of different faiths feel like outsiders. Americans United for Separation of Church and State echoes this position, arguing that some groups are distorting the Kennedy decision to push for legislation that would unconstitutionally promote school-sponsored prayer.

The Kennedy decision has spurred legislative action at the state level. In Texas, lawmakers have introduced bills that would allow public schools to set aside time for students and employees to pray and read the Bible. Meanwhile, Florida’s “Student and School Personnel Religious Liberties Act” codifies broad protections for voluntary student religious expression in coursework, attire, and activities, and requires schools to provide a “limited public forum” for student speakers at events without discriminating based on religious viewpoint.

These developments indicate that the debate over precise boundaries of religion in public schools will continue to be actively contested in state legislatures and courtrooms across the country.

“In God We Trust”: From Coins to National Motto

While school prayer involves actions of individuals within government institutions, the national motto “In God We Trust” represents an official expression by government itself. Found on every piece of U.S. currency and inscribed on government buildings across the nation, the motto is one of the most ubiquitous examples of religious language in American public life.

Its history is deeply tied to periods of national crisis, and its constitutionality has been consistently challenged and consistently upheld through a controversial legal doctrine.

History of the Motto

The phrase “In God We Trust” was not a feature of the early republic. Its adoption came in two distinct waves, each driven by the anxieties of its time: the Civil War and the Cold War.

Civil War Origins: Seeking Divine Favor

The motto first appeared on U.S. coinage in 1864, a direct result of “increased religious sentiment” that swept the nation during the Civil War. In November 1861, as the Union reeled from early Confederate victories, Reverend M. R. Watkinson of Pennsylvania wrote a letter to Secretary of the Treasury Salmon P. Chase.

Watkinson lamented that the nation’s coinage bore no “recognition of the Almighty God” and argued that this omission gave the United States a “reputation of heathenism.” He urged Chase to adopt a motto that would place the nation under God’s protection.

Chase agreed and instructed the director of the U.S. Mint, James Pollock, to prepare designs for a motto that would demonstrate “the trust of our people in God.” After Congress passed necessary legislation, the phrase “In God We Trust” was first inscribed on the two-cent coin in 1864. A subsequent act in 1865 authorized its placement on all gold and silver coins.

This history reveals that the motto’s origins were explicitly and intensely religious, born from a desire to seek divine intervention and affirm national piety during a moment of profound crisis.

Cold War Context: Becoming Official

For nearly a century, the motto appeared on coinage but held no official status. That changed in the 1950s, a period of heightened public religiosity fueled by ideological struggle against the officially atheist Soviet Union. This era saw a concerted effort to publicly affirm the nation’s religious heritage as a cornerstone of American identity.

This movement was championed by President Dwight D. Eisenhower, who took the unusual step of being baptized as a Presbyterian in 1953, a year into his first term. In 1954, he signed legislation adding “under God” to the Pledge of Allegiance.

Two years later, on July 30, 1956, Eisenhower signed a law officially declaring “In God We Trust” to be the national motto of the United States, formally replacing the long-standing, but unofficial, motto E Pluribus Unum (“Out of many, one”). The same law mandated that the new motto be printed on all American paper currency, a process that began in 1957 and was completed on all denominations by 1966.

The adoption of the motto was a deliberate political and cultural statement, reflecting an attempt to define collective American identity in direct opposition to a foreign ideological threat.

Legal Challenges and “Ceremonial Deism”

Given its explicitly religious origins and official government sanction, “In God We Trust” has been the subject of numerous legal challenges claiming it violates the Establishment Clause. However, courts have consistently rejected these challenges, relying on a legal concept known as “ceremonial deism.”

Aronow v. United States (1970): Upholding the Motto

The most influential legal decision regarding the motto is Aronow v. United States, a 1970 case from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. The lawsuit argued that requiring “In God We Trust” on currency was an unconstitutional establishment of religion. The court disagreed.

The court reasoned that the motto’s use had become fundamentally secular over time. It held that the phrase has “nothing whatsoever to do with the establishment of religion” and that its use is of a “patriotic or ceremonial character” that “bears no true resemblance to a governmental sponsorship of a religious exercise.”

In the court’s view, the motto had lost its specific religious meaning and acquired a secular one, serving to inspire patriotism and solemnize public occasions. It had, the court concluded, “no theological or ritualistic impact.” The Supreme Court declined to hear an appeal, leaving the Ninth Circuit’s reasoning as the prevailing legal standard.

Defining “Ceremonial Deism”

The legal theory underpinning the Aronow decision is known as “ceremonial deism.” The term, coined by Yale Law School dean Eugene Rostow and later popularized by Justice William Brennan, refers to public practices and expressions that mention God but are considered constitutional because they have, through long-standing use, become secular rituals rather than substantive religious statements.

Examples often cited alongside the national motto include the phrase “under God” in the Pledge of Allegiance and the opening of legislative sessions with prayer.

This concept is highly contested. For proponents and courts that have adopted it, ceremonial deism is a pragmatic tool that allows accommodation of deeply embedded historical traditions without striking them down as unconstitutional. It creates, in the words of one court, “room for play in the joints” of the First Amendment, permitting “benevolent neutrality” toward religion.

Critics argue that ceremonial deism is a “legal fiction” that ignores reality. They contend that it whitewashes the explicitly religious intent behind phrases like “In God We Trust” and that these phrases continue to send a powerful message of government endorsement of monotheistic religion, thereby alienating and excluding citizens who are non-believers, polytheists, or members of other minority faiths.

This points to a central contradiction in the law: the motto’s legal survival depends on the argument that its purpose is secular, yet its historical origins are undeniably and purposefully religious. The doctrine of ceremonial deism functions less as a description of fact and more as a judicial mechanism to resolve this otherwise intractable constitutional conflict.

Ongoing Debates and Recent Action

Despite numerous legal setbacks, challenges to the motto continue. Activist Michael Newdow has filed multiple lawsuits arguing that the motto on currency violates the rights of atheists, though these have been consistently rejected by federal courts citing the ceremonial deism precedent.

In upholding the motto, courts have also distinguished its use on currency from other forms of government speech. They have reasoned that while a person might be unconstitutionally compelled to display a state motto on their license plate (as in Wooley v. Maynard), carrying money is not a similar act of public expression, as people don’t generally display their currency publicly.

The motto also retains strong political support. In 2011, the U.S. House of Representatives passed a resolution reaffirming “In God We Trust” as the official motto and encouraging its display in public schools and other government institutions. This continued legislative endorsement, combined with solid judicial precedent, suggests that despite ongoing debate, the place of “In God We Trust” in American public life remains legally secure.

The ongoing battles over both school prayer and the national motto reflect deeper questions about the nature of American identity, the role of religion in public life, and the meaning of religious freedom itself. These are not merely legal disputes but cultural and philosophical battles that touch on fundamental questions of what it means to be American in a religiously diverse society.

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