"Somebody is Tampering With America's Soul": Congress and the School Prayer Debate

Abstract

This paper examines the legislative history of school prayer since the U.S. Supreme Court outlawed the practice in 1962. It disputes conventional wisdom about school prayer in three ways. First, almost from the outset, Republicans, not southern Democrats, were the mainstay of school prayer. Second, congressional advocates of school prayer often skillfully used an array of political tools to advance their cause. Third, school prayer was not necessarily destined to defeat, for it always enjoyed overwhelming public support and received majority approval in Congress several times. But tradition, institutional resistance, and divisions within the conservative camp proved insuperable. In the wake of these near-misses, prayer proponents shifted their rationale and tactics for school prayer, and eventually secured the right of students to pray collectively on school grounds before classes and to study their Bibles in the school itself after hours.