Prayer in Public Schools

For all who care to hear: neither God nor prayer has been taken out of public schools (as if any human or human agency could do such a thing!). What has been removed is publically sanctioned formal Christian prayers (I don't think any who pine for the return of this kind of prayer imagines any other than Christian prayer). The reason this bothers some, I believe, is fear - the fear that America has lost its way, fallen away from being a "Christian" nation (which it cannot ever have been for after Christ there can be no such thing - only Christians and churches in every nation and place. The church is God's new people, Jews and Christians together, worshiping and serving God everywhere). Recovery of some vestige or symbol of this imagined past as an assurance that we have not fallen completely and irrevocably away from God is what I think this is all about. However, it is a dead-end and non-starter. If Christians in America could accept this and learn (for the first time) to be Christians and the Church in America (rather than the church of America) we might have some hope for faithful witness and service. Otherwise we have none (save for the grace of God that works in spite of or even without us).

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