The missing clause in the Republicans’ “Contract With America,”
which surfaced for a moment after last November’s election only
to be submerged until this summer, is the promise to secure a
vote on a constitutional amendment that would permit voluntary
and student-led prayers in the public schools. Nonetheless, Newt
Gingrich’s personal commitment to an amendment to the
Constitution permitting voluntary school prayer is clear. Not
only has the Speaker promised a House vote on an amendment by
the summer, but the sentiment behind the proposal seems
genuinely to be central to the articulated vision of a “renewal
of American civilization” that informs all the speeches of this
professor-turned-politician. “I do not have a vision of America
which is dramatically better just because people pray,” he said
in a speech at the Heritage Foundation a month before the
November vote, “but I do have a vision of an America in which
belief in the Creator is once again at the center of defining
being an American.”  Though usuall