Radio Address to the Nation on Prayer in Schools

February 25, 1984

My fellow Americans:



When a group of students at the Guilderland High School in Albany, New York, sought to use an empty classroom for voluntary prayer meetings, the 2d Circuit of Appeals said, ``No.'' The court thought it might be dangerous because students might be coerced into praying if they saw the football captain or student body president participating in prayer meetings.

Then there was the case of the kindergarten class reciting a verse before their milk and cookies. They said, ``We thank you for the flowers so sweet. We thank you for the food we eat. We thank you for the birds that sing. We thank you, God, for everything.'' But a Federal court of appeals ordered them to stop. They were supposedly violating the Constitution of the United States.

Teddy Roosevelt told us, ``The American people are slow to wrath, but when their wrath is once kindled it burns like a consuming flame.'' Up to 80 percent of the American people support voluntary prayer. They understand what the Founding Fathers intended. The first amendment of the Constitution was not written to protect the people from religion; that amendment was written to protect religion from government tyranny.

The amendment says, ``Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.'' What could be more clear?


When the Constitution was being debated at the Constitutional Convention, Benjamin Franklin rose to say: ``The longer I live, the more convincing proofs I see that God governs in the affairs of men. Without His concurring aid, we shall succeed in this political building no better than the builders of Babel.'' He asked: ``Have we now forgotten this powerful Friend? Or do we imagine we no longer need His assistance?'' Franklin then asked the Convention to begin its daily deliberations by asking for the assistance of Almighty God.

George Washington believed that religion was an essential pillar of a strong society. In his farewell address, he said, ``Reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle.'' And when John Jay, the first Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court, was asked in his dying hour if he had any farewell counsels to leave his children, Jay answered, ``They have the Book.''






