by Steve Blow
reprinted by permission from The Dallas Morning News

Let’s imagine that you stopped by the courthouse this morning to renew your car registration. And the clerk said: "I'll be glad to help you with that. But first, let’s pray."

Let’s imagine that you called up City Hall to ask about garbage pickup, and the person on the phone said, "Tuesdays and Fridays, with bulky objects on alternate Mondays, and now let’s bow our heads to close this call with a word of prayer."

I don’t know about you, but it would rankle me.

My prayers are my business, and I don’t need anybody at the courthouse or sanitation department deciding when I’ll pray.

You know where I’m headed here, of course. If we’re not pushing prayer in other government offices, why are we so eager to see it in public schools?

If we really want to stretch our hypothetical situation, let’s imagine that the clerk at the car registration office said: "But first let’s pray. And by the way, we’re going to be praying to Ahura Mazda. You see, we wanted to be fair, so we put the prayer policy to a vote, and most folks in this office happen to be Zoroastrian."

And it’s just a darn good thing you weren’t there for a marriage license. Those Rastafarians over in the county clerk’s office make you smoke sacred dope and say a prayer to Haile Selassie before every transaction.

OK, I know I’m being silly. But not by much.

The folks in Santa Fe, Texas, thought they had a perfectly fine way of praying before football games: They just let the students vote on who would pray.

Want to guess who ended up praying? The Baptist preacher’s daughter, of course. What a shock. I’ll bet you thought it was the one purple-haired Wiccan kid in town.

The Supreme Court ruled that Santa Fe’s system stacks the deck, amounting to a government-sponsored prayer.

The Bible says there will be wailing and gnashing of teeth in hell. And right now we’re getting a pretty good preview. The bemoaning and groaning over the Supreme Court decision is in full bellow. To hear some tell it, you would think the judges had just outlawed children’s bedtime prayer and jammies with feet in ‘em.

Don’t fall for it.

No one has outlawed prayer. No one could outlaw prayer. And the Jeffersons and Madisons didn’t draw a line of separation between church and state because the didn’t like church. They didn’t trust state.

They thought religion was far too important to let the government go trampling around in it. And we ought to be saying "amen."

Don’t fall for the claim that the evil government is running God out of our schools. If anything, the tide is running the other way. I was in a public school just the other day and saw signs posted everywhere: Bible Study 3:30 Today.

We’re getting smarter about making the practice of religion in our schools a truly voluntary thing - and faith is more powerful because of it. That’s the great opportunity the Supreme Court had provided here.

The ruling ought to remind is that, instead of a mumbled prayer from the press box, people of faith are free to exercise their religions on Friday nights in far more creative ways.

How about a prayer and pep rally in the parking lot before home games? What if local churches got together and created Touchdown Alley near the football stadium - a place of fun and games and music (and prayer) before the games?

What if churches took a chance and opened their parking lots after the games for kids to hold tailgate parties there?

Of course, it would be much easier to just carry on with those quick, PA-system prayers. That way everyone in the stadium can feel a little tingle of self-satisfaction over their deep spirituality.

At least those on the winning side of the vote.

Reprinted by permission from The Dallas Morning News.