Hawaiian Punch: School Prayer Isn’t So Great When It’s Someone Else’s Prayer

Many conservative Christians bemoan the lack of officially sanctioned prayers in public schools. Things have gone too far, they argue. The Supreme Court has even banned prayers over the loudspeaker before football games!

Advocates of church-state separation have patiently pointed out that even football games are school events where all students and their families should feel welcome. Pressuring people to stand and acknowledge a prayer outside their faith tradition just isn’t right.

Support for the separationist position came recently from an unusual place: a conservative Christian writing on the far-right Web site WorldNetDaily.

In a letter to the editor, Gary Christenot recalled his time in the Air Force stationed at a base on the Hawaiian island of Oahu. The area was somewhat isolated and dominated by Buddhists and followers of the Shinto faith.

Christenot wrote about attending a high school football game there. The Baptist family was dismayed when a Buddhist priest was called upon to offer the invocation “to god-head figures that our tradition held to be pagan.”

Wrote Chistenot, “We were frozen in shock and incredulity! What to do? To continue to stand and observe this prayer would represent a betrayal of our own faith and imply the honoring of a pagan deity that was anathema to our beliefs. To sit would be an act of extreme rudeness and disrespect in the eyes of our Japanese hosts and neighbors, who value above all other things deference and respect in their social interactions.”

Christenot reports that he made some inquiries to find out if other clergy were ever invited. He learned that because the area was dominated by people of Japanese and Chinese descent, the prayers were always either Buddhist or Shinto.

The incident apparently caused Christenot no small amount of discomfort, as he felt he had betrayed his faith. But it was also a learning experience. Christenot came to understand how non-Christians might feel when they are compelled to sit through Christian rituals.

“We often advocate the practice of Judeo-Christian rituals in America’s public schools by hiding behind the excuse that they are voluntary and any student who doesn’t wish to participate can simply remained seated and silent,” wrote Christenot. “Oh that this were true. But if I, as a mature adult, would be so confounded and uncomfortable when faced with the decision of observing and standing on my own religious principles or run the risk of offending the majority crowd, I can only imagine what thoughts and confusion must run through the head of the typical child or teenager, for whom peer acceptance is one of the highest ideals.”

Amen to that! Christenot’s peers who have yet to see the light and who still agitate for a “majority-rules” prayer scheme in our public schools should spend some time living as the religious minority for a while. They might learn some surprising things.

--Rob Boston

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