A high school in Rhode Island had an obviously illegal prayer banner hanging on its walls. It opened with “Our Heavenly Father” and closed with “Amen”. Student Jessica Ahlquist pointed out that the school can’t go about promoting Christianity, so they ought to take it down. She made a few direct pleas, spoke with administrators, and made a Facebook page for starters. In other words, she had a perfectly reasonable and measured initial response. So you’ll never – never! – believe what happened next: the Christians and high school administrators were stubborn and said “no”. I know, I know. Who would have thought people who supported Christianity and chose to spend their lives controlling teenagers would be stubborn. I swear, I can’t think of more than three or four thousand instances of stubborn actions from the people who ran my high school.
Anyway. Once the mooks rebuffed the constitutional efforts of one of their better students, Ahlquist sued. And won:
U.S. District Judge Ronald Lagueux rejected the school’s claims that the message in the mural – which opens with “Our Heavenly Father” and closes with “Amen” – was purely secular.
“No amount of debate can make the School Prayer anything other than a prayer, and a Christian one at that,” Lagueux wrote in a 40-page opinion.
And now the school has a short period in which it must remove the mural. This is excellent. No one should be using public funds to promote any particular religion. This is especially true when those subjected to that promotion are impressionable teenagers.
Of course, the school had the audacity to claim the prayer was somehow secular in nature. I can’t help but feel everyone involved knew that was a lie. But even if they didn’t, it’s still a stupid argument. I’ll let the judge take this one:
[N]o amount of history and tradition can cure a constitutional infraction.
Not even for you Christians out there.
Filed under: Atheism/Humanism, News, Religions | Tagged: atheism, Cranston High School West, Jessica Ahlquist, Prayer Banner, religion, Rhode Island, Ronald Lagueux |
For the Sake of Science 
It’s the right decision, but I don’t think that a prayer is always a prayer. In this case I think you are right, it was intended to promote Christianity, if the prayer had been the “official school prayer” for the last 300 years or something, that’s a different story, that is inheritance, legacy and/or tradition.
It might be prayer in addition to those things, but reasonable enough to retain.