School prayer is in the news again. Sort of.
        A federal appeals court recently upheld a 2007 Illinois law mandating a moment of silence at the beginning of the school day. Educators and legislators alike said it has a calming effect on the students.
         A long time atheist, Rob Sherman, took on the Illinois law on behalf of his daughter Dawn, who is now a 17 year old senior. Initially, they were successful. The law was held to be unconstitutional. But now that decision has been overturned by a three-judge panel of the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals.
         Sherman and Sherman vowed to appeal.
         I find it ironic that Rob Sherman, the atheist activist accuse the judges of "judicial activism."
        Judicial activism?
        Conservatives have pointed out for years that it was judicial activism that got prayer thrown out of public schools in the first place.
         Judicial activism is when the Supreme Court in its infinite wisdom in the early 1960s threw out school prayer in one form or another repeatedly.
        Opponents to this Illinois law said that it’s just another attempt to get school prayer back in. The panel did not agree and therefore said the law is ok.
        But my point is that we have gone too far the other way. We have become so afraid of anything that smacks of school prayer that we have gone to the opposite extreme.
        What would be so wrong with school prayer?
         In America, the school day began in prayer for the first three hundred years or our experience. And, no, the first amendment wasn’t under assault because of it.
         But there has been a gradual assault on common sense and common courtesy since school prayer has been banned.
        God has been kicked out of schools, and in His place has come the medal detectors.
         I’ll never forget what an Alabama black pastor said to me one time when I interviewed him about Judge Roy Moore, the Ten Commandments judge. He said, "All across American should stand with Judge Moore about the Ten Commandments. Why? Because when they took prayer out of school, you didn't hear about kids killing each other, about them bringing dope to school, shooting the teachers, you didn't hear about that. You see what I'm saying? That's what's wrong. We need more God-fearing."
         One of the three critical Supreme Court decisions on prayer centered around then-14 year old William J. Murray in the Baltimore Public Schools. His mother, Madalyn Murray O’Hare, for years the nation’s leading atheist. Bill told me that in the early 1960s, his mother, who was divorced, tried to emigrate with her children into the Soviet Union. She had thought the atheists had ushered in the millennium, if you will, in the workers’ paradise. But the Soviet officials in Russia told her to return home, that she could do more good for the cause back home.
         She was very upset by this turn of events and when she came home, the school year had already started. As she was bringing William in late for school one day in a Baltimore public school, she was angry to see and hear the school children reciting the Lord’s Prayer. "What the &*&%$^&$ is this?," she asked. She sued, with Bill as the chief plaintiff, and won.
         Today, all these years later, William J. Murray, around whom that pivotal case revolved, is an evangelical minister. He totally disagrees with what he and his mother did. He favors school prayer today. I interviewed him for Christian television, and he said, "I would like people to take a look at the Baltimore public schools today vs. what they were when I went to those schools in 1963 and my mother took prayer out of the schools. We didn’t have armed guards in the hallways then when we had God in the classroom. But I’ll guarantee you there are armed guards. In fact, the city school system of Baltimore now has its own armed police force."
        David Barton, walking encyclopedia on America’s spiritual roots, who is lately a frequent guest on Glenn Beck’s television program, says this of the founding fathers: "On the floor of the constitutional convention, they talked about that a nation accounts to God for its stands. Prior to 1962, our official stand was that God was welcome in the affairs of the nation. In 1962, for the first time, we told God He was not welcome in the lives of our students or in our classrooms, that we wanted Him to stay out."
        Even Bill Clinton, who is no conservative, said when he was president that the public schools should not be religion-free zones.
        George Washington said in his Farewell Address, "Of all the dispositions and habits that lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports."
         Our second president, John Adams, said this, "Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other."
         So even if the Illinois moment of silence law simply inches ever so slightly in the direction of school prayer, I welcome it. Silence is golden.