Chief Supreme Court Justice Defends Ban on Prayers in Public Schools

Chief Justice Earl Warren defended today the Supreme Courts ruling outlawing prayers in public schools. While the House Judiciary Committee continued its third week of hearings into proposed constitutional amendments that would void the Court’s ban against prayers and Bible-reading in the public schools, the Chief Justice touched on the prayer decision in an address at the dedication of a bell tower in the Episcopal Cathedral here.

Without mentioning the court’s ruling specifically, the Chief Justice noted that the constitutional provision for separation of church and state was aimed at protecting not only the state but also religion. Under the United States Constitution, he said, “the interaction of religion and state is made informal and free, and not non-existent, as some claim.” This interaction, he added, “is as fruitful as Americans have the will and the strength to make it.”

B’nai B’rith’s Anti-Defamation League entered a sharp dissent today before the House Judiciary Committee against the proposed constitutional amendments dealing with religion in public schools. Rejecting the proposed constitutional change, Seymour Grabard, chairman of the ADL’s Special Committee on Church-State Relations, told the committee that government formalization of religious practices would “downgrade the essentially voluntary nature of prayer” and would create “a watered-down secularistic kind of religion which would compete with and cheapen” true religious practices.

RABBIS REGISTER OPPOSITION TO PRAYERS IN PUBLIC SCHOOLS

Two other Jewish organizations today expressed objections to a constitutional overturn of the Supreme Court’s bans against school prayers and Bible-reading. The New York Board of Rabbis telegraphed Rap. Celler stating that the Board opposes alteration of the First Amendment. “Prayer and religious observance,” the rabbis stated, “should be practiced in the home, synagogue and church, surely not in public schools where they can and have become a divisive, rather than a unifying, factor among Americans.”

The Workmen’s Circle, a Jewish fraternal Order with more than 70,000 members, informed the committee that it opposes specifically the proposed constitutional amendment on this issue being pressed by Congressman Frank Becker, New York Republican. The organization told Rep. Celler that the Becker draft would in effect force a religious type of segregation in the public schools and is “especially repulsive.”

Opposition to the draft amendments was also voiced before the committee this afternoon by Dr. Frederick Schiotz, president of the Lutheran Church. He warned that such an alteration in the American Constitution could affect the status of Christians in new African and Asian nations which might “imitate American action” by “crippling the minority Christian churches.”

COMPROMISE IN DISPUTE OVER PRAYERS DISCUSSED BY CONGRESSMEN

Meanwhile, the idea of a compromise in the dispute over public school prayers, in the form of a Congressional Declaration instead of a Constitutional Amendment, was being discussed behind the scenes in the House Judiciary Committee. This suggestion now has reached a stage where it was offered for discussion by the chairman of the Committee, Rep. Emanuel Celler, who is known as a firm opponent of the proposed Constitutional Amendment. Mr. Celler noted that he has not yet decided, personally, to endorse the suggestion.

Under the idea, Congress would pass a resolution-without force of law-declaring the sense of Congress that voluntary, non-denominational prayers are not contrary to the Constitution. A Federal court in New York recently ruled that the Supreme Court decision does not forbid prayers in schools when they are not supervised by the school. The suggested resolution would, in effect, tell the Supreme Court that Congress hoped it would uphold the New York court decision.

Many members hope that such a resolution would ease the pressure on Congress to amend the Constitution to permit prayers in public schools. Many members feel caught between their desire to respond to the vocal demand for school prayers, on the one hand, and their grave concern that any prayer amendment would dilute, if not seriously undermine, the Constitutional guarantees of religious freedom and of separation between church and state.