When 200 students stood to recite the Lord’s Prayer at high school graduation in Russell Springs, Ky., they were rewarded with a standing ovation.

Prayer wasn’t on the program. But students decided to protest after a federal judge ordered school officials not to allow a scheduled prayer at the ceremony.

The ruling was in response to a lawsuit filed by The American Civil Liberties Union of Kentucky on behalf of a student challenging the school’s practice of annual graduation prayer by the student chaplain.

Applause for the students continues to reverberate across the conservative Christian blogosphere.

On the surface, the story has all the elements of a culture-war rallying cry: Courageous students stand up to “activist judge” in defense of “religious freedom and free speech.”

But what were those students standing up for? The right of the majority to impose a Christian prayer on the minority?

And why did most in the audience cheer? To congratulate the kids for using prayer against a judge? To humiliate the student who filed suit?

For years, Russell County High School seniors have elected a “class chaplain” who gives the prayer at graduation.

This year, a student (who tried to remain anonymous but was reportedly booed at rehearsal) filed suit to stop it.

After all, the U.S. Supreme Court repeatedly has declared school prayers unconstitutional, even delivered by a student.

The seniors first attempted to cure the problem by re-electing chaplain Megan Chapman to give a “message.”

The judge wasn’t impressed by the last-minute switch, and the court canceled the prayer.

The students’ proposed fix might have worked had they done it earlier.

U.S. Department of Education guidelines from 2003 suggest a student speaker may give religious or secular messages if the student is selected based on “genuinely neutral” criteria and retains “primary control” over the message content.

But even under those disputed guidelines, neither school officials nor the seniors can create a process to ensure that a speaker offers a prayer.

There are legal ways to acknowledge God during graduation.

A moment of silence gives everyone an opportunity to pray (or not). A community baccalaureate that is voluntarily attended allows people to worship and pray any way they choose. Both solutions accommodate the majority while protecting the minority.

For some people, though, it’s all or nothing. They see graduation prayer as a symbolic act. The conflict isn’t about “free speech” or a 60-second prayer; it’s about who gets to define what kind of country we are.

What would happen if a Baptist family in Russell Springs were suddenly transported to, say, a school district in Dearborn, Mich., with a large population of Muslim Americans?

How would they feel about an Islamic prayer at their child’s graduation? How about 200 students standing to recite the Quran during the ceremony?

Here’s the American reality: We’re all a religious minority somewhere in this country. How we treat people where we’re in the majority helps determine how we’ll be treated where we’re in the minority.

It would appear that for most in Russell Springs, silent prayer is not enough.

A baccalaureate with sermons and prayers is not enough.

Even the fact that Chapman expressed her religious views in her speech is not enough.

Apparently, only by giving the majority the “right” to impose their prayer on everyone else will these students and parents be satisfied.

Fortunately, there is no such right. The First Amendment protects us from the tyranny of the majority – at least as long as we have judges with the courage to stand up for religious freedom.

Charles C. Haynes is senior scholar at the First Amendment Center. E-mail: chaynes@freedomforum.org.

This entry was posted on Friday, June 2nd, 2006 at 12:00 am and is filed under Opinion. Tags for this post: Charles C. Haynes, Columnist/Guest, Opinion-Columnist/Guest, page-a11. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.