Anonymous Asks (344)

“How do you feel about prayer in public schools?”

My family returned to Canada from overseas when I was due to enter grade 4, resulting in the school system bumping me into grade 5 a year early. Awkward and shy, I pretty much accepted everything the way it came, at least initially. Each morning at school started the same way: with the day’s announcements, preceded by rising for the national anthem and a rote recitation of the “Lord’s prayer”.

How did I feel about it?

Well, it’s a template prayer. Jesus was teaching his disciples to pray at their request, and he modeled the types of worshipful statements and requests his disciples ought to include when they addressed their Father in heaven. My own instinct is that the Lord never intended his disciples (or us) to recite it like some kind of liturgical mantra, and I was convinced of that back then. So I repeated it dutifully like most other kids in the room, but I didn’t attach any great significance to it. I was also well aware in grade 5 how people get saved, and I didn’t expect the morning ritual was doing much for my classmates, many of whom were not even convinced God was really there to be addressed. Do unbelievers honor God when they mumble syllables that are meaningless to them because the system requires it? I very much doubt it.

In 1985, a Sudbury trio — Jew, Muslim, unbeliever (don’t look so surprised) — filed a lawsuit under the Canadian Charter of Rights that eventually resulted in the removal of the Lord’s prayer from Ontario public schools. By then I was in the work force and probably didn’t notice. One of my own children attended a Christian school for a year, but he was the only one in that generation of his family to have a similar experience to mine. The chances of a morning prayer routine — formula or no — returning to the public school system today are microscopically low.

How do I feel about it today? Maybe I’m getting old and sentimental, but it seems to me that acknowledging God every morning cannot possibly be a bad thing, even if it’s only rote. The removal of almost every remnant of the Christian faith from the public square has not improved the lives or morals of Canadian children or their parents one whit. Our education system is on one of Muggeridge’s “mad Gadarene slides”. Who knows when we’ll hit bottom?

If I ever have grandchildren, it would be nice for them to have a daily reminder that God exists and has communicated with humanity. Then again, if I ever have grandchildren, they’ll only be in the public school system over my dead body.