[Congressional Record Volume 143, Number 14 (Thursday, February 6, 1997)]
[Senate]
[Pages S1109-S1111]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]

      By Mr. BYRD:
  S.J. Res. 15. A joint resolution proposing an amendment to the 
Constitution of the United States to clarify the intent of the 
Constitution to neither prohibit nor require public school prayer; to 
the Committee on the Judiciary.


             public school prayer constitutional amendment

  Mr. BYRD. Mr. President, the English word ``irony'' comes to us from 
an Ancient Greek word meaning ``a dissembler in speech.''
  The English word ``irony'' is defined as the contrast between 
something

[[Page S1110]]

that somebody thinks to be true, as revealed in speech, action, or 
common wisdom, and that which an audience or a reader knows to be true.
  Mr. President, permit me to give an example.
  If anyone in the hearing of my voice will take out a U.S. one-dollar 
bill and turn that one-dollar bill over onto its obverse side, he or 
she will read in clear script, ``In God We Trust.''
  Permit me to introduce another example.
  Every day of each new meeting of the Senate and House of 
Representatives, an official chaplain of each of those two chambers of 
Congress--or a designated substitute--will stride to the dais and 
address a sometimes elegant prayer to the Deity.
  Again, every day in courtrooms across this country, hundreds of 
witnesses will take their place at the front of the court chamber, put 
their hands on incalculable numbers of Bibles, and swear to tell the 
truth, ``. . . so help me God.''
  We do the same. I have done it many times in my 50 years of service 
and elected office. We stand and swear on oath to support and defend 
the Constitution of the United States, ``so help me God.''
  Additionally, daily, thousands of men and women, in a variety of 
groups and millions upon millions of boys and girls in our schools will 
pledge allegiance to our flag, uttering, among other words, the words 
``under God.'' I was a member of the House of Representatives in June 
1954, when the House of Representatives, I believe on June 7th of that 
year, added the words ``under God'' to the Pledge of Allegiance to the 
Flag. The next day, the Senate adopted a similar amendment, and then, 
on June 14, the measure was signed into law adding the words ``under 
God.'' I will always be proud of the fact that I was a Member of the 
Congress of the United States when those words were added to the Pledge 
of Allegiance--``one nation under God.'' Both Houses added the words 
``under God.''
  Here is the irony. In spite of that chain of rituals I have just 
related, in situation after situation, anecdotal and documented both, 
public school authorities, ostensibly following rulings of the Supreme 
Court dating from at least the 1960's, have prohibited the utterance of 
prayers at school functions, in classrooms, or even in groups or 
privately on public school property.
  As I read my U.S. Constitution--and here it is--such a prohibition of 
prayer in school flies in the face of the first amendment, which 
declares that ``Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment 
of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof. . . .''
  Please note those words again: ``. . . or prohibiting the free 
exercise thereof. . . .''
  That passage was explicitly written into our Bill or Rights at the 
insistence of none other than James Madison, based on direct appeals to 
Madison by baptist ministers in Virginia, who had been forced to 
support the official State church during the colonial era, and whose 
practice of their own religious choice had been officially denied, 
proscribed, or penalized by colonial officials.
  It is ironic that from that understandable constitutional safeguard 
in support of the free exercise of religious faith, opponents of any 
religion have turned that passage of the First Amendment on its head to 
prohibit--I say prohibit--the free exercise of religion in our public 
life and, particularly, to drive religious faith out of our public 
schools.
  It is equally ironic that, as religion is making a public resurgence 
in the long-atheistic former Soviet Union, our Nation, whose 
protofoundations stand on the sacrifices of hundreds of thousands of 
early colonists whose primary inspiration in coming to America in the 
first--Congregationalists, Calvinists, Baptists, Jews, Catholics, 
Orthodox, and others--whose primary purpose in coming to America in the 
first place, I repeat, was a yearning for religious liberty against 
those who would deny them the right of religious liberty--that our 
Nation should be embarked on a course which, in effect, denies 
religious liberty to many of our citizens.
  Mr. President, I have heard increasing concerns about the lack of 
moral orientation among so many younger Americans--about a rising drug 
epidemic among our children, about rampant sexual promiscuity, about 
children murdering children, about gangs of teenage thugs terrorizing 
their neighborhoods, and about a pervading moral malaise among youth in 
both our inner cities and suburbs.
  Is there any wonder that so many young Americans should be drifting 
with seemingly no ethical moorings in the face of an apparent effort to 
strip every shred of recognizable ethics, of teachings about values, 
and spirituality from the setting in which those young Americans spend 
most of their waking hours--our public schools?

  Mr. President, in an effort to restore something of a spiritual 
balance to our public schools and to extracurricular activities in our 
public schools, I am today introducing a joint resolution to propose an 
amendment to the Constitution clarifying the intent of the Constitution 
with regard to public school prayer.
  My amendment is an effort to make clear that neither the 
Constitution, or the amendments thereto, require, nor do they prohibit, 
voluntary prayer in the public schools or in the extracurricular 
activities of the public schools.
  Let me read my amendment. Let me read my proposed amendment. It is 
very short, very brief, very much to the point:

       Nothing in this Constitution, or amendments thereto, shall 
     be construed to prohibit or require voluntary prayer in 
     public schools, or to prohibit or require voluntary prayer at 
     public school extracurricular activities.

  So anyone who fears that the language of this amendment would allow 
public schools to mandate the recitation of daily prayer, or that 
school administrators will become the authors of such prayers, need not 
worry. Have no fear. You need not lose a moment of sleep. This 
amendment does not supplant the clear proscription contained in the 
``establishment'' clause of the First Amendment. My amendment is an 
effort to make clear that the words that the Constitution uses with 
regard to religious freedom do not mean that voluntary prayer is 
prohibited from our public schools or our public school activities.
  As I shall one day state on this floor, all of the Presidents in 
their inaugural speeches, and/or in other documents and writings, have 
referred to the Deity, referred to the Almighty God, to Providence, all 
of them. I shall read from the words of each President's inauguration 
speech in which he refers, in one way or another, to God Almighty, the 
Great Judge of the world. We read those references in the Declaration 
of Independence and the Mayflower Compact, and all of the State 
constitutions, as I shall show upon another occasion. Then to say that 
the schoolchildren of the Nation cannot enter into voluntary prayer in 
the public schools, or during commencement exercises is absurd, absurd, 
utter nonsense.
  In short, I hope to end the three-decades-long tyranny of the 
minority in denying to the majority of Americans the least vestige of 
the exercise of a liberty otherwise guaranteed by the Constitution--the 
right of believing children in our public school system to pray in 
accordance with their own consciences and in the privacy of their 
voluntary associations within our public schools. That right I 
sincerely believe the Constitution already grants, but I want to spell 
out in that same Constitution by way of an amendment that permission to 
pray voluntarily in our public schools does not constitute ``an 
establishment of a religion.''

  To deny any schoolchild in this country the right to voluntarily pray 
in academics maintaining that that constitutes establishment of 
religion is pure nonsense.
  With introduction, and I hope eventual adoption of my amendment, we 
can finally begin the 7-year long process to answer the peoples' 
concerns. We can begin to restore the spiritual compass that has been 
lost in the lives of so many of our citizens. And, most importantly, we 
can begin to return to our children the moral orientation they so 
desperately desire.
  Tennyson said, ``More things are wrought by prayer than this world 
dreams of.''
  So, Mr. President, I urge those who want to deliver on the wishes of 
the American people to join me in this effort.

[[Page S1111]]

  I send to the desk my amendment, and ask that it be printed and 
referred appropriately to committee.
  I yield the floor.
  There being no objection, the joint resolution was ordered to be 
printed in the Record, as follows:

                              S.J. Res. 15

       Resolved by the Senate and House of Representatives of the 
     United States of America in Congress assembled (two-thirds of 
     each House concurring therein), That the following article is 
     proposed as an amendment to the Constitution, which shall be 
     valid to all intents and purposes as part of the Constitution 
     when ratified by the legislatures of three-fourths of the 
     several States within seven years after the date of its 
     submission to the States for ratification:

                              ``Article --

       ``Section 1. Nothing in this Constitution, or amendments 
     thereto, shall be construed to prohibit or require voluntary 
     prayer in public schools, or to prohibit or require voluntary 
     prayer at public school extracurricular activities.''.

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