[Congressional Record Volume 144, Number 55 (Wednesday, May 6, 1998)]
[House]
[Pages H2925-H2928]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




   RELIGIOUS FREEDOM THREATENED BY PROPOSED CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENT

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 7, 1997, the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Edwards) is recognized 
for half the time between now and midnight as the designee of the 
minority leader.
  Mr. EDWARDS. Mr. Speaker, I am here tonight to discuss an issue that 
is of critical importance to our Nation and to every American family. 
The issue is religious freedom. Specifically, I want to comment on 
Federal legislation that I believe will do great damage to our Bill of 
Rights and to the cause of religious liberty.
  The gentleman from Oklahoma (Mr. Istook) has introduced a 
constitutional amendment that, if passed into law, would for the first 
time in our Nation's history amend our cherished Bill of Rights, which 
has for over 200 years protected Americans' religious, political and 
individual rights.
  The House could vote on this amendment as early as next month. The 
gentleman from Oklahoma has mislabeled his work the Religious Freedom 
Amendment. More appropriately, it should be called the Religious 
Freedom Destruction Amendment.
  That is why so many religious organizations such as the Baptist Joint 
Committee, the American Jewish Congress and the United Methodist Church 
are strongly opposing the Istook amendment. In fact, these and many 
other religious organizations and education groups, known as the 
Coalition to Preserve Religious Liberty, are opposing the Istook 
amendment because it will harm religious freedom in America.
  In my opinion, Mr. Speaker, the Istook amendment is the worst piece 
of legislation that I have seen in 15 years in public office. It is 
dangerous because it threatens our core religious rights and literally 
tears down its 200-year-old wall that our Founding Fathers built to 
protect religion from intrusion by government.
  That is why I have been active and will continue to be active in the 
bipartisan coalition of House Members and religious leaders to defeat 
this ill-designed measure.
  Mr. Speaker, the Istook amendment would allow satanic prayers, it 
would allow animal sacrifices to be performed in public schoolrooms, 
even in elementary schools with small children. It would step on the 
rights of religious minorities and allow government facilities to 
become billboards for religious cults.
  Mr. Speaker, America already has a religious freedom amendment. It is 
called the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. It is the first 
pillar of the Bill of Rights. It is the sacred foundation of all our 
freedoms.
  The first amendment begins with these cherished words: Congress shall 
make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the 
free exercise thereof.
  For over two centuries that simple but profound statement has been 
the guardian of religious liberty, which is perhaps the greatest single 
contribution of the American experiment in democracy.

                              {time}  1140

  To tamper with the First Amendment of our Bill of Rights has profound 
implications. In the name of furthering religion, the Istook amendment 
would harm religion. In the name of protecting religious liberty, it 
would damage religious freedom.
  With no disrespect intended, if I must choose between Madison, 
Jefferson, and our Founding Fathers versus the gentleman from Oklahoma 
(Mr. Istook) on the issue of protecting our religious liberty, I shall 
stand with Madison, with Jefferson, and our Founding Fathers. I shall 
stand in the defense of our Bill of Rights.
  Mr. Speaker, if history has taught us nothing else, it has taught us 
that the best way to ruin religion is to politicize it. Our Founding 
Fathers did not mention God in our Constitution, not out of disrespect, 
but out of total reverence. It is that same sense of reverence that 
should move us in this House to protect the First Amendment, not 
dismantle it.
  Some have suggested that the Istook amendment is necessary because 
they allege that ``God has been taken out of public places and 
schoolhouses.'' I

[[Page H2926]]

would suggest those people must not share my belief that no human has 
the power to remove an all-powerful ever-present God from any place on 
this Earth.
  The fact is that there is no law in America that prohibits all 
prayers in our school. It has been said that ``as long as there are 
math tests, there will be prayers in school.'' I agree. Under present 
law, schoolchildren may pray silently in school or even out loud, as 
long as they do not disturb the class work of others or participate in 
government-sanctioned prayer.
  Children can say grace over their school lunches and, if they wish, 
pray around the flagpole before and after school. In fact, before and 
after school, prayer groups have been established at hundreds of 
schools all across America, and these numbers are increasing every day.
  The April 27 copy of Time Magazine of this year documents that 
voluntary prayer is alive and well in American schools. Mr. Speaker, I 
include that article in the record this evening.
  Under the Bill of Rights, as it should be, government resources 
cannot be used to force religion upon our schoolchildren against the 
wishes of their parents or against the wishes of the students 
themselves. What the Bill of Rights does prohibit is government-
sponsored prayer, and thank goodness it does.
  Our Founding Fathers were wise to separate church and State in the 
very First Amendment, in the very first words of the Bill of Rights. 
Religious freedom flourishes in America today precisely because of our 
wall of separation between church and State.
  Islamic fundamentalism seen in the Middle East today is a clear 
example of how religious rights are trampled upon when government gets 
involved in religion.
  In the weeks ahead, I urge Americans to look beyond the sound bite 
rhetoric of the Istook amendment and to ask yourselves this question: 
Should prayer be an individual right or a government program?
  Whether I am in office for 2 more years or 10 more years, there never 
has been and never will be an issue more important to me than 
protecting religious liberty by defeating the Istook amendment.
  Our Bill of Rights is one of the greatest political documents in the 
history of the world. We cannot allow the gentleman from Oklahoma (Mr. 
Istook) in sound bite politics or anything else, for that matter, to 
dismantle it.
  First, let me say, too, that there should be an enormous burden of 
proof placed upon anyone wanting to amend the first words of the First 
Amendment of our Bill of Rights. The document has not been amended even 
a single time since its adoption, as I said, over two centuries ago.
  There can be no more sacred freedom than the freedom of religion. To 
tamper with it is a grave undertaking. Frankly, I would have hoped 
that, prior to any vote on amending the Bill of Rights, this Congress 
would have had hearings more extensive than any other hearings past or 
present in the history of the Congress.
  Unfortunately, that has not happened. In fact, in 1998, and this is 
hard to believe, in 1998, there has only been one day of hearings on 
the Istook amendment to amend the Bill of Rights for the first time in 
our country's history.
  Regardless of one's view on the Istook amendment to have a vote 
changing the Bill of Rights with less review than Whitewater, campaign 
finance, or even the Branch Davidian hearings I believe would be an 
injustice to our Bill of Rights, our Founding Fathers, and all who 
cherish religious liberty.
  It would be tragic to set a precedent in this House that amending the 
Bill of Rights deserves a less careful review than any other issue 
before this Congress or any Congress.
  As Mr. Istook and his supporters try to meet their burden of proof in 
arguing that the Bill of Rights is flawed, I hope they will follow the 
Ninth Commandment.
  For example, many proponents of this measure have failed to point out 
the Ellen Pearson school bus story about a student who was told that 
she could not read a Bible or bring a Bible on the school bus. They use 
that as a reason to amend the Bill of Rights, but yet they forget to 
point out that that problem was solved with one phone call to a school 
principal in 1989, hardly a reason to amend a bill of rights in 1998.
  Mr. Speaker, I believe the American people have the right to know 
that, under the Istook amendment, seven, eight, nine, ten-year-old 
schoolchildren could be subjected to satanic prayers in their public 
schools.
  Let me read an example of what our children could be exposed to under 
the Istook amendment, a satanic prayer:

       I am a born satanist. I am a happy little blob of custard 
     and you cannot nail me to any wall; in fact, I would pull 
     those nails out and aim them at you. Tell me how negative I 
     am. Tell me how I am filled with hate. You are not just 
     stupid. You are wrong. Dracula loved his bride. Dr. 
     Frankenstein loved his monster. My satanic love burns 
     fiercely. It is perfect and uncompromising.

  Maybe Mr. Istook would not mind his children being exposed to that 
satanic prayer and others like it in our public schools, our tax-
supported schools, but I would be offended if my two young sons someday 
are exposed to witchcraft, satanic, or cult prayers in the public 
schools of Waco, Texas.
  Therein lies the unanswered dilemma, the unanswerable, in fact, 
dilemma of the Istook amendment that allows student-initiated prayer. 
Either you expose young impressionable children in first and second and 
third and fourth and fifth grades in public school classrooms to 
satanic and all other types of prayers from thousands of religious 
sects and cults, or, on the other hand, you allow 10-year-old children 
in elementary schools to be the censors and selectors of permissible 
prayers and the guardians of America's religious rights.

  Under the Istook amendment, would 10-year-olds set up prayer 
selection committees? Would 10-year-olds create prayer appeals 
committees? Would eight, nine, and 10-year-olds be expected to balance 
majority views with minority rights as written in our Constitution 
through the Bill of Rights?
  What if one's religion, such as the Santerias, involves animal 
sacrifices? Would that be allowed, cutting off the heads of chickens in 
the classrooms as part of a prayer ritual? Which 10-year-olds would be 
forced or allowed to make that decision in our public schools? Could 
school administrators be allowed to override that 10-year-old student's 
decision? If so, where do we then draw the line on government officials 
reviewing what is and is not a permissible prayer?
  Mr. Speaker, until these and hundreds of other questions are answered 
concerning the Istook amendment, I would suggest we would do well to 
follow the wisdom of Jefferson, Madison, and our Founding Fathers and 
protect, not dismantle, the First Amendment to our Bill of Rights.
  I think Thomas Jefferson said it better than I could ever imagine 
when he said this in his letter to the Danbury Baptists, ``Religion is 
a matter which lies solely between man and his God; that he owes 
account to none other for his faith or worship; that the legislative 
powers of government reach actions only and not opinions.''
  I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American 
people which declared that their legislature should ``make no law 
respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free 
exercise thereof, thus building a wall of separation between church and 
State.''
  Mr. Speaker, I think it is interesting that the other day the 
gentleman from Oklahoma (Mr. Istook) in supporting his constitutional 
amendment that, in my opinion would destroy an important part of the 
Bill of Rights, he suggested that those who were opposing his amendment 
of the Bill of Rights were ``demagogues''.
  Let me suggest, I do not know about whom the gentleman from Oklahoma 
was suggesting, but if you want to call those demagogues opposing the 
Istook amendment, you are going to have to include the Baptists, you 
are going to have to include the Methodists, you are going to have to 
include Jewish organizations across America, and dozens and dozens of 
other devout religious organizations who oppose the Istook amendment 
specifically because of their belief in the reverence of religious 
liberty in America.

                              {time}  2350

  On April 22, just a few days ago, the Baptist Standard said this: 
``The Baptist Standard remains a strict advocate

[[Page H2927]]

of the separation of church and State. The first amendment has served 
us well. We don't need the Religious Freedom Amendment.''
  Finally, Mr. Speaker, and there are so many other issues that I hope 
we can discuss on the floor of this House in the weeks leading up to a 
vote on the Istook amendment, and I would urge the other side to agree 
to our recommendation or request that we have an open debate, it seems 
to me the least we owe, the Congress to the American people, is to have 
an open dialogue, an open discussion and not just one person's debate 
in the late hours of the evening, which the other side has been doing 
recently to discuss the pros and cons of amending the first 16 words of 
the Bill of Rights.
  My concern about this Istook amendment, among many other things, goes 
to a statement that was made right here on the floor of this House last 
evening when the gentleman from Oklahoma (Mr. Istook) and the gentleman 
from Georgia (Mr. Kingston) were discussing this amendment. The 
gentleman from Oklahoma had listed a series of Federal Court decisions 
where he disagreed with the judge's opinion that we should, in Thomas 
Jefferson's words, have separation of church and State in America. The 
gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Kingston) then replied in this way. He 
said, ``Mr. Speaker, there is no doubt in my mind that there is a 
special place in hell for a number of Federal court judges, as I am 
sure there will be for Members of Congress.''
  I hope the gentleman from Georgia will come to the floor of this 
House and explain that statement, because it appears to me that in the 
context in which it was given, he was suggesting that because certain 
Federal judges happen to disagree with the gentleman from Oklahoma and 
the gentleman from Georgia, and happen to agree with Thomas Jefferson 
and James Madison, that somehow there would be a special place in hell 
reserved for not only those Federal judges but perhaps for Members of 
Congress that would agree with our Founding Fathers that the best way 
to protect religion is to keep government out of religious affairs.
  Mr. Speaker, I think it is this kind of thinking that will create 
divisive debate around this country if the proponents of the Istook 
amendment would continue to suggest, as they did last night, that if we 
agree with certain views of church and State issues, somehow we have a 
special place in heaven; and somehow if we disagree with those people's 
opinions, somehow we will have a special place in hell reserved for us.
  I do not think this country needs that kind of religious 
divisiveness, and I would suggest, Mr. Speaker, that kind of 
divisiveness that was part of the debate on the floor of this House 
last night will be replicated in thousands of schoolhouses across 
America as we have fights over who gets how many minutes to give which 
prayer in 1st grade classrooms and 5th grade classrooms and 12th grade 
classrooms, public classrooms in America's schools.
  So for those reasons, Mr. Speaker, and for many, many more that I 
will have the privilege to discuss in the weeks ahead, I would urge the 
Members of this Congress and the American people to think carefully 
before we buy into the sound-bite rhetoric of the Istook constitutional 
amendment; that we should think seriously before we change what our 
Founding Fathers carefully designed as the very first 16 words of our 
Bill of Rights, to defend religious freedom.
  I think this will be the most important debate of this Congress, and 
I hope this Congress will give it serious consideration and ultimately 
the defeat that it deserves.

                       [From Time, Apr. 27, 1998]

                      Spiriting Prayer Into School

                          (By David Van Biema)

       On an overcast afternoon, in a modest room in Minneapolis, 
     23 teenagers are in earnest conversation with one another--
     and with the Lord. ``Would you pray for my brother so that he 
     can raise money to go [on a preaching trip] to Mexico?'' asks 
     a young woman. ``Our church group is visiting juvenile-
     detention centers, and some are scared to go,'' explains a 
     boy. ``Pray that God will lay a burden on people's hearts for 
     this.''
       ``Pray for the food drive,'' says someone.
       ``There's one teacher goin' psycho because kids are not 
     turning in their homework and stuff. She's thinking of 
     quitting, and she's a real good teacher.''
       ``We need to pray for all the teachers in the school who 
     aren't Christians,'' comes a voice from the back.
       And they do. Clad in wristbands that read w.w.j.d. (``What 
     Would Jesus Do?'') and T shirts that declare upon this rock I 
     will build my church, the kids sing Christian songs, discuss 
     Scripture and work to memorize the week's Bible verse, John 
     15: 5 (``I am the vine and you are the branches''). Hours 
     pass. As night falls, the group enjoys one last mass hug and 
     finally leaves its makeshift chapel--room 133 of Patrick 
     Henry High School. Yes, a public high school. If you are 
     between ages 25 and 45, your school days were not like this. 
     In 1963 the Supreme Court issued a landmark ruling banning 
     compulsory prayer in public schools. After that, any worship 
     on school premises, let alone a prayer club, was widely 
     understood as forbidden. But for the past few years, thanks 
     to a subsequent court case, such groups not only have been 
     legal but have become legion.
       The clubs' explosive spread coincides with a more radical 
     but so far less successful movement for a complete overturn 
     of the 1963 ruling. On the federal level is the Religious 
     Freedom amendment, a constitutional revision proposed by 
     House Republican Ernest Istook of Oklahoma, which would 
     reinstate full-scale school prayer. It passed the Judiciary 
     Committee, 16 to 11, last month but will probably fare less 
     well when the full House votes in May. One of many local 
     battlefields is Alabama, where last week the state senate 
     passed a bill mandating a daily moment of silence--a response 
     to a 1997 federal ruling voiding an earlier state pro-school 
     prayer law. Governor Fob James is expected to sign the bill 
     into law, triggering the inevitable church-state court 
     challenge.
       But members of prayer clubs like the one at Patrick Henry 
     High aren't waiting for the conclusion of such epic 
     struggles. They have already brought worship back to public 
     school campuses, although with some state-imposed 
     limitations. Available statistics are approximate, but they 
     suggest that there are clubs in as many as 1 out of every 4 
     public schools in the country. In some areas the tally is 
     much higher: evangelicals in Minneapolis-St. Paul claim that 
     the vast majority of high schools in the Twin Cities 
     region have a Christian group. Says Benny Proffitt, a 
     Southern Baptist youth-club planter: ``We had no idea in 
     the early '90s that the response would be so great. We 
     believe that if we are to see America's young people come 
     to Christ and America turn around, it's going to happen 
     through our schools, not our churches.'' Once a religious 
     scorched-earth zone, the schoolyard is suddenly fertile 
     ground for both Vine and Branches.
       The turnabout culminates a quarter-century of legislative 
     and legal maneuvering. The 1963 Supreme Court decision and 
     its broad-brush enforcement by school administrators 
     infuriated conservative Christians, who gradually developed 
     enough clout to force Congress to make a change. The 
     resulting Equal Access Act of 1984 required any federally 
     funded secondary school to permit religious meetings if the 
     schools allowed other clubs not related to curriculum, such 
     as public-service Key Clubs. The crucial rule was that the 
     prayer clubs had to be voluntary, student-run and not 
     convened during class time.
       Early drafts of the act were specifically pro-Christian. 
     Ultimately, however, its argument was stated in pure civil-
     libertarian terms; prayers that would be coercive if required 
     of all students during class are protected free speech if 
     they are just one more after-school activity. Nevertheless, 
     recalls Marc Stern, a staff lawyer with the American Jewish 
     Congress, ``there was great fear that this would serve the 
     base for very intrusive and aggressive proselytizing.'' 
     Accordingly, Stern's group and other organizations challenged 
     the law--only to see it sustained, 8 to 1, by the Supreme 
     Court in 1990. Bill Clinton apparently agreed with the court. 
     The President remains opposed to compulsory school prayer. 
     But in a July 1995 speech he announced that ``nothing in the 
     First Amendment converts our public schools into religion-
     free zones or requires all religious expression to be left 
     at the schoolhouse door.'' A month later Clinton had the 
     Department of Education issue a memo to public school 
     superintendents that appeared to expand Equal Access Act 
     protections to include public-address announcements of 
     religious gatherings and meetings at lunchtime and recess.
       Evangelicals had already seized the moment. Within a year 
     of the 1990 court decision, prayer clubs bloomed 
     spontaneously on a thousand high school campuses. Fast on 
     their heels came adult organizations dedicated to encouraging 
     more. Proffitt's Tennessee-based organization, First 
     Priority, founded in 1995, coordinates interchurch groups in 
     162 cities working with clubs in 3,000 schools. The San 
     Diego-based National Network of Youth Ministries has launched 
     ``Challenge 2000,'' which pledges to bring the Christian 
     gospel ``to every kid on every secondary campus in every 
     community in our nation by the year 2000.'' It also promotes 
     a phenomenon called ``See You at the Pole,'' encouraging 
     Christian students countrywide to gather around their school 
     flagpoles on the third Wednesday of each September; last 
     year, 3 million students participated. Adult groups provide 
     club handbooks, workshops for student leaders and ongoing 
     advice. Network of Youth Ministries leader Paul Fleischmann 
     stresses that the resulting clubs are ``adult supported,'' 
     not adult-run. ``If we went away,'' he says, ``they'd still 
     do it.''

[[Page H2928]]

       The club at Patrick Henry High certainly would. The group 
     was founded two years ago with encouragement but no specific 
     stage managing by local youth pastors. This afternoon its 
     faculty adviser, a math teacher and Evangelical Free Church 
     member named Sara Van Der Werk, sits silently for most of the 
     meeting, although she takes part in the final embrace. The 
     club serves as an emotional bulwark for members dealing with 
     life at a school where two students died last year in off-
     campus gunfire. Today a club member requests prayer for 
     ``those people who got in that big fight [this morning].'' 
     Another asks the Lord to ``bless the racial-reconciliation 
     stuff.'' (Patrick Henry is multiethnic; the prayer club is 
     overwhelming white.) Just before Easter the group experienced 
     its first First Amendment conflict: whether it could hang 
     posters on all school walls like other non-school-sponsored 
     clubs. Patrick Henry principal Paul McMahan 
     eventually decreed that putting up posters is off limits 
     to everyone, leading to some resentment against the 
     Christians. Nonetheless, McMahan lauds them for 
     ``understanding the boundaries'' between church and state.
       In Alabama, the new school-prayer bill attempts to skirt 
     those boundaries. The legislation requires ``a brief period 
     of quiet reflection for not more than 60 seconds with the 
     participation of each pupil in the classroom.'' Although the 
     courts have upheld some moment-of-silence policies, civil 
     libertarians say they have struck down laws featuring pro-
     prayer supporting language of the sort they discern in 
     Alabama's bill. In the eyes of many church-club planters, 
     such fracases amount to wasted effort. Says Doug Clark, field 
     director of the National Network of Youth ministries: ``Our 
     energy is being poured into what kids can do voluntarily and 
     on their own. That seems to us to be where God is working.''
       Reaction to the prayer clubs may depend on which besieged 
     minority one feels part of. In the many areas where 
     Conservative Christians feel looked down on, they welcome the 
     emotional support for their children's faith. Similarly, non-
     Christians in the Bible Belt may be put off by the clubs' 
     evangelical fervor; members of the chess society, after all, 
     do not inform peers that they must push pawns or risk eternal 
     damnation. Not everyone shares the enthusiasm Proffitt 
     recently expressed at a youth rally in Niagara Falls, N.Y.: 
     ``When an awakening takes place, we see 50, 100, 1,000, 
     10,000 come to Christ Can you imagine 100, or 300, come to 
     Christ in your school? We want to see our campuses come to 
     Christ.'' Watchdog organizations like Americans United for 
     the Separation of Church and State report cases in which such 
     zeal has approached harassment of students and teachers, 
     student prayer leaders have seemed mere puppets for adult 
     evangelists, and activists have tried to establish prayer 
     clubs in elementary schools, where the description ``student-
     run'' seems disingenuous.
       Nevertheless, the Jewish committee's Stern concedes that 
     ``there's been much less controversy than one might have 
     expected from the hysterical predictions we made.'' Americans 
     United director Barry Lynn notes that ``in most school 
     districts, students are spontaneously forming clubs and 
     acting upon their own and not outsiders' religious agendas.'' 
     A.C.L.U. lobbyist Terri Schroeder also supports the Equal 
     Access Act, pointing out that the First Amendment's Free 
     Exercise clause protecting religious expression is as vital 
     as its Establishment Clause, which prohibits government from 
     promoting a creed. The civil libertarians' acceptance of the 
     clubs owes something to their use as a defense against what 
     they consider a truly bad idea: Istook's school-prayer 
     amendment. Says Lynn: ``Most reasonable people say, `If so 
     many kids are praying legally in the public schools now, why 
     would you possibly want to amend the Constitution?' ''
       For now, the prospects for prayer clubs seem unlimited. In 
     fact, the tragic shooting of eight prayer-club members last 
     December in West Paducah, Ky., by 14-year-old Michael Carneal 
     provided the cause with matyrs and produced a hero in prayer-
     club president Ben Strong, who persuaded Carneal to lay down 
     his gun. Strong recalls that the club's daily meetings used 
     to draw only 35 to 60 students out of Heath High School's 
     600. ``People didn't really look down on us, but I don't know 
     if it was cool to be a Christian,'' he says. Now 100 to 150 
     teens attend. Strong has since toured three states extolling 
     the value of Christian clubs. ``It woke a lot of kids up,'' 
     he says. ``That's true everywhere I've spoken. This is a 
     national thing.''

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