They Haven't Got a Prayer
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Attorney Anthony Griffin, who took on the Does' case in 1995 for the ACLU and would argue on their behalf before the Supreme Court, saw this policy as the beginning of a slippery slope. "If a student vote could privatize prayer," he said, "then students could vote for prayer in the classroom, and public schools could evade every one of the Supreme Court's school prayer cases." Raised a Baptist, Griffin had no reservations about taking on the case—despite heated criticism from his brother, who is an evangelist, and several devout co-workers, who regularly held prayer circles at the office in support of the opposing side—because he felt he was fighting for religious freedom. "Students may pray on their own anytime, anywhere," said Griffin. "But at Santa Fe football games, students were being coerced to participate in a religious exercise that was clearly sponsored and encouraged by the school. Religious belief and expression is flourishing in this country because we have avoided others' mistakes; we have not allowed our government to endorse religion or to interfere in religion. In Santa Fe, the will of the majority was being imposed on the minority."
Judge Kent heard testimony from both the Does and school administrators and ruled in 1996 that the district had violated the First Amendment by having allowed school-sponsored prayer and the distribution of Bibles on school property. Though the district had erred, Kent ruled, it was acting in good faith to correct such policies, and he declined to award any damages to the Does. Both sides appealed to the Fifth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which delivered a ruling last February that proved to be a devastating blow to prayer proponents in Santa Fe. Student-led prayer was appropriate at graduation ceremonies, the three-judge panel ruled, since it is "a significant, once-in-a-lifetime event," but football games, they added with scant understanding of Texas tradition, are "far less solemn and extraordinary." Prayer before football games was unconstitutional, the court ruled, stating, "Football games are hardly the sober type of annual event that can be appropriately solemnized with prayer."
The ruling was greeted with outrage in Santa Fe, and the school board vowed to take its case to the next level, voting 7-0 to appeal the case to the Supreme Court. "Pray Before It's Illegal" trumpeted one church sign, in a common refrain. The battle was on, and if Santa Feans needed a martyr for the cause, they found one in Marian Ward.
"There's a verse in the Bible that says, 'Whether you eat, or drink, or whatsoever you do, do all to the glory of God,'" said Marian Ward, her blue eyes resolute. "And so, if I'm given a public platform, I must glorify God, even if the courts say otherwise." A Baptist preacher's daughter, Marian would challenge the Fifth Circuit's ruling by daring to pray over the school loudspeaker before a game, and at seventeen, there was no better standard-bearer for the cause. Her straight brown hair framed a round, serious face that betrayed no hesitations, and she felt passionately that the Doe suit was an affront to everything she believed. When the suit was filed, during her seventh-grade year, she wore Christian-themed T-shirts and carried her Bible with her to school, laying it across her desk as a silent protest. Now a student at the University of Arkansas, she recalled, "When I was sixteen, I decided to surrender my whole life to the Lord. I realized I needed Him, and I needed to surrender everything to Him, to serve Him to the utmost." She spent the better part of her time in her father's church, singing with the Praise Team and committing long passages of Scripture to memory. During her junior year in high school, she wrote an essay arguing that the educational system was wrongly promoting "the religion of humanism," instead of a belief in God, by teaching "the humanist doctrine of evolution."
As fate—or as some thought, divine intervention—would have it, Marian was the student chosen to deliver prayers before football games last fall. She had run for student speaker and finished second, but that September, she won by default after the winner stepped aside, putting her in both a legal and a moral quandary. By then, the Fifth Circuit had declared that pre-game prayer was unconstitutional, and though the school district was appealing the ruling, it had amended its guidelines accordingly. The speaker could still deliver an "inspirational message," the school district allowed, but in accordance with federal law, prayers and references to a deity would be forbidden. For Marian, the new policy was the manifestation of all her fears about the Doe suit—namely, that it was trying to ban religious expression from public life. "I want to be able to express my religious faith, wherever I am," she said. "If there is a religion that has been suppressed, it's what a lot of people call evangelical Christianity. Christianity isn't just an activity; it's a state of being. It permeates every area of my life, and that's why it's such a problem when people don't want me to express my religion publicly."
Her fears were compounded when, the Tuesday before the first Indians game, she was summoned over the P.A. system to report to the principal's office. There, school administrators handed her the new rules governing pre-game messages. "The gist of the conversation was, 'Look, we know you're a good student, and we've never had any problems with you before, so we're sure you'll go along with the guidelines,'" she recalled. "It was very upsetting to me to realize that they wanted me to compromise my faith to 'do the right thing.'" Several teachers took her aside that week and cautioned her not to offer a prayer before the game. One instructor she greatly respected pulled her out of class, wiping tears away as she urged Marian to "Render unto Caesar the things which are Caesar's, and unto God the things that are God's." An honor student who had always obediently followed the rules, Marian was overwhelmed. "Man's law was trying to override God's, and I could feel the emotional and spiritual strain of it," she said. "I felt like I was involved in an intense good-versus-evil contest, almost a battle between God and Satan."
Publicly, she kept her intentions hidden, but privately she typed out what she hoped to say that Friday, titling it "What the World Is Waiting to Hear." Rumors abounded that if she prayed, she would be arrested, and Marian—not usually rattled—called her parents from school, distraught. "I felt physically ill," she remembered. "I felt like a pawn in a chess game." Seeking a compromise, the Wards met with Principal Gary Causey. To their dismay, he explained that Marian would be disciplined if she violated the new guidelines by leading students in prayer over the loudspeaker. Failing to see any other recourse, the Wards consulted with Houston attorney Kelly Coghlan, who filed suit on their behalf against the school district. Hours before the game, Coghlan won a temporary restraining order from U.S. district court judge Sim Lake preventing the district from punishing Marian if she prayed. "We wanted the school district, and the government as a whole, to treat Marian's speech neutrally, so that if she said, 'Let us have a safe game tonight' or if she said, 'God, let us have a safe game tonight,' they wouldn't discriminate," said Coghlan.
The Ward case posed a legal conundrum: When students wish to pray over the loudspeaker before a football game, should their school allow them to do so in order to practice their religion freely, or forbid them to do so and thus avoid government participation in religion? The litmus test—named the Lemon test after the Supreme Court case Lemon v. Kurtzman—sets out that a government practice is unconstitutional if it lacks a secular purpose, advances or inhibits religion, or excessively entangles government with religion. Indeed, by any standard, the Santa Fe school district seemed excessively "entangled" by the time the Wards filed suit, having tried for several years to maintain a public forum for prayer and then putting restrictions on what could be said. Lost in Santa Fe's fight for school prayer was a simple fact: Students are free to pray, individually or in groups, at any time. The courts' concern begins only when prayer and government start to mix. (For example, football players may pray together before a game, but their coach may not lead them in prayer.) So why not simply abolish the pre-game speech altogether and allow students to pray on their own? "It's a part of the game," superintendent Ownby said. "Imagine if you went to church and there was no singing. It's a long-standing tradition. We couldn't take that away."
The crowd roared at game time when Marian's name was called, and as she ascended the stadium stairs in her green-and-gold band outfit to the press box, her hands shook and flashbulbs popped, the applause of four thousand people ricocheting off concrete. "I could actually almost feel the Lord carrying me, like a little kid," she remembered. "I could almost feel his arms around me." She asked all who wished to give thanks to God to bow their heads, and the crowd fell silent. "Lord, thank you for this evening," she said, her voice gaining strength. "Thank you for all the prayers that were lifted up this week for me. I pray that you watch over each and every person here tonight, especially those involved in the game, that they will demonstrate good sportsmanship, Lord, and that we'll have safety. Just be with the fans, that they will exemplify good behavior as well, Lord. And just be with each and every one of us as we go home to our respective places tonight. In Jesus' name, I pray. Amen." The crowd erupted in applause and stood for several minutes, cheering.
It was, in many ways, a portrait of the best of small-town life, of a community uniting to give thanks and to rejoice in the game that brought them together. And if not for the ugly scene that would take place when Marian repeated her prayer at homecoming several weeks later, during which fifty or so protesters were ridiculed and harrassed, perhaps it would be easier to make the case for school prayer in Santa Fe. Its supporters argue that students in the minority—who do not wish to participate or who ascribe to a different religion—cannot be hurt by a profession of faith. "I cannot imagine how a prayer could do harm, especially a Christian prayer, because we're all about loving people and being more like Christ, and Christ was the ultimate form of good and truth and right," said Marian. School prayer advocates argue that those in the minority can choose not to listen or can step outside of a prayer gathering, without being stigmatized. But on homecoming night last fall, those who chose not to participate were indeed stigmatized, as has become commonplace for those in Santa Fe who dare to disagree.
Amanda Bruce, then a high school senior, was among the group of protesters. A practicing Catholic, she was angered that Marian Ward was delivering prayers that everyone in the stadium, regardless of belief, had to listen to. Amanda had already incurred a fair amount of hostility at Santa Fe High School for, among other things, speaking up in science class in support of Darwinism and against school-sponsored prayer. At the protest, she held a sign that said "I'm Not Protesting Prayer. I'm Protesting Discrimination," but she was greeted with catcalls and jeers.
"Don't you believe in God?" several passersby called out.
"You're going to hell!" two girls cried.
"Devil worshiper!" a man spat from a passing pickup.
