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Prayer In Schools Research Paper

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In 1960 Madalyn Murray O’Hair sued Baltimore public schools for requiring students to read the Bible and to recite the Lord’s prayer. At this time in history reciting prayers and reading the Bible were common in schools across the nation. Children could be excused from this exercise if they were equipped with a note from their parents. Instead of O’Hair following this procedure she believed that this exercise violated the First Amendment rights. The case ended up making it to the Supreme Court where is was joined with a similar case. In 1963, the court ruled in favor of O’Hair with an eight to one vote. The Supreme Court decision ended prayer and prayer recitation in schools. To this day this court decision has caused much controversy. …show more content…

The biggest motive behind banning is the separation of church and state. Separation of church and state is the distance between religion and the nation state. This is hard concept to find a concept to find a fine line between church and state. This can be resolved by keeping everything completely separate. All church related stuff stays within church or home and all state stuff is elsewhere. Prayer within ones self is not banned so there is no need for mandatory prayer especially if there are students who choose not to pray. They would be singled out due to not participating which is not fair for them. Prayer within public schools could potentially lead to intolerance due to religious difference amongst the students that were unaware. This could again also lead to singling out student also known as ostracized. Public schools were created for all students and are funded by all taxpayers. With that being said it only makes sense and is right for the school to stay neutral due to the difference in religious beliefs between students and taxpayers. Banning school prayer has prevented many conflicts of within the school system because of different religious

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