Howard C. Wilkinson - "The Supreme Court Prayer Decision" (July 22, 1962)

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-	As many have taken in hand to set forth in order	0:12
	a declaration of their opinions concerning	0:18
	the Supreme Court's ruling regarding prayer	0:21
	in the public schools,	0:25
	it seemed good to me also, having had a keen interest	0:28
	in the subject for 20 years, to write a sermon on it.	0:33
	Few decisions which the court has made in this generation	0:39
	have stirred up as much discussion	0:44
	and controversy as this one.	0:46
	Among those who have expressed opposition to the ruling	0:51
	are the former president Eisenhower,	0:54
	North Carolina Governor Terry Sanford,	0:57
	Evangelist Billy Graham,	0:59
	the chaplain to Columbia University, Dr. John Krum,	1:02
	Cardinal Spellman, Rabbi Shubow,	1:06
	and Justice Stewart of the Supreme Court itself.	1:09
	Many United States senators and congressmen	1:14
	have either introduced or supported legislation	1:18
	calculated to set aside the court's decision.	1:22
	On the other hand, among those who have expressed pleasure	1:27
	in the ruling are Dr. Douglas Branch, the General Secretary	1:31
	of the North Carolina Baptist State Convention,	1:34
	the Reverend Charles Jones of the Community Church	1:38
	in Chapel Hill, the Reverend W. W. Finlator	1:41
	of the Poland Memorial Baptist Church in Raleigh,	1:44
	Dr. Dana Greeley, who is president	1:48
	of the Universalist Association of America.	1:50
	Well, how about you and me?	1:54
	What will be our view?	2:00
	Was the decision of the court wise or unwise?	2:03
	Valid or invalid?	2:06
	First, let us take a quick look at the decision itself.	2:11
	The State Board of Regents of New York	2:14
	composed a 22-word prayer,	2:17
	which they said they believed would be subscribed to	2:20
	by all men and women of good will.	2:23
	They recommended the use of this prayer	2:27
	in the public schools of New York.	2:31
	The board of education in turn	2:34
	of the Union Free School District Number Nine,	2:36
	New Hyde Park, New York	2:39
	directed the school district's principal	2:42
	to cause the Regents' prayer to be used in each class	2:46
	at the beginning of each day.	2:51
	Shortly after this, the parents of 10 pupils in that school	2:54
	brought court action against the use of this prayer	2:58
	contending that its use was contrary to the beliefs	3:01
	and religious practices of both themselves	3:04
	and their children.	3:07
	The lower courts and the Court of Appeals in New York	3:10
	denied the wish of the objecting parents	3:13
	and upheld the action of the Board of Education.	3:16
	But on June 25, the United States Supreme Court	3:19
	reversed the decisions of the lower courts	3:22
	and granted the wish of the objecting parents.	3:25
	That in brief was the case before the court	3:29
	and such was the court's ruling.	3:33
	Why did it make this ruling?	3:37
	Here is a part of the majorities' explanation.	3:41
	'It is no part of the business of government	3:46
	to compose official prayers for any group	3:50
	of the American people to recite.	3:53
	One of the greatest dangers to the freedom	3:57
	of the individual to worship in his own way,	3:59
	lay in the government's placing	4:02
	its official stamp of approval	4:04
	upon one particular kind of prayer.	4:07
	It is neither sacrilegious nor anti-religious	4:11
	to say that each separate government in this country	4:14
	should stay out of the business of writing	4:18
	or sanctioning official prayers	4:21
	and leave that purely religious function	4:24
	to the people themselves and to those the people choose	4:27
	to look to for religious guidance', end of quote.	4:29
	This ruling with this explanation	4:36
	clearly excludes the possibility	4:40
	of a State Board of Regents,	4:42
	composing an official prayer for use in all schools	4:44
	and it denies the legality of a local school board	4:48
	requiring that any given prayer	4:53
	be said in each classroom every day.	4:54
	If, if this ruling by the Supreme Court means that	4:59
	and nothing more, it will certainly deserve the commendation	5:05
	and thanks of all Americans.	5:10
	The haunting question which remains is,	5:15
	did the court mean something more than this?	5:18
	Did it intend by its ruling and opinion	5:23
	to stop all prayers in public schools?	5:26
	There is an enormous difference between the two intentions.	5:32
	Having read the complete opinion of the court three times,	5:39
	I am still not certain of the answer to that question.	5:43
	The court failed to provide a clear cut answer	5:49
	to that query, whether because of carelessness	5:51
	or studied intent, I do not know.	5:54
	The court must respectfully be urged	5:58
	to supply an answer so unmistakably clear	6:00
	that all rational persons cannot fail to understand it.	6:05
	Experts in constitutional law who have read the opinion	6:10
	are divided in their interpretations of the ruling.	6:13
	United Press International surveyed the opinions	6:17
	of a variety of these experts	6:20
	and found that some of them think the ruling	6:22
	is very narrow in its application,	6:23
	that it only bans officially composed	6:27
	and officially required prayers.	6:29
	Others take a different view of the ruling	6:32
	declaring that the majority opinion	6:34
	spelled the end of all religious exercises	6:37
	in public schools, including voluntary prayers,	6:40
	devotional reading of the Bible,	6:44
	and such religious observances as Christmas, et cetera.	6:45
	Indeed, the concurring opinion of Justice Douglas	6:51
	plainly states that there is no important difference	6:54
	whatever between the kind of religious observance	6:57
	here ruled against and the prayers	7:01
	which opened the sessions of the Supreme Court,	7:03
	both houses of Congress	7:06
	and many, many other religious observances	7:07
	in governmental agencies.	7:09
	His opinion is that all this should end.	7:11
	Further evidence that the majority ruling	7:17
	and its supporting opinion may have been calculated	7:19
	to banish all prayer in public schools	7:23
	is gathered from the dissenting opinion of Justice Stewart	7:25
	who sat with the other justices	7:29
	when they discussed this matter prior to the ruling.	7:31
	In his dissent, Justice Stewart wrote this,	7:35
	"We deal here with whether school children	7:39
	who want to begin their day by joining in prayer	7:42
	must be prohibited from doing so."	7:47
	Well, I have already mentioned	7:54
	that we have no problem on our hands	7:55
	if the court's ruling is directed only against	7:57
	the required use of governmentally written prayer,	8:00
	but in view of the definite possibility	8:03
	that it shall be interpreted	8:06
	as applying in wholesale fashion	8:07
	against all religious observances	8:10
	in all public institutions, it behooves us now	8:12
	to consider the problem we should be facing in that event.	8:15
	A recent survey shows that 88% of the public schools	8:20
	in America regularly hold some form	8:24
	of voluntary religious observance,	8:27
	therefore a Supreme Court ruling which banned all of this	8:30
	would inescapably effect a sweeping and drastic change	8:35
	in the public life of this country.	8:39
	If and when the court issues a clarification	8:42
	of the June 25 decision,	8:46
	the justices should give attention to three matters,	8:49
	which were not elaborated in their opinion.	8:52
	In fact, these three items have scarcely been touched upon	8:57
	in any of the discussion which has been raging	9:01
	since the court's decision was handed down.	9:03
	The American public should study and ponder	9:07
	the significance of each of these three important matters,	9:13
	which I shall now mention,	9:16
	since all three of them bear in a most direct way	9:18
	upon the question before America at the present time.	9:23
	First, what did the authors and ratifiers	9:27
	of the First Amendment mean by the phrase	9:34
	'an establishment of religion'?	9:39
	The amendment specifies	9:43
	that Congress shall make no law	9:44
	respecting an establishment of religion	9:45
	and the court declared that they based their ruling	9:48
	upon that statement.	9:50
	In deciding a point of constitutional law,	9:54
	the question is never	9:56
	what do these words mean when we use them now?	9:59
	Or what can these words be made to mean?	10:04
	Or what do I wish the authors	10:09
	and ratifiers had meant by their words?	10:12
	I fear that most of the ink which has been split	10:17
	on this subject recently has been an answer	10:19
	to such questions as these,	10:21
	rather than an answer to the only legitimate question,	10:24
	which can honestly come before the court.	10:28
	That question is, what did the authors and ratifiers	10:33
	of the amendment mean when they used the words?	10:37
	And how does that meaning relate to the present situation	10:41
	which the court is being asked to rule upon?	10:46
	Well, this is a question	10:50
	that I've studied for a number of years,	10:51
	and I have read very extensively in the relevant literature.	10:54
	It is my belief that the answer to this question	10:58
	is not merely probable, but is crystal clear	11:00
	and that all who will take the time	11:06
	to read the records of that far off era	11:09
	must come to the unequivocal conclusion	11:11
	that the phrase 'an establishment of religion'	11:15
	referred then to what we would call	11:19
	an established church or denomination.	11:21
	It referred to the arrangement	11:26
	whereby government selects a particular denomination	11:28
	as its official state church.	11:30
	The government appoints that church's ministers,	11:33
	pays them by tax money,	11:36
	constructs and maintains the houses of worship,	11:38
	and in some instances even requires under penalty	11:40
	that all citizens give verbal ascent	11:44
	to the theological beliefs of that denomination.	11:46
	At the time of the American Revolution,	11:50
	eight of the American colonies	11:53
	had such established churches.	11:55
	England has an established church,	11:58
	the Anglican church today.	12:00
	The evangelical Lutheran Church	12:02
	is the state church of Norway.	12:04
	Now the First Amendment was intended	12:07
	to prevent this arrangement.	12:10
	And as Jefferson said "to erect a wall of separation	12:14
	between church and state".	12:18
	The founders did not mean to eradicate religion	12:22
	from government, nor did they mean to hamper	12:25
	religious observances within the institutions of government.	12:28
	They made it abundantly clear that the United States	12:33
	as a nation, as a nation officially believed in	12:35
	and relied upon God and they repeatedly acknowledged	12:41
	the government's dependence upon God.	12:45
	Literally hundreds of statements, decisions,	12:50
	proclamations and enactments could be brought forward	12:54
	in proof of this.	12:58
	We have time now to cite only a very few.	13:00
	The first Congress which was elected and convened	13:04
	under the constitution of the United States	13:08
	came together for the first time on March 4, 1789	13:10
	and recessed on September 29 of that same year.	13:15
	During that period of less than seven months,	13:18
	this Congress installed the first president	13:22
	of the United States, adopted the Bill of Rights	13:25
	and sent it to the several states for ratification.	13:29
	The members organized the Congress	13:32
	and fixed many important policies,	13:34
	which have continued to this day.	13:36
	Now note, one of the very first actions	13:39
	of this first Congress was to make provision	13:44
	for the appointment of two congressional chaplains	13:48
	among whose duties would be that	13:52
	of leading the houses of Congress in prayer	13:53
	to Almighty God each day.	13:57
	They provided that they should not both be members	14:01
	of the same denomination.	14:04
	By joint action of both houses of Congress,	14:09
	plans were carried out to the effect that	14:11
	as soon as George Washington took his oath of office	14:14
	as the first president of the United States,	14:16
	he together with all governmental officials	14:19
	and all members of both houses of Congress	14:22
	went directly to St. Paul's Chapel	14:25
	to attend divine services	14:29
	conducted by a congressional chaplain.	14:32
	This took place on April 30, 1789.	14:35
	During that summer,	14:40
	this first Congress wrote, rewrote, discussed	14:41
	and debated the proposed Bill of Rights,	14:44
	including what we now call the First Amendment.	14:46
	On August 15 of that summer,	14:49
	there was a lengthy discussion	14:51
	in the House of Representatives on this very point.	14:52
	Mr. Madison and Mr. Huntington spoke at length	14:57
	before the House on what the meaning	15:00
	of this proposed First Amendment is.	15:02
	Compulsory belief, the violation of conscience,	15:06
	tax support for churches and ministers,	15:13
	court suits to compel payment of church dues,	15:17
	the domination of all denominations	15:22
	by one established denomination.	15:24
	These were the evils which they said on that day	15:27
	this amendment would avoid.	15:30
	After much discussion,	15:34
	the House adopted the proposed Bill of Rights	15:35
	and sent it over to the Senate on September 24.	15:37
	On September 25,	15:42
	this same House of Representatives	15:46
	upon motion of Elias Boudinot of New Jersey,	15:48
	passed the following resolution.	15:51
	'Resolved that a joint committee of both houses	15:54
	be directed to wait upon the president of the United States	15:57
	to request that he would recommend	16:01
	to the people of the United States	16:03
	a day of public thanksgiving and prayer	16:05
	to be observed by acknowledging with grateful hearts,	16:10
	the many signal favors of Almighty God,	16:13
	especially by affording them an opportunity peaceably	16:16
	to establish a constitution of government'.	16:19
	Well, quite evidently the authors	16:24
	of the 'no establishment of religion' clause	16:26
	believed they had done nothing on September 24,	16:28
	which prevented their calling	16:32
	for a national day of public prayer on September 25.	16:33
	This resolution reached the Senate later on that same day	16:40
	and by a strange but dramatically significant coincidence,	16:44
	it was acted upon immediately after the Senate took action	16:50
	on the Bill of Rights Resolution,	16:54
	which had been sent over from the house the day before.	16:57
	The action in both instances was favorable.	17:00
	The vote on the prayer resolution	17:06
	in the House of Representatives and its close relationship	17:08
	to the vote on the First Amendment	17:11
	will be seen in even more significant and relevant focus	17:14
	when it is recalled that there was an objection to it	17:17
	made at the time of its proposal.	17:22
	When Boudinot offered his resolution,	17:25
	a Mr. T. T. Tucker of South Carolina arose	17:27
	and spoke against it,	17:31
	giving some of the same arguments	17:32
	which the secularists of today use	17:34
	against government doing anything about religion.	17:37
	Now observe this.	17:41
	After the members of the house	17:43
	heard all of Mr Tucker's objections,	17:45
	they voted to ask the president to issue an official call	17:50
	for a national day of prayer	17:54
	and thanksgiving to Almighty God,	17:56
	and this within 24 hours of the time they voted	18:00
	not to have an establishment of religion.	18:04
	So that those who gave us this amendment	18:07
	clearly did not intend it should interfere	18:10
	with religious observances in public institutions.	18:14
	Since there are some people who are deeply prejudiced	18:22
	in favor of a secularistic government,	18:25
	they might be helped to see the constitutional point here	18:29
	if an illustration were used.	18:32
	So let us suppose an amendment to the constitution,	18:35
	which pertained to clothing had been adopted	18:39
	in those early days.	18:43
	And that the Supreme Court were asked in 1962	18:46
	to rule on the constitutionality of wearing shoes.	18:48
	Suppose further that the language of the amendment	18:54
	as now understood, could be construed to mean either	18:57
	that it is, or that it is not constitutional to wear shoes.	19:01
	But if historical research proved conclusively	19:06
	that the members of Congress, which adopted the amendment,	19:09
	wore shoes and that the members of the legislatures,	19:13
	which ratified the amendment wore shoes,	19:16
	the conclusion would seem inevitable, wouldn't it?	19:20
	That the authors and ratifiers of that amendment	19:22
	did not intend the amendment which dealt with clothing	19:25
	to be interpreted as a prohibition against wearing shoes.	19:29
	Now by the same token, if we were to find, as we do,	19:34
	that there is an amendment	19:40
	which prohibits an establishment of religion,	19:41
	and if we were to find, as we do,	19:44
	that the authors of this amendment	19:47
	had prayer in Congress and called upon the president	19:48
	to proclaim a day of national prayer.	19:51
	And if we were to find, as we do,	19:55
	that the state legislatures which ratified this amendment	19:57
	were opened with prayer,	20:00
	then the conclusion would seem inevitable	20:02
	that the authors and ratifiers of the First Amendment	20:05
	did not intend that it should be construed	20:07
	to mean that it is unconstitutional	20:10
	to have prayer in such public institutions, as Congress,	20:13
	the courts, the legislatures,	20:17
	the armed forces and the public schools.	20:18
	A second matter on which the court did not elaborate	20:26
	in its June 25 opinion,	20:30
	but which is relevant to any decision concerning prayer	20:32
	in public institutions, is the clause	20:36
	which follows the clause we have just been discussing.	20:39
	The complete statement is this,	20:44
	'Congress shall make no law respecting	20:46
	an establishment of religion	20:48
	or prohibiting the free exercise there are.	20:50
	Let us see how that statement would read	20:57
	if we remove from it the portion	20:59
	which we've already discussed,	21:00
	the remaining statement would go like this.	21:02
	Congress shall make no law	21:05
	prohibiting the free exercise of religion.	21:08
	Congress shall make no law	21:12
	prohibiting the free exercise of religion.	21:14
	It's a fair assumption that what the legislative branch	21:20
	of government is forbidden to do in this area,	21:23
	the executive and judicial branches	21:26
	are also forbidden to do.	21:27
	If therefore we substitute the court in place of Congress,	21:30
	we would have a statement like this.	21:35
	The Supreme Court shall not make a ruling	21:38
	prohibiting the free exercise of religion.	21:42
	Does this mean that the court shall not prohibit students	21:48
	and teachers in schools from freely exercising	21:51
	their religious desire to pray,	21:55
	so long as they do not compel others to do so?	21:57
	Justice Stewart in his dissenting opinion	22:01
	thinks it means just that.	22:04
	He wrote, "To deny the wish of school children	22:05
	to join in reciting prayer is to deny them the opportunity	22:09
	of sharing in the spiritual heritage of our nation."	22:13
	Let the American people in general	22:17
	and the Supreme Court in specific particular	22:21
	ponder this question.	22:25
	Let us study the meaning of the fact	22:28
	that the First Amendment bars the government	22:31
	from prohibiting the free exercise of religion.	22:34
	A third matter on which the court did not elaborate	22:40
	in its June 25 opinion,	22:42
	but which is directly relevant to any decision	22:46
	concerning religious observances in public institutions	22:49
	is the complete impossibility of neutrality.	22:53
	Notwithstanding the fact that a number of people today	22:59
	imagine that there can be such a thing	23:02
	as a government which is religiously colorless.	23:04
	This is not possible at all	23:07
	and the promise that it can be achieved is a cruel mirage.	23:11
	Either our public institutions will be oriented favorably	23:17
	toward religious faith,	23:20
	or they will be oriented unfavorably toward it.	23:23
	Our Lord, Jesus Christ said.	23:27
	"He who is not with me is against me".	23:28
	His parable of the empty room and the seven devils	23:34
	clearly teaches the folly of attempting	23:37
	to maintain a religious vacuum,	23:41
	which neither affirms nor denies.	23:43
	Christ taught that the attempt to be neutral	23:47
	resulted in seven devils taking charge	23:50
	of the allegedly empty room.	23:52
	So it would be with our schools.	23:55
	Dr. George Buttrick has written words	24:00
	which deserve our various sober thought here.	24:02
	He said, "A school, a factory or a symphony hall	24:06
	ought likewise to be made consecrate.	24:13
	The doctrine of the separation of church and state	24:17
	never meant and can never mean	24:20
	the dichotomy of life into secular and sacred.	24:22
	The age old frictions of the doctrine prove that fact.	24:27
	Our founding fathers mindful of the tyrannies they had fled	24:31
	intended a wise separation of function,	24:34
	but they never doubted that both functions	24:37
	were religious in nature.	24:39
	To teach facts without meanings	24:42
	is worse than teaching notes without music.	24:44
	To cultivate the mind without purpose	24:48
	is worse than intensive farming that yields no food.	24:50
	Either education must become dedicate to a genuine faith	24:54
	or religion will be compelled to provide	25:00
	a reverent education.	25:03
	The school and the Senate, the mill and the home,	25:06
	the hospital and the church should all be consecrate	25:10
	by corporate prayer.	25:13
	The prayer is the light without which cities are vain."	25:16
	End of the Buttrick statement.	25:21
	It is my own belief that those who wrote our constitution	25:24
	never intended to require that our public institutions	25:28
	should be conducted in such fashion	25:32
	that the thorough going secularist would be the only person	25:34
	who could feel completely at home in them.	25:38
	The American public in general,	25:43
	the Supreme Court in specific particular	25:45
	must bring careful study to the question	25:48
	of whether in the long run,	25:50
	a genuine neutralism is possible in our public institutions.	25:53
	The idea that it is possible to effect an honest neutrality,	25:58
	which will permanently be equally fair	26:03
	both to religion and irreligion,	26:06
	presupposes an optimistic concept of the nature of man,	26:09
	which biblical theology knows nothing about.	26:12
	And if such a neutrality can indeed be achieved	26:17
	without the support of religious resources and assumptions,	26:20
	then the biblical doctrine of the nature of man	26:24
	will have been proved false,	26:27
	and I do not think it is false.	26:29
	It might be added parenthetically that neither Adlerian	26:33
	nor Freudian psychology knows of such a race of humans	26:36
	as this neutralism presupposes.	26:41
	All of life is committed life.	26:44
	All of life is biased life, whether it be seen privately	26:48
	or in such public institutions as schools.	26:54
	Where will our commitment be?	26:59
	What will be our bias?	27:01
	We have to do decide that.	27:03
	If voluntary prayers in public schools	27:06
	and religious observances of various kinds	27:09
	in all governmental institutions	27:13
	are held to be constitutional,	27:15
	this will not relieve the church and the home	27:18
	of their primary duty to cultivate the religious faith	27:22
	and practice of our people,	27:26
	nor will it guarantee that all of the prayers	27:28
	which will be offered in school will be worthy prayers.	27:31
	Incidentally, the same could be said	27:35
	of prayers in church and home, unfortunately.	27:36
	If public devotions are allowed by the court to continue,	27:41
	this will not mean that we are God's chosen people	27:46
	or that we have thereby purchased the smiling	27:49
	and beneficent favor of God for our land.	27:52
	Rather on the other hand,	27:56
	it will keep our institutions more intently	27:59
	under the scrutiny of God's stern and righteous judgements	28:02
	than they otherwise would consciously be.	28:06
	It will mean what the Supreme Court of the United States	28:11
	declared to be true 10 years ago,	28:14
	when it said we are a religious people	28:17
	whose institutions presuppose a supreme being.	28:20
	It will mean that we have officially committed ourselves	28:24
	to high ground, and that as a nation,	28:27
	we are obligated to live in terms of this commitment.	28:32
	As George Washington said in proclaiming	28:38
	the first day of national thanksgiving,	28:40
	it is the duty of all nations	28:44
	to acknowledge the providence of the Almighty God,	28:49
	to obey His will, to be grateful for His benefits	28:54
	and humbly to implore His protection and favor.	29:02
	Let us pray.	29:13
	Oh God...	29:16

Item Info

Title:

Howard C. Wilkinson - "The Supreme Court Prayer Decision" (July 22, 1962)

Permalink:

https://idn.duke.edu/ark:/87924/r4n29t761

Date:

July 22, 1962

Speaker:

Wilkinson, Howard C.

Contributor:

Duke University. Chapel

Identifier:

UA.17.01.0003 RR-0193
ref5590_tbt
uachapelsermaud
duke:627939
dcrau002204
ark:/87924/r4n29t761
b59aaa78-aff3-4148-af77-cf947b015bb3

Digital Collection:

Duke Chapel Recordings

Source Collection:

Duke University Chapel recordings, 1954-2005

Related Resources:

See below

Language:

English

Location:

United States
North Carolina
Durham (N.C.)

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Howard C. Wilkinson - "The Supreme Court Prayer Decision" (July 22, 1962)

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1. Howard C. Wilkinson - "The Supreme Court Prayer Decision" (July 22, 1962)

Duke University Archives

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Howard C. Wilkinson - "The Supreme Court Prayer Decision" (July 22, 1962)

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Duke University Archives

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