Tuesday, January 17, 2012

What's The Payoff Behind Taking Down A Banner With A Prayer?

Catholic polemicist Egnorance has posted a couple of times about a judge's decision to remove a small poster with a prayer on it at Cranston High School West in Rhode Island. The prayer had been there since the 1960s. A current Cranston student got the ACLU involved and they sued to have it removed.

What was the point?

I've got lots of things I like to do. Photography, cooking, blogging, soccer, old cars, gardening and so forth. Anything that competes for time had better have a pretty serious payoff if it's going to take me away from watching a Newcastle game or making Lambsicles.

What's the cost-benefits calculation that goes on when you decide to engage in a court case to make sure a tiny poster gets covered? In exchange for hundreds of hours of free time eaten up in meetings with lawyers and writing depositions and court hearings, you get ... what?

Here's an interview with the Cranston High student who wrote the prayer back in 1963. The prayer is pretty innocuous and reads as follows:
"Our Heavenly Father, grant us each day the desire to do our best to grow mentally and morally as well as physically, to be kind and helpful to our classmates and teachers, to be honest with ourselves as well as with others. Help us to be good sports and smile when we lose as well as when we win. Teach us the value of true friendship. Help us always to conduct ourselves so as to bring credit to Cranston High School West. Amen."
The judge claimed that the plaintiff suffered tangible harm from the existence of the prayer. How did that manifest itself? Tremors? Cold sweats? Fits? My first thought upon hearing that someone suffered tangible harm from seeing that prayer in a public place is that they needed professional help. If that's going to set them off, then who knows what else if going to cause them to suffer. Seriously, you have to feel compassion for someone who needs to world so utterly sanitized in order to keep them from suffering tangible harm.

I've been sincerely trying to understand the motives at work here, but the only response I've gotten is an Obsessive-Compulsive one - all laws must be enforced and there are laws against this. I don't buy that at all as one can see unenforced laws all around us every day. I know it's not charitable, but the most likely motive I can think of is hatred of religion.

13 comments:

tim eisele said...

Just as a thought experiment: How would you feel about exactly the same prayer, but instead of starting with "Our Heavenly Father", have it start with "Allah, the Beneficent, the Merciful".

If you think the two are completely interchangeable, and are convinced that most other people would think they were interchangeable too, then I concede your point.

Secular Apostate said...

Tim,

I do not believe those two prayer openings are interchangeable, a belief I share with approximately four billion other people, give or take a half-billion or so.

Nevertheless, a Muslim prayer in a public school would not bother me in the slightest. Nor does a menorah or a crescent in a public square. And no one has ever mistaken me for a person sympathetic to Islam.

And here's why I'm not bothered... I'm perfectly comfortable in my belief. Other religious symbols, or symbols of any type, really, have no power over me. Power is the issue, in my opinion. The swastika, an ancient symbol in wide use since the Neolithic Era, was never reviled until it became a symbol of power. Dangerous power.

My advice to those who fear the cross, or a prayer, to the point of agitating on the national stage, is to relax. It can't possibly hurt you unless you are unable to go outdoors in daytime. And even that is just a rumor. :-)

Unless, of course, it's about attention-seeking. That's a different matter altogether.

TychaBrahe said...

It's about being marginalized. It's about being made to feel that you have no place in an institution. It's about being made to feel that your school is being run for the benefit of other people and not for you.

It's about the law. It's about making people feel safe expressing who they are. You may feel safe everywhere you go, but many people who are not part of the religious mainstream do not. Atheists are extremely feared/hated in our country. Many surveys show that atheists are the least likely to be elected president or for a parent to judge a child fit to marry.

But this is not limited to atheists. Muslims and Mormons get the same treatment.
http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2012/01/pew-survey-most-mormons-feel-they-are-misunderstood-not-viewed-as-mainstream/
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/24/business/24muslim.html?pagewanted=all


And we're all a little sick of it.

tim eisele said...

Secular Apostate:

You are absolutely right. It is about power. And what that prayer, posted in a state-supported institution, says is "Christians have the power here."

To a non-Christian, a rough translation of the rest of it goes:

"All these laudable attributes we are listing must be given to you by God. If you are not a Christian, you almost certainly don't have these attributes, probably don't even want to have them, and are not as good as those of us who are believers."

So that "prayer" not only claims power, it also attempts to justify it on the grounds that the power-holders are better people. Maybe that's not what the author consciously intended, but that's how it comes across to me.

K T Cat said...

Tim, I've asked myself that very same question and tried to answer honestly. Here's what I come up with.

I adopted my daughter from Russia. She is half Russian and half Azerbaijani. All across the US, in schools and workplaces, there are ethnic celebrations - Black History Month, Hispanic Heritage days, etc. I cannot see a time when there will ever be a large-scale Azerbaijani Heritage Month.

Under US law, she could find a way to claim discrimination and sue to have her school or workplace or city create such a holiday. I would be utterly ashamed if she did so and our relationship would be soured from then on.

If I lived in a section of Detroit where Moslems are common, a Moslem prayer wouldn't bother me. Why take it down? If it gives some pleasure to them and it's not encouraging attacks against me, what do I have to gain from spoiling their pleasure?

That's where I'm left wondering what the purpose might be. From previous efforts to remove this or that religious excrescence from a public place, everyone knows that it's going to cause all kinds of turmoil and unhappiness. What was the payoff in exchange for that price?

K T Cat said...

So that "prayer" not only claims power, it also attempts to justify it on the grounds that the power-holders are better people. Maybe that's not what the author consciously intended, but that's how it comes across to me.

How did you feel about Justice Sotomayor's comment about the court needing a "wise Latina"? What about the reputation of the Ivy League schools? How about pay scales at work or income inequality in general? There are lots and lots of ways to feel slighted, ways with real impact. A poster with a prayer wouldn't seem to rank very high on that list. If you were trying to make sure you didn't feel marginalized, I don't see how a poster in a school would be a worthwhile target.

Again, why attack the thing?

Secular Apostate said...

Tim, that's about as weird an interpretation of what that prayer actually said as I can imagine. My interpretation is as follows:

God, help me grow my desire to improve myself mentally, morally, and physically, help me be nice to my fellow students and teachers, be honest and not lie, help me be a good sport when I lose, help me be the best friend I can be, and encourage me to work to bring credit to our high school and the people associated with it.

Aside from the word "God", what part of that do you dislike, or threatens you, and why? I want God to help me be a better person, too. Should I stay away from wherever you live and never mention it in public to protect you from my desire for personal growth?

Jedi Knight Ivyan said...

Tycha, nowhere in that prayer does it say or imply that only those attributes come from God. It's merely asking God for help in developing those traits. It's a humble prayer, really. I think you're projecting a bit.

And Tim, I've seen Hindu and Buddhist quotes and/or prayers posted at universities and it never occurred to me to file a lawsuit. I read them, thought about them, shrugged, and went on with my life.

KT, you're thinking too hard. Your answer is in the Word. "If the world hates you, keep in mind that it hated me first." (John 15:18) The young student hated to see a prayer to God. It was worth it to her and the ACLU to do away with the thing they hated.

K T Cat said...

It's about being marginalized. It's about being made to feel that you have no place in an institution. It's about being made to feel that your school is being run for the benefit of other people and not for you.

A single poster makes you feel that way? Would there be some supporting evidence of this? I'm not trying to be insulting here, but taking a single piece of evidence and constructing an institutional attempt to harm me would be an indication of paranoia.

School athletes get all kinds special treatment, rewards that far outstrip a poster. Some people, due to physical limitations, are unable to participate in athletics and reap those rewards. Does that make you feel marginalized, too?

Again, the scope of the problem wouldn't seem to be worth the effort. I'm looking for the reason why a poster with a prayer would rise to the top of the list of Things To Get Wound Up About.

K T Cat said...

Ivyan, I'm trying to find a motivation here other than hate. So far, we've got a couple of data points of people who claim to feel marginalized. The question is, how far does the feeling go and why do posters with prayer trigger it while other things do not?

Anonymous said...

sometimes these things can remain up if an open forum is allowed, where multiple different banners could be allowed. however that can often ruffles feathers as well.

tim eisele said...

Just to be clear, I personally am not particularly concerned about posting prayers, but I can see where some people would be, and I was explaining why.

That said, I think one thing to keep in mind is that in these cases, we don't have somebody seeing something mildly objectionable in a school, and then immediately blowing it all out of proportion and splashing it all over the national news just for the publicity. It actually seems to go down more like this:

1. Person making complaint: "You know, that is kind of annoying, and is distinctly religious. I think I'll mention to the principal that such things really aren't appropriate in school, and they should probably take it down".

2. Principal: "No! I won't! And besides it isn't religious if you look at it in a particular way, so it stays. Get lost, kid!" [note that, at this point, the principal could have defused the whole thing just by quietly taking it down, but he's probably worried about backlash from some of the more annoying parents. Or maybe he's just a jerk].

3. "What an arrogant prick! How dare he dismiss me like that! I'll take it to the school board! [at this point, the person complaining could also have defused the whole thing just by letting it drop, but they're probably pretty mad at the high-handed way the principal handled it]

From this point, it really isn't about the original complaint anymore. It is now a personal vendetta. Lather, rinse, repeat with the school board, and now the community as a whole hears about it, and a bunch of people who love nothing better than a good fight start mixing it up and calling in the lawyers. It takes two sides to make a lawsuit happen, after all. And once the lawyers get stuck into it, things get completely out of hand, and neither side is willing to back down until they fight it out to the bitter end.

K T Cat said...

1. Person making complaint: "You know, that is kind of annoying, and is distinctly religious. I think I'll mention to the principal that such things really aren't appropriate in school, and they should probably take it down".

Yeah, I can see that, but if it was my daughter, I'd tell her to get a life. I just don't understand the need to spit in the punchbowl.