PB's Statement on Dirksen Amendment
Diocesan Press Service. September 7, 1966 [46-9]
Presiding Bishop Hines has expressed his opposition to Senator Everett Dirksen's amendment to the Bill of Rights to make public school devotions "voluntary." Bishop Hines' position was read to the Senate Subcommittee on Constitutional Amendments by the Rev. Herschel O. Halbert, Associate Secretary in the Department of Christian Social Relations with responsibility for dealing with Church and State relations. This is the full text of Bishop Hines' statement:
"I am personally opposed to the proposed Constitutional Amendment which would permit voluntary participation in prayer in public schools. In my opinion, prayer is an act of faith which can only be effective and worthwhile when it involves personal commitment on the part of the one who prays to God; and when it involves personal commitment to a way of life which stems from profound theological convictions. The public schools of this country, in the light of the traditional doctrine of the separation of Church and State, do not afford the best areas for encouragement of the kind of faith from which prayer rightfully springs. Voluntary participation in prayer in public schools would more than likely promote divisiveness and would likely become a formalism which would militate against the very thing which the Amendment apparently seeks. The encouragement of such prayer rightfully belongs in church, synagogue and home. Its exclusion from the public school arena serves notice of the nature of this high responsibility upon those institutions which properly should cultivate it. I hope the Amendment will not prevail."
The statement of Presiding Bishop Hines follows a view previously enunciated. In 1963, then Presiding Bishop, Arthur Lichtenberger approved of the Supreme Court decision regarding Bible reading and recitation of the Lord's Prayer unconstitutional when part of a religious exercise in public schools. "We may be thankful that the Constitution does not permit the government to define and give preference to some general version of Christianity or of Judeo-Christian religion," he said.
In May of 1964 the Executive Council adopted a resolution supporting the position of the Presiding Bishop. It stated that the Supreme Court decision was not, in the opinion of the Council, hostile to religion, and that it was not the proper function of government to inculcate religious beliefs or habits of worship. "We believe that worship and religious education are the responsibility of Church and home, and not of the public schools or governmental institutions."
"The National Council of the Protestant Episcopal Church (now the Executive Council) records its considered opinion that amendments to the Constitution of the United States which seek to permit devotional exercises in our public schools should be opposed," the resolution concluded.