re: #689 Salamantis

Snarky anti-intellectualism. How nice.

Yes, to match the snarky intellectual elitism of the author of the article.

It was removed because it entangled church and state by having a ritual observed by some but not all faiths officially provided for, and by doing so violated both the Establishment Clause and the Free Exercise Clause of the 1st Amendment to the Constitution of the United States of America.

A worthy reason since prayer was obviously oppressive to the welfare of the people.

Slavery and the denial of women to vote were also once settled practices that were in place from the founding. Our founders and framers were, for the most part, not Christians, but Deists. Thomas Paine was an open Atheist. Thomas Jefferson was the fellow who first referred to the 1st Amendment as establishing a ‘wall of separation between church and state’, in an 1802 letter to the Danbury Baptists. They did not embrace what you have been led to think that they did. And anybody can pray in public if they wish, and even - silently - in school. But official school-organized prayer is quite properly forbidden.

I’m not convinced that the American tradition of prayer in schools was a gross injustice.