RICHMOND, Va. — The Virginia House of Delegates passed an amendment to the state constitution Feb. 1 which supporters said would ensure the right to pray on public property, including public schools.
The amendment, adopted 61-33 in the Republican-dominated House, says that “the people’s right to pray and to recognize their religious beliefs, heritage and traditions on public property, including public schools, shall not be infringed; however, the Commonwealth and its political subdivisions, including public school divisions, shall not compose school prayers, nor require any person to join in prayer or other religious activity.”
Bill Carrico, the Republican delegate from Galax, Va., who sponsored the amendment, said it was prompted by a student’s prayer at a high school football game in his Southwest Virginia district. The American Civil Liberties Union later objected to the prayer as unconstitutional.
Opponents of the amendment warned it might violate the federal Constitution and the bill is expected to get a chilly reception in the Virginia Senate, where Democrats have a majority.
Carrico said volunteer prayers in public places are protected by the First Amendment.
“There’s an impression given across the country that because you’re on public property, that you are not entitled to express your religious belief and the prayer that you hold sacred in your heart,” he said. “It just strengthens that language to say that you have the right to do it.”
His amendment would ensure that “no longer would the secular world be able to tell anyone that their beliefs wouldn’t be tolerated in public. I don’t think our forefathers wrote this language to tell us that you can’t pray. I believe that they wrote it saying that the government could not tell you not to pray.”
He added his legislation would not protect prayers led by public school teachers or officials.
Two Jewish delegates said Carrico’s bill would impose Christianity on minority faiths.
“It gives the religious majority the opportunity to promote its own sectarian beliefs,” said Del. Adam Ebbin, an Alexandria, Va., Democrat.
“Some of the supporters of this amendment don’t know what it means to be a religious minority,” said Del. David Englin, another Democrat from Alexandria. “Nearly every day in this chamber — the most public of public property — our session opens with a prayer that invokes Jesus’ name. You may not notice, because when you’re the majority it’s easy not to. But when you’re the one being excluded it’s hard to miss.”
Englin said the amendment would put his son in the difficult position of "choosing between the pressure of silent exclusion or the pressured acquiescence from teachers or classmates in the face of prayer to somebody's else's faith."
“We are forced to struggle to raise strong children who are proud of who they are,” he said. “All we ask is that our government not make that struggle harder.”
After the vote, Kent Willis, executive director of the Virginia ACLU, said the measure would allow “clearly unconstitutional prayers.”
The House adopted similar legislation — also sponsored by Carrico — in 2005, but it died in a Senate committee.
If the measure (HJ593) survives this year, the earliest the state constitution could be amended would be November 2012. Virginia constitutional amendments must win House and Senate passage in two different years separated by a legislative election, and then be approved by voters in a statewide election.
Robert Dilday is managing editor of the Religious Herald.