Indiana School Board Gets Rid of Opening Prayers After Warning from Atheists

[wnylib]

10. I was 13 when the SC ruled against mandatory

prayer and Bible reading in public schools. I lived in Pennsylvania then, where state law had required teachers to read a chapter from the Protestant King James Bible at the start of each school day. Catholics as well as atheists objected.

The pastor of our Protestant church gave a sermon the next Sunday in support of the SC ruling. He said it was not the responsibility of government run schools to teach religion, and parents and churches should not shirk that responsibility onto schools and government or they could lose their own religious freedoms. He gave the Catholic versus Protestant versions of the Bible as one example, among others. He also emphasized that belief cannot be forced and that attempts to force it are contrary to basic Christian teachings about how people come to faith.

I never understood the notion that you could or should force people to religion and at the same time claim to believe in religious freedom. Totally contradictory.