Add Freedom of Education, not Prayer, to the First Amendment

An item came across my Facebook feed that linked to a tweet promoting an article that is apparently a Trump 2020 campaign ad, Supreme court Rules 5-4 to reinstate school prayer.. The headline is a projected headline of what could, it is hoped, happen in a Trump second term.

The Facebook feed highlighted a tweet caption, 

Prayer should never have been taken out of schools. That was a Big mistake. We are “One Nation, Under God.” This is our Father in Heaven, and no other god should ever be before “our Father.” Amen  

As to the article, it states:

According to Democrats and the way the Constitution has been interpreted since the Carter administration, school prayer is “state-sanctioned religion” and therefore a violation of your 1st Amendment rights.

The problem is, prayer isn’t religion, it is — by itself — free and independent thought.

This, I believe, is disingenuous—a gross misreading of the First Amendment. It is an insult to the intention of the Founders.

I posted these comments to my acquaintance on my feed:

The First Amendment prohibition that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion” must be understood in its full context. The Framers understood freedom of CONSCIENCE as the foundational principle, and used “freedom of religion” and “freedom of conscience” interchangeably. Not everyone believes in religion or God or prayer. The government’s purpose is to secure every individual’s unalienable right to freedom of conscience, be they religionists, theists, deists, agnostics, atheists, people of faith, people of reason, believers in God, many gods, or no god, believers in “Fathers in Heaven,” or no Heaven. 

It’s true that, as the article observes, “prayer isn’t [necessarily] religion.” But it IS a belief. The following “or prohibiting the free exercise thereof” means to be free of government coercion on behalf of anyone else’s beliefs. The government should never impose ANY belief system on anyone. The American government is secular, meaning legally neutral. It protects each person’s unalienable right to the free exercise of his/her own personal conscientious beliefs, equally, at all times. Prayer imposed in public schools, being government-run institutions, is unconstitutional and un-American. America is not a theocracy. America is, as the Declaration proclaims and the Constitution guarantees, a free nation with a rights-protecting government.  America is not “One Nation, Under God.” America is “One Nation, indivisible, with Liberty and Justice for all.” Instead of calling for a “clause allowing prayer will be added to the 1st Amendment,” prayer supporters should be calling for the clause “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of education, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof” . . . the separation of education and state.

Related Reading:

Freedom Of Religion Demands Freedom From Religion

Why We Need the Separation of Education and State

On Religion, The First Amendment Works Both Ways

Moral Minority: Our Skeptical Founding Fathers by Brooke Allen  

The guiding spirit of the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution . . . was not Jesus Christ but John Locke.