Dear Ms. Curvin,

Thank you for taking the time to write me about the situation regarding prayer at Pace High School.  This issue is very troubling and I am glad you wrote to share your views and concerns.

Below is an editorial I submitted to the Pensacola News Journal on August 14 in response to an August 8, 2009 opinion article on school prayer by Mr. J. Earle Bowden.  This encompasses my viewpoints, and I will be offering my support to the Pace community as the situation progresses.  I support Pace High School and believe we should not prosecute people for offering a simple prayer before a meal.  

Text of my editorial: "After reading Mr. Bowden's August 8 editorial, one would think that Thomas Jefferson was the final and only authority on all church and state issues during the founding years of our country.  We are left to believe that the First Amendment came out of the "Jeffersonian essence of religious freedom."

But what Mr. Bowden fails to mention is that there were NINETY framers of the First Amendment, and Thomas Jefferson was not one of them.  While Mr. Jefferson was serving as Minister to France, Congress debated the wording of the Bill of Rights.  According to the Congressional Record from 1789, not once during the months of debate did the framers mention the words "separation of church and state."

The origination of this phrase comes from a letter newly elected President Jefferson penned to a group of Baptists in Danbury, Connecticut in 1802 regarding religious freedom.   There is probably no other occasion in history where a sentence from a personal note, taken out of context, has become the foundation for U.S. policy.

When we put the Danbury letter in perspective, we see that Jefferson was responding to the question of religious establishment.  The Baptist congregation specifically questioned the government's interference in the church, not the religious principles of our government leaders.  Jefferson accurately responded that the First Amendment precluded the government from establishing a religion or denomination.  Jefferson did not state that religion has no place in our government.

The "wall of separation between church and state" is a one-way wall.  It was not the founders' intent to keep God out of the government, but to keep the government out of the church. 

There are hundreds if not thousands of documented expressions of the importance of religion and Christian principles by our Founding Fathers.  From the Mayflower Compact to the Declaration of Independence and beyond, early American leaders believed as George Washington believed that "it is impossible to rightly govern the world without God and Bible."

It was not until the late 1940's when a liberal Supreme Court began to misinterpret Jefferson's words.  Earlier courts held that the government may step in only when religious principles turn into dangerous actions such as polygamy or human sacrifice.  But the government has no right, and is in fact PROHIBITED from interfering with religious practices and beliefs, whether that be in the church or in the classroom.

Although Mr. Bowden sidesteps the issue of Pace High School and prayer in our schools, I will not.  Precluding prayer at student events is wrong.  Prohibiting a class president from speaking at graduation because she might mention God is offensive.  And prosecuting a man as a criminal for offering a prayer before a meal is abhorrent.

I am proud of the Pace community for standing up for our country's founding principles of a faith in God that cannot be broken.  Americans must be free to worship when they please, free to pray where they please, and free to speak what they please.  These are the very basics of our American liberties and the foundation upon which this country was built.

For as Thomas Jefferson argued, "The constitutional freedom of religion is the most inalienable and sacred of all human rights.""

_________________________________________________________________________________________