Praying in public: part of coping, or defiant act?

At every home game since Sept. 11, Greenbrier High students and parents gather before kickoff under the glaring football-field lights.

As a student steps up to the microphone, all bow their heads and join in the Lord's Prayer, which crackles over the loudspeakers.

The prayer comes with the blessing of the Greenbrier, Ark., School Board, the encouragement of the state's governor, and in defiance of the US Supreme Court, which last year banned such pregame prayer.

It is the latest - and perhaps the boldest - example of just how pervasive public prayer has become since the day jetliners tore through steel, concrete, and the nation's psyche.

For the most part, officials from East Troy, Wis., to Ringgold, Ga., have made no apologies for their decisions, which they say brought healing to their grieving communities. And after the initial escalation of prayer vigils and hymn sings, majority have quietly returned to their policies of limiting religious expression in public settings.

But, particularly in the South, some politicians, religious groups, and school superintendents believe that the wall between church and state should be lowered permanently, and see a fresh opportunity to do so in the wake of the country's search for faith in the days following the attacks.

Civil libertarians - determined to preserve restrictions carved out by courts over the past 40 years - argue that there has been no real shift in the public's views on prayer, and that these new challenges to the First Amendment come from the same cast of characters.

"It is a continuation of 40 years of defiance by the same players who have never accepted these views," says Douglas Laycock, a church-state scholar at the University of Texas at Austin.

But both sides agree that the efforts to give prayer a more public presence have accelerated in the past six weeks.

In Texas, for instance, Gov. Rick Perry (R) prayed with a group of middle-schoolers during an assembly just last week. His statement to the Austin American-Statesman that he wants to make legalizing school prayer a campaign issue has touched off a furor of debate on both sides.

Spokeswoman Kathy Walt says Governor Perry has long believed that prayer should be allowed in public schools and that, since the Sept. 11 attacks, he has noticed a greater tendency by Americans to want to pray together in public.

Indeed, religion has seeped into every crevice of American life in recent weeks. People are joining Internet prayer circles in record numbers, sales of spiritual books are at an all-time high, and although church pews are no longer stuffed to overflowing, attendance at Sunday worship is still higher than usual.

But it doesn't stop there. Local leaders are erecting the Ten Commandments in public places. Moments of silence are being replaced by moments of prayer in town halls and classrooms. Even President Bush called for a National Day of Prayer and Remembrance the Friday after the attack.

"Leaders seem to equate patriotism with religion and religion with patriotism, when, in fact, they are two distinct things," says Barry Lynn, executive director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State. "The thing is, in this time of crisis - more than ever - we need to protect the guarantees of the Constitution."

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