Officials Defend Prayer in Public Schools in Oklahoma and Arkansas

Officials Defend Prayer in Public Schools in Oklahoma and Arkansas

In Oklahoma and Alabama, effort is being taken to keep prayer a part of public school sporting events.

CBN News reports that Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt, who advocated to keep a Ten Commandments monument on the grounds of the Oklahoma State Capitol, is arguing that it is not constitutional for the school board that governs sporting activities to ban student prayer.

“You just can’t uniformly, arbitrarily say, ‘We are going to allow all speech except religious speech,’ and that is why it is overboard,” Pruitt stated.

Because the state allows open announcements in a public forum, Pruitt argued, it cannot constitutionally ban religious speech.

A battle over prayer at public school sporting events is also being waged in Arkansas

The Freedom From Religion Foundation (FFRF) warned the Ashdown, Arkansas school district and district superintendent Jason Sanders that allowing prayer at public school sporting events is unconstitutional, and specifically accused the school’s band director of praying at a school football game. 

Sanders disagrees.“We feel like that the freedom of our students to express themselves will hold up in a court of law,” he said. “We’re not going to stop any student who wants to exercise their freedom of religious expression such as a prayer.”

During a recent football game, students and fans had a time of prayer in defiance of the FFRF’s accusation. 

Photo courtesy: Wikipedia

Publication date: October 9, 2015



Officials Defend Prayer in Public Schools in Oklahoma and Arkansas