Ralph Reed

[Bradley P. Jacob]

On Mon, 6 Jan 1997, Robert J. O'Brien wrote:

> Rick, do you really think the state's telling a minister how to pray is a
> trivial violation of the separation of church and state?

I can't speak for Rick, but I think it's interesting to remember that the
principal's only effort to control the content of the Rabbi's prayer was
giving him a booklet on how to make public prayer generic, inclusive,
non-sectarian and non-offensive -- a direct response to the presumed
Establishment Clause concern about graduation prayer!  If not for 1st Am.
concerns, the principal would presumably have just asked the Rabbi (or a
minister or priest) to give an invocation at graduation without any
effort to "tell him how to pray."  If the attempt to influence the
prayer's content was a material fact in *Weisman* (and I'm not sure
that it was), then we have the enormous irony that the school's effort to
comply with the Establishment Clause actually caused an otherwise
constitutional practice to *violate* the Establishment Clause!

Brad

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Bradley P. Jacob
Geneva College Law Center                (412) 847-5228 (voice)
3200 College Avenue                      (412) 847-6588 (fax)
Beaver Falls, PA 15010                   bpjacob at geneva.edu

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