President Donald Trump has released federal guidelines that reaffirm some Biden-era policies against school-sponsored prayers, highlight teachers’ freedom to say prayers that students can join, and dismiss the metaphor of a “wall of separation” as “legally unsound.”
Trump promised new guidance on school prayer last fall and again at last week’s National Prayer Breakfast, where he told more than 3,500 attendees his administration would “rededicate America as one nation under God.”
Trump also used the occasion to announce “Rededicate 250: National Jubilee of Prayer, Praise and Thanksgiving,” a government-sponsored prayer event in Washington, D.C. on May 17. The event is part of “America Prays,” an effort to have “one million Americans dedicated one hour a week to praying for our country and our people.”
“My administration is confronting head-on the militant and, really, intolerant campaign that tried to drive religious believers out of public life and out of society,” Trump said at the breakfast.
The 45 sponsors supporting America Prays include the Southern Baptist Convention (listed twice), First Baptist Church Dallas, the Christian Broadcasting Network, Salem Media Group, and Focus on the Family. Focus CEO Jim Daly attended the breakfast and praised Trump’s actions.
“President Trump’s ongoing protection of religious liberty is deeply supported by faith leaders,” Daly said.
Presidents are required to issue guidance on school prayer so administrators know how to handle conflicts over religion. Trump’s guidance, issued Feb. 5, does not represent a “radical departure” from Biden’s 2023 guidance, but it does emphasize individuals’ religious liberty over schools’ responsibilities to provide students of all faiths and no faith with a “religiously neutral setting,” reported Education Week.
Trump’s guidance on what school employees can or can’t do seems to grant greater leeway for teachers to engage in “visible, personal prayer.”
The guidance reaffirms the rights of students, student groups and school events to reflect students’ beliefs but maintains that “schools may not sponsor or organize compulsory prayer at official events such as ceremonies, assemblies, graduations or sporting events.”
However, Trump’s guidance on what school employees can or can’t do seems to grant greater leeway for teachers to engage in “visible, personal prayer, even if there is voluntary student participation in such prayer.”
“For example, a teacher may bow her head to say grace before lunch, and students may join her in grace, but she may not instruct her class to pray with her, pressure them to pray with her, or create an atmosphere in which students are favored if they pray with her,” says the guidance.
One expert told Education Week this portion of the new guidance might “muddy the waters” and “give teachers more wiggle room to push some boundaries.” The guidance cites the U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Kennedy v. Bremerton School District, which said a football coach’s on-field prayers, which were joined by students, were the coach’s individual expression of faith, not school-sponsored prayer.
That decision was narrowly applied by the court but has been broadly applied by conservative advocates for evangelical cultural dominance.
The Supreme court ruled against school-sponsored prayer in its 1962 Engel v. Vitale, which said a written classroom prayer approved in the 1950s by the New York State Regents violated the wall of separation between church and state.
The court also ruled against daily classroom devotionals incorporating Bible readings in 1963’s Abington School District v. Schempp and ruled against classroom Bible readings and recitation of the Lord’s Prayer in 1964’s Chamberlin v. Public Instruction Board.
Some conservative Christians have sought for decades to reverse these rulings. In 1982, the SBC broke with precedent by supporting the Reagan administration’s proposed amendment to return organized voluntary prayer to schools.
The SBC’s shift led to “dismay and disappointment” among some Jewish groups. “We are alarmed that what had been one of the strongest bulwarks in defense of religious freedom and the separation principle would have apparently succumbed to pressures from right-wing forces to abandon such a long and strongly held position,” one Jewish leader told The New York Times.
The new guidance was authored by Joshua Kleinfeld, chief counsel for the U.S. Department of Education, who served in the George W. Bush administration and has worked with the powerful conservative legal group the Federalist Society.
Kleinfeld said he was emphasizing “neutrality” over “the familiar but legally unsound metaphor of a ‘wall of separation’ between religious faith and public schools.”
Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty opposed Trump’s plans to promote more school prayer when he announced his intentions last fall.
“When political leaders suggest that religion is the government’s to promote, they threaten the very freedom they claim to defend,” said BJC Executive Director Amanda Tyler. “The Baptist tradition has long insisted that government has no business dictating religious belief or practice, whether in our churches, our schools or our personal lives.”
Trump confessed to the National Prayer Breakfast crowd that he himself was not much of a man of prayer.
“You know, Mike Johnson is a very religious person, and he does not hide it. He’ll say to me sometimes at lunch, ‘Sir, may we pray?” I say, ‘Excuse me? What happened to lunch?’ It’s OK with me. But he’s a very religious person, and he is popular, and he’s doing an unbelievable job. So, I think God is watching over you. God is watching over him. I don’t know about me, so I hang around with him because I feel I’m protected a little bit.”
