Asking a student to lead a prayer in a school district on a public address system before the kickoff of an event sponsored by the school district could be a violation of the First Amendment. That is what an article published on 5 September 2008 in the New York Time by Tom Jacobs says. In an analysis of a number of cases involving education and the First Amendment rights, the author highlights the ruling on Santa Fe Independent School District v. Jane Doe(2000) case in which a number of anonymous students and parents sued a Texas school district for having coerced students to take part in a religious ceremony (Jacobs, 2008). The school had asked a student 'chaplain' elected by the students to conduct a prayer before the start of home football games. In its ruling, the Supreme Court observed that the policy on prayer by the school district was unconstitutional. It coerced all students, irrespective of their religious affiliations or beliefs, to participate in the ritual or ceremony in violation of the First Amendment rights which prohibits any public school student from voluntarily praying any time of the school day.
Based on the case in the preceding, the issue at hand is religious freedom. According to the American Constitution, religious freedom is protected by the First Amendment and that means no one should be coerced into participating in a ritual they do not believe in. Well, the Bible sets the standard very high for Christians in the agape or sacrificial love of Christ (Ardelean, 2010:191), which is what the student 'chaplain' and the school expressed. God has guaranteed religious freedom for all and this guarantee goes beyond such concepts as tolerance, non-discriminatory practice, and among others, empathy that are used in the discourse on religious freedom as in the case above. The school could use the same understanding to promote the relationship between Christians and non-Christians.
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References
Ardelean, B-O. (2010). The Bible and Religious Freedom. Evangelical Journal of Theology, IV (2), 181-194.
Jacobs, T. (2008). 10 Supreme Court Cases Every Teen Should Know. The New York Times Archives. Retrieved 29 Sept 2018, from https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/learning/teachers/featured_articles/20080915monday.html
