Posted on 11/18/2001 4:35:27 PM PST by victim soul
ARVEY, Ill., Nov. 17 — Jason Clark, 17, a junior at Thornton Township High School, stood at the chalkboard in Room 202, thumbing through his Bible as about 30 students stood silently, eyes closed and heads bowed.
"Father, we thank you for being the God that you are, the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords," Mr. Clark said. "We ask you to forgive us for all of our sins, cleanse our minds, cleanse our hearts, cleanse our spirit. We thank you and we praise you and give you all honor and all glory."
"Amen," the students said. Mr. Clark then began his regular Tuesday after-class sermon. The theme was "Self Check," he told the group, because "basically, it's time to get real in our walk with Christ."
Mr. Clark and most of the teenagers who pray with him in this public school in a suburb south of Chicago call themselves Prayer Warriors for Christ. The metaphor is spiritual, but it fits on a political level, too, for the residents here who see the battlefield as the wall between church and state.
They include Harvey's mayor, Nickolas Graves, and City Council members who recently have called for voluntary prayer in the public schools in this city of 33,000, where community and church leaders have asked Harvey officials to petition the state for the right to pray openly in school.
Mr. Graves and Harvey's aldermen have pressed their case in light of the Sept. 11 attacks, and the subsequent national embrace of public prayer. The Harvey City Council, in fact, unanimously passed a resolution calling for the restoration of prayer in schools two weeks after the attacks, and Harvey political leaders held a town hall meeting two weeks ago to discuss the topic.
Mr. Clark and two of his Prayer Warrior friends, Devlin Scott, 17, and David Anderson, 16, were among scores of people who testified at that meeting, which city officials called a first step in restoring school prayer.
While school-prayer initiatives have been fiercely challenged in other suburbs, the mayor's call has been welcomed in Harvey, known to some as "Little Chicago" because of the urban-style ills that have swelled in recent years with the migration of poor city residents. Gangs, drugs and violent crime have added to the roster of suffering in a city already plagued by poverty.
While politicians here concede that constitutional hurdles and potentially years of legal battles lie ahead, they say the need for prayer has never been clearer.
"It's on everybody's mind and on their hearts," Mr. Graves said at the town meeting. "It's about our children."
Illinois is among the dozen states that allow voluntary moments of silence in schools. But Harvey officials pushing for prayer contend that the law, which permits a moment of silence in class at a teacher's discretion, does not go far enough.
"What we want is actual prayer," said Alderman Ronald J. Waters. "I happened to have been around on Sept. 11. The next day at some of those schools, there was open prayer all through the schools. Even the president is asking for prayer. But the very institutions that we need to have prayer the most, it has been outlawed. So why not where it is needed the most and where it can have a lasting effect?"
Mr. Anderson, one of the Prayer Warriors, agreed.
"We have a lot of young people in school that are troubled and hurting," he said in an interview after the meeting. "And the first thing they want to turn to is the gangs, they turn to the drugs. But they are not turning to prayer. Why can't we pray in the school and let peers know that you have somebody to turn to?"
The Harvey meeting on Oct. 30 took on the air of a church service, and it was clear that the speakers were preaching to the converted. Among those in attendance were pastors and ministers, as well as business and civic leaders and residents from across the Chicago area.
The meeting fell on the day after the United States Supreme Court refused to hear a Virginia case that challenged that state's law, which mandates a daily moment of silence in public schools.
At Thornton, prayer at least a couple of days a week has become the norm for the Prayer Warriors. There is also a teachers' prayer group that meets on Thursdays before school. The student group, which has started a step dance troupe called Everlasting Faith, meets for an hour after classes on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Members as well as nonmembers attend the prayer and Bible study sessions that sometimes include singing and preaching. Otherwise, the group functions the same as any other school-based group at Thornton, said William O'Neal, the school's principal.
"We follow the same guidelines as the science club, the math club and the English club," said Mr. O'Neal, who has been principal for nine years. "The only stipulation that I put there is, I don't want them coercing anybody to come."
"They take some criticism for it," he said of the Prayer Warriors. "I always let kids know that it's O.K. to be different."
Inside Room 202 this week, Mr. Clark was praying again after his sermon. He paced back and forth.
"Father God, only you know the things that they are going through," Mr. Clark prayed. "I ask Father that as they confess with their mouth and believe in their heart that Jesus Christ is Lord, I ask that you cleanse them."
The teenagers stood, some crying, calling upon God.
Prayer is a private thing , and it is purely for show and attention that a person prays in public. Church is essentially a public demonstration of your faith. If 2 little girls want to pray, they can do it at home or at church.
Listen to yourself. Quite dictatorial, aren't you?
The prayers of a righteous man accomplisheth much. And I do believe we have lots of prayers going out. There seems to be lots of prayer warriors in FR, too.
If the ACLU gets involved here, it runs the risk of being labelled "RACIST".
I'll say again also that you are mangling the concept of separation of church and state. There is nothing here that establishes an official state religion.
I am looking at a tree outside my window. How about you pray that it moves a few feet to the right. When that fails, I will get a shovel and dig it up and move it. That should prove two things:
1.) nothing fails like prayer 2.) God helps those who help themselves
I am fully aware that God is not Santa Clause or the good fairy, waiting out there to fulfill your every wish and command. Not all sick people are healed and not every prayer is answered as we desire it to be. Everyone who has ever lived before us are dead, no faith was strong enough to keep mortals alive and healthy forever. Death awaits all flesh. But I have had prayers answered and loved ones spared, and my own existance extended as well, against all odds.
God is in charge-his will will be done regardless of desires to the contrary, but time and eternity will show that he knows best, and if we obey his will we will, after all is said and done, and done comprehend the wisdom of his actions.
Lee was my Teaching Pastor for 6 years. He is a very good man and 'did a good work in me'.
That being said, he is also somewhat of a lightweight when it comes to convincing someone who doesn't already suspect God's existence. I would recommend the Bible as a source material. If that doesn't do it, then nothing man-made will.
As for myself now, the Church has injured my spirit and I will never be the same. My vote is for private prayer and study and leaving the organizations alone.
The argument is not based on a Constitutional imperative. Religions are numerous, contradictory, diverse and largely false. They are also ostensibly concerned with the supernatural. This implies two things; believers can make all manner of outrageous claims to special instructions from God which men outside of the faith are not privy to; and, more importantly, they can justify the extermination or conversion of nonbelievers. While it is presently true that most Christian religions in the U.S. are relatively benign it is the intolerant fundamentalist faiths that will aggressively dominate the secular institutions at the grass roots level.
Once this door is opened it is only a matter of time before the group with the most extreme and aggressive followers is in charge and anyone who doesn't toe the line will find themselves in a hell of these zealots' making. It is this possibility, however remote, that must be minimized by the simple expedient of keeping any form of religion from being sanctioned by an attachment to government institutions.
If God's will will be done regardless of desires to the contrary, what is the point of prayer? By your reasoning, God wanted 6,000 US citizens to be killed on September 11. Saying that it was an evil thing therefore is blasphemy against God's will...
I guess I will never understand Christians. And I was one...
I have also heard Christians say that atheists only become atheist because of some bad event in their lives which they blame on God and thus turn against him.
It seems you can have it both ways...
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