Engel v. Vitale

Engel v. Vitale (1962), a U.S. Supreme Court decision addressing the issue of school prayer.In the early 1960s some New York public school districts asked children to recite a state‐composed prayer each day: “Almighty God, we acknowledge our dependence upon Thee, and we beg Thy blessings upon us, our parents, our teachers and our Country.” Some non‐Christian parents objected that the prayer, though supposedly not compulsory, was nonetheless required and that tax‐supported facilities were used for a religious observance. While the American Civil Liberties Union and the American Jewish Committee came to the aid of the parents, the New York Board of Regents, twenty state attorneys general, and Porter R. Chandler, a lawyer with close ties to the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of New York, joined in defense of the prayer requirement.

The case produced one of the Supreme Court's most controversial decisions under the chief justiceship of Earl Warren. Justice Hugo Black's majority opinion assuming a high wall of separation between church and state, declared the prayer an unconstitutional violation of the First Amendment's Establishment Clause. Using public schools to encourage prayer, Black argued, was “a practice wholly inconsistent with the Establishment Clause.” Justice Potter Stewart's lone dissent reasoned that the Establishment Clause only forbade government from establishing an official church and coercing religious beliefs.

President John F. Kennedy supported the Court by noting that Americans were still free to pray at home with their children. Yet fundamentalist religious groups charged that the Court in Engel had erected too high a barrier between church and state and had promoted atheism, agnosticism, and secularization.
See also Bill of Rights; Christian Coalition; Church and State, Separation of; Civil Liberties; Fundamentalist Movement; Moral Majority; Religion.

Bibliography

Kermit L. Hall , The Magic Mirror: Law in American History, 1989.

Kermit L. Hall