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Catching the Congressional Waves

Most mornings I start by checking several emails that have a round-up of potentially interesting articles. Last week I checked SCOTUSblog, which covers Supreme Court cases, and there was good news for once! An article ([link removed]) reporting that even though the Supreme Court’s Carson decision says Maine must allow religious schools to participate in its state-funded program of private school options in rural areas, only one has signed up. Maine law says any school in the program must agree not to discriminate against LGBTQ students or teachers and the religious schools aren’t having it. The taxpayer money would be nice, but not at any cost, not if they can’t discriminate. The Carson decision could have wider-reaching implications but so far the actual harm is minimal.

This got me wondering, are there any bills in Congress introduced since Carson was announced in June that would accomplish the same thing on a national level? I searched “religious schools” on Congress.gov and didn’t find any bills like that. What about the Kennedy decision that allowed the high school coach to pray with the team after games? Has anyone come up with a legislative response to that one? I searched “prayer” but didn’t find any legislative solutions to public school coaches praying on the field.

However, I did find House Resolution 874 “Supporting the designation of a National Year of Humiliation, Fasting, and Prayer.” Now that sounded interesting. You are just going to have to read it for yourself ([link removed]) . Most resolutions have a handful of “whereases” and then a “Be it resolved that…” where it gets to the point. This one has 53 whereases. Two of them are as follows:
* Whereas America is different because God endowed us with rights;
* Whereas that belief is either true or it is false. If it is false, then we Americans, among all mankind, are most to be pitied. The experiment must fail. It cannot and must not succeed;

Those aren’t even the craziest. I was mostly interested in the humiliation part of all this but remarkably, in 53 whereases, it isn’t mentioned once. It’s just in the title. Also remarkably, there are 15 cosponsors for this resolution. Even so, it won’t be passing the House any time soon.

That seemed like enough bill-surfing, but there was one more possibility. You can make something happen, or not happen, by getting a provision in one of the annual spending bills, usually by starting with “no federal funds may be spent on…” I searched this year’s Department of Education bill for “prayer” and found this: “No funds appropriated in this Act may be used to prevent the implementation of programs of voluntary prayer and meditation in the public schools." Again, not what I was looking for, but interesting, especially because Democrats wrote the bill. Then I looked at last year’s bill and found the exact same provision. Hmm.

I checked with one of my colleagues at one of our coalition member organizations but he had never seen this either. Time to go to the experts: the Appropriations Committee staff. One of them got back to me with “That provision has been in the bill every year since 1982. It’s known as the Walker Amendment.” Why is this so important that it’s been in every appropriations bill for 40 years through Democratic and Republican regimes? First, Congressman Walker, a big school prayer advocate, made sure it stayed in each year until he retired in 1997. Since then, it seems to be a combination of “It’s not really causing anyone any problems,” “It would become a controversy if we took it out,” and just “We always do it that way.”

There is no record of anyone actually trying to use federal education money to prevent voluntary prayer in school. But is the Walker Amendment worth a lobbying effort to try to eliminate it? I’m going to bring it up at the next Secular Coalition government affairs meeting but my thought is, we’ve got bigger problems to deal with. Like coming up with a legislative remedy to government funding being directed to religious schools and finding support for it on the Hill. That’s where I started the day, and that’s a higher priority.


Scott MacConomy, Director of Policy ad Government Affairs at the Secular Coalition for America, wears a blue suit and stands with his arms crossed over his chest in front of the United States Capitol Building.

Your advocate,

Scott MacConomy
Director of Policy and Government Affairs
Secular Coalition for America
If you have the opportunity to talk to your representative about the Caucus, you can use this printable handout ([link removed]) , which gives a basic description and tells them who to contact to join.
The Secular Coalition for America works every day to defend the separation of religion and government and to fight anti-democratic ideologies like Christian nationalism. Your support for this work is vital.

Help us fight for equal rights for nonreligious Americans! ([link removed])
P.S. Please consider leaving a legacy gift to the Secular Coalition for America ([link removed]) . The protection of our secular values requires eternal vigilance.

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