When Texas middle schooler Hannah Allen bowed her head to pray for an injured classmate in the cafeteria, school officials ordered her to move behind a curtain, to an empty gym, or anywhere her faith couldn’t be seen by other students. But President Donald Trump has now made clear that this and all other repressive actions against religious liberty in schools are coming to an end.
Speaking at the Museum of the Bible earlier this month, Trump announced that the Department of Education will issue new guidance to fully protect the right of students like Hannah to pray in public schools. To loud applause, he denounced the “anti-religious propaganda” that has beleaguered believers for too long and pledged that his administration will stand firmly with students of faith.
Trump is right to challenge the long-standing legal and cultural taboo against prayer in public schools. The Founders never sought to banish faith from the public square. Rather, they saw voluntary prayer as a natural expression of conscience, not an affront to others’ liberty.
Yet generations of Americans have suffered under the mistaken application of “separation of church and state” to individual expression, a distortion that has silenced voices rather than protected freedom. With President Trump leading the charge, now is the time to correct this historic wrong and restore prayer to its rightful place in America’s schools.
If liberals truly cared about “diversity” and “tolerance,” they would join conservatives in this fight. A voluntary prayer or moment of reflection in front of a classroom at public schools is an important exercise for young Americans to learn tolerance of others’ beliefs. The lack of this has led to fewer opportunities for Americans to hear, respect, and appreciate one another’s deepest convictions.
Intolerance breeds intolerance, and the decades-long suppression of prayer in our country’s schools has only fueled a harsher, more divided civic life.
Imagine the civic benefit if young schoolboys and girls grew up learning to listen respectfully to each other expressing their faith, even though they themselves believe differently. Johnny may offer a Catholic prayer, Julie a Protestant hymn, David a Jewish blessing, while another classmate of no faith may choose silence or an inspiring thought. Each would be heard in turn, each respected.
Voluntary exchange of truths and beliefs among citizens is the core purpose of the First Amendment. The Founders’ strategy to ensure the government would not censor truth was to empower each citizen to speak freely. Likewise, the Founders wanted to avoid repeating the European history of religious wars, so they empowered each citizen with religious freedom to worship how he or she sees fit. America has been all the better for it as we have learned to live side by side with those who may not worship the same way we do or exercise their freedom of speech the same way we do.
Critics of prayer in school, however, assert that history and precedent are on their side. They often cite landmark Supreme Court cases such as Engel v. Vitale (1962) and Abington School District v. Schempp (1963), which respectively struck down state-sponsored prayer and Bible readings in public schools. They argue that these rulings established a firm wall of separation between faith and public education, warning that even voluntary prayer may lead to coercion or government favoritism of one religion over another. In their view, allowing students to pray openly undermines neutrality and threatens the rights of those who choose not to participate.
Yet this reasoning confuses liberty with compulsion. Justice Potter Stewart, dissenting in Engel, argued, “With all respect, I think the Court has misapplied a great constitutional principle. I cannot see how an ‘official religion’ is established by letting those who want to say a prayer say it.” Stewart continued, “I think that to deny the wish of these school children to join in reciting this prayer is to deny them the opportunity of sharing in the spiritual heritage of our Nation.”
In that same vein, nothing in Trump’s defense of those who want to express their religious beliefs requires a child to bow his head against his will. Voluntary prayer is not the government imposing religion; it is the government refraining from punishing those who choose to exercise faith.
The Court itself has acknowledged, in such cases as Good News Club v. Milford Central School (2001), that equal access for religious expression is not an “establishment of religion,” but rather a vindication of free speech. Protecting Hannah Allen’s right to pray publicly is no different than protecting another student’s right to advocate for climate action or social justice.
The real danger lies not in too much liberty, but in too little. By chilling religious expression, past court opinions have fostered a culture where students are taught to hide their faith rather than share it in a spirit of mutual respect. Thankfully, President Trump may have five (and perhaps six) votes on the Supreme Court to reverse these decades-long errors.
That progress is already underway. In 2022, Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote for the 6-3 majority who upheld the right of a high school football coach to hold prayer on the field before games. The Court encouraged lower courts to interpret the Establishment Clause within the context of historical practices and according to what the Founding Fathers envisioned, rather than Court precedent set in the 1960s.
Gorsuch further wrote, “Respect for religious expressions is indispensable to life in a free and diverse Republic—whether those expressions take place in a sanctuary or a field and whether they manifest through spoken word or bowed head.”
In other words, the Court is telling us that a government seeking to ensure every student—Christian, Jewish, Muslim, or atheist—has the freedom to speak or remain silent affirms the genius of the First Amendment. Far from division, this approach teaches the next generation that true tolerance is forged not by silencing the faithful, but by protecting their right to speak.
W.J. Lee has served in the White House, NASA, on multiple political campaigns, and in nearly all levels of government. In his free time, he enjoys the “three R’s” – reading, running, and writing.
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