Ok so the muslim needs to go to a muslim school then if they have to have that much time out for prayer, but I watched a documentary of young muslims here and they work their prayers around their activities, so they too can work them around the school day, lets see first thing in the morning, just before school, then after school a home, then three times at home, that covers their 5 times.

Christians have it easy, they can most certainly pray upon waking, as we did as kids and upon going to sleep, it's not nessessary in school unless a specific religion is try to prove a point. no?

It seem a reasonable compremise, either religious school or before and after school. I wonder what that is such an unreasonable compremise in this country.

When I was in school, they did a brief overview and it was taught in the context of the region, not that these were the only world religions of course. However it must also be taught that this class will be incapable of covering each and every spirituality but we will cover these in the context of the geographic areas we are currently studying. The students must be made aware of that. I was speaking of taking time to pray and observe each and every faith. That is not possible.

Not one person has complained about a silent prayer. Who would even know. Be realistic here. Its the SANCTIONING of any one spirituality over another that is intolerable. Clearly just because Christianity is currently (may not be forever) the largest practiced religion in the US does not give it precedence or a place of privilege in public schools that are funded by state tax dollars. Thats like saying the largest, crazy mob is the one we should be listening to and respecting.

I agree...I think what happens...is the " practice "...of religion...is sometimes confused with the " expression "...of religion...a silent prayer is something both sides can agree on...now when it becomes expression through symbols and such...that's when the two sides are at odds...and rightfully so...opps !...good morning...

Right. You can pray all you want silently and I wont know you are doing it.

what if I fold my hands ?...then you'll know...right ?...

Just stick with your first statement. We are turning you into an educated Lib yet. We are like vampires here.

Seriously, creating a specific time for Christian prayer is wrong. If you can silently do this without interrupting the class instructor, then no one would be aware and it would not effect others. What most are against is the sanctioning of one religion over another be it Christian, Muslim, Judaic, Wiccan, so on and so forth. Wicca is the 5th largest religion in the US now and is currently the fastest growing. Christianity falls roughly a percentage point each year.

well...I think it was Winston Churchhill who said...there is nothing wrong with change...as long as it's in the right direction...

Well I dont think Christians have anything to worry about. Its not as if the Wiccans are going to begin a campaign of burning Christians at the stake.

I was referring to your comment ...in jest of course...Just stick with your first statement. We are turning you into an educated Lib yet. We are like vampires here....gulp !!... ...lol...

Well I think most educated and reasonable Christians dont argue this point. Once again it would only be the strict, conservatives that insist that the god of the bible need enter the public schools.

For those who question what the founders thoughts on religion.

I give you this Christmas gift.

First my personal favorite and hero. Thomas Paine

"The New Testament, they tell us, is founded upon the prophecies of the Old; if so, it must follow the fate of its foundation.''
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"Of all the tyrannies that affect mankind, tyranny in religion is the worst."
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"Whenever we read the obscene stories, the voluptuous debaucheries, the cruel and torturous executions, the unrelenting vindictiveness, with which more than half of the Bible is filled, it would be more consistent that we call it the word of a demon than the word of God. It is a history of wickedness that has served to corrupt and brutalize mankind.
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"What is it the New Testament teaches us? To believe that the Almighty committed debauchery with a woman engaged to be married; and the belief of this debauchery is called faith."
.

"Take away from Genesis the belief that Moses was the author, on which only the strange belief that it is the word of God has stood, and there remains nothing of Genesis but an anonymous book of stories, fables, and traditionary or invented absurdities, or of downright lies."
.

"We do not admit the authority of the church with respect to its pretended infallibility, its manufactured miracles, its setting itself up to forgive sins. It was by propagating that belief and supporting it with fire that she kept up her temporal power."
.

"I do not believe in the creed professed by the Jewish Church, by the Roman Church, by the Greek Church, by the Turkish Church, by the Protestant Church, nor by any Church that I know of. My own mind is my own Church. Each of those churches accuse the other of unbelief; and for my own part, I disbelieve them all."
.

"The story of Jesus Christ appearing after he was dead is the story of an apparition, such as timid imaginations can always create in vision, and credulity believe. Stories of this kind had been told of the assassination of Julius Caesar."



"All national institutions of churches, whether Jewish, Christian or Turkish, appear to me no other than human inventions, set up to terrify and enslave mankind, and monopolize power and profit."
.

"The study of theology, as it stands in the Christian churches, is the study of nothing; it is founded on nothing; it rests on no principles; it proceeds by no authority; it has no data; it can demonstrate nothing; and it admits of no conclusion."



"It may not be easy, in every possible case, to trace the line of separation between the rights of religion and the Civil authority with such distinctness as to avoid collisions and doubts on unessential points. The tendency to unsurpastion on one side or the other, or to a corrupting coalition or alliance between them, will be best guarded agst. by an entire abstinence of the Gov't from interfence in any way whatsoever, beyond the necessity of preserving public order, and protecting each sect agst. trespasses on its legal rights by others."
James Madison, "James Madison on Religious Liberty",
edited by Robert S. Alley, ISBN 0-8975-298-X. pp. 237-238
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"What influence, in fact, have ecclesiastical establishments had on society? In some instances they have been seen to erect a spiritual tyranny on the ruins of the civil authority; on many instances they have been seen upholding the thrones of political tyranny; in no instance have they been the guardians of the liberties of the people. Rulers who wish to subvert the public liberty may have found an established clergy convenient auxiliaries. A just government, instituted to secure and perpetuate it, needs them not."
- "A Memorial and Remonstrance", 1785
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"Experience witnesseth that ecclesiastical establishments, instead of maintaining the purity and efficacy of religion, have had a contrary operation. During almost fifteen centuries has the legal establishment of Christianity been on trial. What has been its fruits? More or less, in all places, pride and indolence in the clergy; ignorance and servility in the laity; in both, superstition, bigotry and persecution."
- "A Memorial and Remonstrance", 1785
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"Religious bondage shackles and debilitates the mind and unfits it for every noble enterprise."
-letter to Wm. Bradford, April 1, 1774
.

"Ecclesiastical establishments tend to great ignorance and corruption, all of which facilitate the execution of mischievous projects."
.

"The purpose of separation of church and state is to keep forever from these shores the ceaseless strife that has soaked the soil of Europe in blood for centuries."
-1803 letter objecting use of gov. land for churches
.

.
John Adams The second president of the United States was John Adams, lawyer and diplomat. Adams' public career lasted more than 35 years. He was second only to George Washington in making a place for the young United States among the nations of the world. In his devotion to the country he was second to none.
.
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Excerpted from Compton's Interactive Encyclopedia Deluxe
Copyright © 1994, 1995, 1996, 1997 The Learning Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
.

"As I understand the Christian religion, it was, and is, a revelation. But how has it happened that millions of fables, tales, legends, have been blended with both Jewish and Christian revelation that have made them the most bloody religion that ever existed?"
-letter to F.A. Van der Kamp, Dec. 27, 1816
.

"I almost shudder at the thought of alluding to the most fatal example of the abuses of grief which the history of mankind has preserved-- the Cross. Consider what calamities that engine of grief has produced!"
-letter to Thomas Jefferson
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"The priesthood have, in all ancient nations, nearly monopolized learning. And ever since the Reformation, when or where has existed a Protestant or dissenting sect who would tolerate A FREE INQUIRY? The blackest billingsgate, the most ungentlemanly insolence, the most yahooish brutality, is patiently endured, countenanced, propagated, and applauded. But touch a solemn truth in collision with a dogma of a sect, though capable of the clearest proof, and you will find you have disturbed a nest, and the hornets will swarm about your eyes and hand, and fly into your face and eyes."
- letter to John Taylor
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"The divinity of Jesus is made a convenient cover for absurdity. Nowhere in the Gospels do we find a precept for Creeds, Confessions, Oaths, Doctrines, and whole cartloads of other foolish trumpery that we find in Christianity."
.

"The question before the human race is, whether the God of Nature shall govern the world by his own laws, or whether priests and kings shall rule it by fictitious miracles?"
.

"Can a free government possibly exist with the Roman Catholic religion?"
-letter to Thomas Jefferson
.

"God is an essence that we know nothing of. Until this awful blasphemy is got rid of, there will never be any liberal science in the world."
.

"Have you considered that system of holy lies and pious frauds that has raged and triumphed for 1,500 years?"

". . . Thirteen governments [of the original states] thus founded on the natural authority of the people alone, without a pretence of miracle or mystery, and which are destined to spread over the northern part of that whole quarter of the globe, are a great point gained in favor of the rights of mankind."
.

"This would be the best of all possible worlds, if there were no religion in it."

From Jefferson

"In every country and every age, the priest has been hostile to liberty. He is always in alliance with the despot ... they have perverted the purest religion ever preached to man into mystery and jargon, unintelligible to all mankind, and therefore the safer engine for their purpose."
- to Horatio Spafford, March 17, 1814
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"Millions of innocent men, women and children, since the introduction of Christianity, have been burnt, tortured, fined, imprisoned; yet we have not advanced an inch towards uniformity. What has been the effect of coercion? To make one half the world fools, and the other half hypocrites. To support roguery and error all over the earth."
- "Notes on Virginia"
.

"Shake off all the fears of servile prejudices, under which weak minds are servilely crouched. Fix reason firmly in her seat, and call on her tribunal for every fact, every opinion. Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason than that of blindfolded fear.
- letter to Peter Carr, Aug. 10, 1787
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"It is too late in the day for men of sincerity to pretend they believe in the Platonic mysticisms that three are one, and one is three; and yet that the one is not three, and the three are not one. But this constitutes the craft, the power and the profit of the priests."
- to John Adams, 1803
.

"History, I believe, furnishes no example of a priest-ridden people maintaining a free civil government. This marks the lowest grade of ignorance, of which their political as well as religious leaders will always avail themselves for their own purpose."
- to Baron von Humboldt, 1813
.

"On the dogmas of religion, as distinguished from moral principles, all mankind, from the beginning of the world to this day, have been quarreling, fighting, burning and torturing one another, for abstractions unintelligible to themselves and to all others, and absolutely beyond the comprehension of the human mind."
- to Carey, 1816
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"Gouverneur Morris had often told me that General Washington believed no more of that system (Christianity) than did he himself."
-in his private journal, Feb. 1800
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"It is not to be understood that I am with him (Jesus Christ) in all his doctrines. I am a Materialist; he takes the side of Spiritualism, he preaches the efficacy of repentance toward forgiveness of sin; I require a counterpoise of good works to redeem it." - to Carey, 1816
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"The priests of the superstition, a bloodthirsty race, are as cruel and remorseless as the being whom they represented as the family God of Abraham, of Isaac and of Jacob, and the local God of Israel. That Jesus did not mean to impose himself on mankind as the son of God, physically speaking, I have been convinced by the writings of men more learned than myself in that lore."
- to Story, Aug. 4, 1820
.

"The doctrines of Jesus are simple, and tend all to the happiness of man. But compare with these the demoralizing dogmas of Calvin.
1. That there are three Gods.
2. That good works, or the love of our neighbor, is nothing.
3. That faith is every thing, and the more incomprehensible the proposition, the more merit the faith.
4. That reason in religion is of unlawful use.
5. That God, from the beginning, elected certain individuals to be saved, and certain others to be damned; and that no crimes of the former can damn them; no virtues of the latter save."
- to Benjamin Waterhouse, Jun. 26, 1822
.

"Difference of opinion is advantageous in religion. The several sects perform the office of a common censor over each other. Is uniformity attainable? Millions of innocent men, women and children, since the introduction of Christianity, have been burnt, tortured, fined, imprisoned; yet we have not advanced an inch towards uniformity. What has been the effect of coercion? To make one half the world fools, and the other half hypocrites. To support roguery and error all over the earth."
"Notes on Virginia"
.

"Creeds have been the bane of the Christian church ... made of Christendom a slaughter-house."
- to Benjamin Waterhouse, Jun. 26, 1822
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"Let us, then, fellow citizens, unite with one heart and one mind. Let us restore to social intercourse that harmony and affection without which liberty and even life itself are but dreary things. And let us reflect that having banished from our land that religious intolerance under which mankind so long bled, we have yet gained little if we countenance a political intolerance as despotic, as wicked, and capable of a bitter and bloody persecutions."
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"I do not find in orthodox Christianity one redeeming feature."
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"It has been fifty and sixty years since I read the Apocalypse, and then I considered it merely the ravings of a maniac."
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"The truth is, that the greatest enemies of the doctrine of Jesus are those, calling themselves the expositors of them, who have perverted them to the structure of a system of fancy absolutely incomprehensible, and without any foundation in his genuine words. And the day will come, when the mystical generation [birth] of Jesus, by the Supreme Being as his father, in the womb of a virgin, will be classed with the fable of the generation [birth] of Minerva in the brain of Jupiter."
- to John Adams, Apr. 11, 1823
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"They [preachers] dread the advance of science as witches do the approach of daylight and scowl on the fatal harbinger announcing the subversions of the duperies on which they live."
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"I have recently been examining all the known superstitions of the world, and do not find in our particular superstition (Christianity) one redeeming feature. They are all alike founded on fables and mythology."
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"We discover in the gospels a groundwork of vulgar ignorance, of things impossible, of superstition, fanaticism and fabrication ."
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"No man shall be compelled to frequent or support any religious worship, place, or ministry whatsoever."
-Virginia Act for Religious Freedom
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"... I am not afraid of priests. They have tried upon me all their various batteries of pious whining, hypocritical canting, lying and slandering. I have contemplated their order from the Magi of the East to the Saints of the West and I have found no difference of character, but of more or less caution, in proportion to their information or ignorance on whom their interested duperies were to be played off. Their sway in New England is indeed formidable. No mind beyond mediocrity dares there to develop itself."
- letter to Horatio Spofford, 1816
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"The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious to others. But it does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods, or no God. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg."
.
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"Christianity neither is, nor ever was, a part of the Common Law."
-letter to Dr. Thomas Cooper, 1814
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"In every country and in every age, the priest has been hostile to liberty. He is always in alliance with the despot.... they have perverted the purest religion ever preached to man into mystery and jargon, unintelligible to all mankind, and therefore the safer engine for their purpose."
- to Horatio Spafford, March 17, 1814
.

"Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between man and his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legislative powers of government reach actions only, and not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should 'make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,' thus building a wall of separation between church and State."
-letter to Danbury Baptist Association, CT
"The Complete Jefferson" by Saul K. Padover, pp 518-519

Washington

The father of this country was very private about his beliefs, but it is widely considered that he was a Deist like his colleagues. He was a Freemason.

Historian Barry Schwartz writes: "George Washington's practice of Christianity was limited and superficial because he was not himself a Christian... He repeatedly declined the church's sacraments. Never did he take communion, and when his wife, Martha, did, he waited for her outside the sanctuary... Even on his deathbed, Washington asked for no ritual, uttered no prayer to Christ, and expressed no wish to be attended by His representative." [New York Press, 1987, pp. 174-175]

Paul F. Boller states in is anthology on Washington: "There is no mention of Jesus Christ anywhere in his extensive correspondence." [Dallas: Southern Methodist University Press, 1963, pp. 14-15]
.
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"Religious controversies are always productive of more acrimony and irreconcilable hatreds than those which spring from any other cause. Of all the animosities which have existed among mankind, those which are caused by the difference of sentiments in religion appear to be the most inveterate and distressing, and ought most to be depreciated. I was in hopes that the enlightened and liberal policy, which has marked the present age, would at least have reconciled Christians of every denomination so far that we should never again see the religious disputes carried to such a pitch as to endanger the peace of society."
- letter to Edward Newenham, 1792
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"Gouverneur Morris had often told me that General Washington believed no more of that system (Christianity) than did he himself."
-Thomas Jefferson, in his private journal, Feb. 1800

Franklin

"I think vital religion has always suffered when orthodoxy is more regarded than virtue. The scriptures assure me that at the last day we shall not be examined on what we thought but what we did."
- letter to his father, 1738

". . . Some books against Deism fell into my hands. . . It happened that they wrought an effect on my quite contrary to what was intended by them; for the arguments of the Deists, which were quoted to be refuted, appeared to me much stronger than the refutations; in short, I soon became a thorough Deist."
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"I cannot conceive otherwise than that He, the Infinite Father, expects or requires no worship or praise from us, but that He is even infinitely above it."
- "Articles of Belief and Acts of Religion", 1728
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"I wish it (Christianity) were more productive of good works ... I mean real good works ... not holy-day keeping, sermon-hearing ... or making long prayers, filled with flatteries and compliments despised by wise men, and much less capable of pleasing the Deity."
- Works, Vol. VII, p. 75
.

"If we look back into history for the character of the present sects in Christianity, we shall find few that have not in their turns been persecutors, and complainers of persecution. The primitive Christians thought persecution extremely wrong in the Pagans, but practiced it on one another. The first Protestants of the Church of England blamed persecution in the Romish Church, but practiced it upon the Puritans. They found it wrong in Bishops, but fell into the practice themselves both here (England) and in New England."
.

"Lighthouses are more helpful than churches."
.

"The way to see by faith is to shut the eye of reason."
-in Poor Richard's Almanac
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"When a religion is good, I conceive it will support itself; and when it does not support itself so that its professors are obliged to call for the help of the civil power, 'tis a sign, I apprehend, of its being a bad one."
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"I looked around for God's judgments, but saw no signs of them."
.

"In the affairs of the world, men are saved, not by faith, but by the lack of it."

"It is much to be lamented that a man of Franklin's general good character and great influence should have been an unbeliever in Christianity, and also have done as much as he did to make others unbelievers" (Priestley's Autobiography)

congratulations Lyn...the above post just set the world record in all around length !...beating the previous 20 held by MadMan...

I'll bet you a dollar you didn't read it.

It might upset your notion that this was founded as a Christian nation.

Can't have those pesky facts intruding in our your long held beliefs.

in all honesty...I think most people bypass the posts that are too lengthy...and no...I didn't read it...I'm at work and I don't have an hour to spare !..LOL..

That is some overwhelming evidence that the Founding Fathers were probably Deists and not Christians.

your right, prayer can be done silently and in most cases should be done in private. Nothing wrong with a group having a prayer. but you are correct. No need to make a big show out of it. Just Pray, you can do it silently, for God knows our mind and heart. Some just like to be seen p raying before men to feel Holy. God can hear our prayers in private and rewards openly. Also, your right again, Christianity will experience an Apostasy before the end .

I dont know what that last sentence means. No one should be allowed recognition of their own spirituality while in a public school that is state funded.

a "falling away" of their beliefs" Apostasy. Christians will seem a minority then.

No one should be allowed recognition of their own spirituality while in a public school that is state funded....duly noted...got it !!...