Prayer In School Controversy Analysis

Identified as the most common complementary intervention to date, Prayer has caused a major uproar in the academic setting since the advent of public schools. There has been continued controversy about the relationship between religion and public education from displaying the Ten Commandments to reciting the pledge of allegiance. Learned as a child and still engrained into my memory, I never realized the controversy that prayer would cause because God is referred to in the pledge of allegiance. Implemented during the era of “piety on the Potomac” Congress added the words “under God” during the Eisenhower administration not only to the pledge of allegiance but also to the prayer breakfast the President would have with his cabinet members
Typically people petition God for help for themselves or their loved ones in addition to finding guidance perhaps in a difficult scenario which they have no other recourse to refer. A prime example would be in reading or reciting the Proverbs to enhance ones wisdom which is provided by God. Prayer intended for advancing a certain goal or an achievement is not immoral. It is based more on hoping that something will happen to relieve the issue at hand or asking for something supernatural to happen (Smilansky, 2014). For example, if a mother brings her son into a hospital because he falls ill for some reason and tests are done by a doctor indicating that her son is in need of a kidney, the mother’s prayer in hopes of finding a donor is established. Within the hour a young kid similar in age and blood type is hit by a car and wheeled into the hospital and it has been established that the decease child’s kidney can be removed and surgically installed into her son to save his life her prayer would be considered moral. However, if the mother goes out and pushes a child similar in age to her son and purposefully causes this kid to be hit by a car this obviously would be an immoral