DEAR EDITOR:

After the mass shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, many Republican politicians and right-wing media figures claimed the shooting was the result of “taking prayer and God out of schools.” This claim is both irrational and disingenuous.

It is irrational because none of the other wealthy industrialized nations of the world has school prayer, and yet they don’t have anywhere near the number of school shootings that we have. For example, the secular nations of Western Europe and Scandinavia, where religion has almost completely disappeared from public life, are not experiencing an epidemic of school shootings. So, the absence of prayer in classrooms cannot be the cause of mass shootings.

The claim that mass shootings are the result of “taking prayer and God out of schools” is disingenuous because the politicians and pundits making that claim know nobody has ever taken prayer and God out of schools. Voluntary, student-led prayer and Bible reading are 100 percent legal in schools. It’s only compulsory prayer and teacher-led prayer that are illegal. Therefore, conservatives can’t be upset that we “took prayer out of schools,” because we didn’t. They are upset because we took compulsory prayer out of schools.

Conservatives should just be honest and admit that they want to be able to force all students to pray the same way. Is this really what we want to do? Do we want to turn our schools into places where the religious majority is permitted to bully religious minorities into theological conformity? I hope not.

Teacher-led or coach-led prayer would create a situation where students who practice a minority faith (or no faith) would feel pressure to pray in a way that is incompatible with their own personal religious beliefs.

Imagine a young Jewish person on a high school sports team whose coach leads the team in a Christian prayer before each game. The Jewish student would feel pressured to participate in the Christian prayer or risk being perceived as an outsider, not a true team player. Such an environment would cause unnecessary divisions and discrimination among students.

The so-called Supreme Court is expected to issue a decision on this very issue any day now. If the court decides to allow teacher-led and coach-led prayers, then “religious freedom” in the United States is dead.

In any case, it’s obvious that the absence of compulsory school prayer is not the cause of mass shootings.

SHAWN KOSIOR

Canfield