So, I take this advice...I'm working because I can do academic writing and research.
Actually I don't know if I'm really going to complete this part or if it will lead anywhere. I have all (or almost all) the letters, reported speeches and editorials about the Devotional Exercise controversy from the New Haven press from November 1877-December 1878. It's really really thick with some really official tabs. Looks organized even. And I'm real bad on spatial organization.
I thought I would read them and see if there were common arguments between them. Discussing school prayer is similar to discussing abortion. The sides have no commonality, they live on vectors that don't remotely intersect. I'm only halfway through January but I can see that the clergy have a whole set of arguments which seem to belong to them. I even have some "that deluder Satan" remarks. Generally, that school prayer is essential to our Christian nation that our ancestors founded and that the state will slide into complete destruction if our children don't learn to pray using the King James Bible and Protestant liturgy in school.
Sound familiar?
The clergy and press repackage the controversy as "The Bible in the Schools" when the action of the Board of Education dispensed with the rule specifying that the morning session would be opened with a devotional exercise. The Board never mentioned the Bible, never said that school prayer was forbidden. Just did not make the morning service a requirement.
From the reading I've done, that these 19th century struggles deal mainly with power struggles between the Protestant establishment and the Roman Catholics (referring to Catholics by the derogatory term Romanists was common in the press). The Catholics wanted their own liturgy in the schools. I'm sure that the clergy committee thought they had achieved a significant breakthrough when they came up with a school prayer scheme acceptable both to Protestant and Catholic interests. Which was turned away by the Board largely due to the efforts of my great great grandfather Maier Zunder. I imagine him thinking "this will not happen, not on my watch, no, it will not happen,"
As an Israelite himself, he did not want children labeled by their family's religion and he didn't want the school system to be the one who endorsed the labeling. Plus there wasn't room in the schools and the whole business would take up too much time.
But, maybe there is something interesting in all of these impassioned letters.
Also, I have the time and the desire. If not now, when? Plus, the Prius is going to be at the car place all week getting fixed from my little rear ender (hit and run, I might add) from last week.
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