Get God Back In These Classrooms

In classrooms across America, we face a deep hunger, not just for academic excellence, but for moral grounding, meaning, and spiritual identity. Many believe that welcoming God into our schools again does not mean mandating a single creed, but rather restoring space for reverence, values, and the sacred to inform character development. Polls suggest there is broad, if nuanced, public support for religious presence in schools: for instance, 52 % of U.S. adults favor allowing public school teachers to lead prayers referring to Jesus (with 27 % strongly favoring). And a recent survey found that 58 % of adults support having religious chaplains available to offer spiritual support services in public schools. This reveals that, regardless of party lines, many parents, educators, and communities are open to faith being part of the learning environment, if done in a way that honors pluralism, voluntary participation, and conscience.

The barrier isn’t lack of aspiration; it’s the legal and cultural constraints shaped by Supreme Court decisions. Since Engel v. Vitale (1962), school-sponsored prayer in public schools has been deemed unconstitutional under the Establishment Clause.  More recent decisions (such as Kennedy v. Bremerton, 2022) have started to recalibrate how individual religious expression by teachers or staff is protected, ruling that a coach had the right to quietly pray, so long as it wasn’t coercive. The path forward lies not in overturning these protections for religious freedom, but in envisioning a school environment where students and teachers can freely and respectfully practice faith, where chaplaincy and voluntary prayer are permitted, where faith is treated as part of holistic formation rather than partisan theater.

If we lean into unity instead of division, we can restore God’s presence not by force, but by influence, allowing light to shine in those seats, awakening purpose, wisdom, and moral courage in the next generation.