Law & Courts

Without a Prayer

By Mark Walsh — October 30, 1996 21 min read
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Assistant Principal Michael Chandler says public schools in his Alabama county still consider pre–game prayers well within bounds.

The football game between the Geraldine Bulldogs and the Warriors of Westbrook Christian School is about to start. That the game is being played at all is something of a miracle. Torrential thunderstorms swept through northeastern Alabama earlier on this Friday, the traditional day of the week for one of the most important community events in small towns across the South: high school football.

Most other schools in rural DeKalb County, as well as throughout the region from Huntsville down to Gadsden, have postponed their Friday night games, holding out for sunshine and drier fields on Saturday. But at Geraldine High, the game will begin in a steady drizzle. The aroma of boiled peanuts wafts through the damp fall air from a truck just a few yards from one of the end zones. Hardy fans line up to buy Styrofoam cups full of the regionally popular snack to crack open and eat during the game.

Minutes before the Bulldogs storm the home field, two dozen students and cheerleaders stream onto the soggy turf for the traditional “victory line,” where they rally for their team as the players burst through a paper circle and make their way to the sideline. On this night, a few of the enthusiastic fans wear T-shirts that have gained popularity at school. The front reads: “Dog spelled backwards is GOD. Our mascot is the DOG. Our Master is GOD.” And the back proclaims: “In prayer, power is mine! Meet me in the victory line.”

The white shirts with black lettering allude to a controversy that has gripped DeKalb County and its public schools for almost a year. Students began wearing the T-shirts when school officials reluctantly told them they could no longer have student-led prayers at Friday night football games. As Leslie Sexton, the president of the Geraldine High student council, put it to The Gadsden Times: “We feel like they’re taking our privileges away. We want to take a stand and get them back.”

Dianna Armstrong, a Geraldine High freshman who is wearing her T-shirt at tonight’s football game, says the purpose of the shirts is simply “to signify that we are Christians.”

Sitting in a nearby bleacher is the man who, to a large degree, is the target of the T-shirts. Michael Chandler, the assistant principal at DeKalb County’s Valley Head High School, filed a federal lawsuit last February alleging that the school system has allowed a variety of unconstitutionalreligious practices for years. The American Civil Liberties Union of Alabama, as well as the Washington-based Americans United for Separation of Church and State, have both backed his suit. The school district, in large part, has denied violating the law. But tonight, few, if any, people in the crowd at the Geraldine game seem to recognize Chandler as the man causing the big ruckus over religious practices in the public schools here.

Chandler came to the Geraldine game because he has read about the T-shirts in the local paper and wants to see for himself. He also wants to see whether any prayer or moment of silence is observed before the game. He’s shown up at a lot of other football games across the county this fall for the same reason. Sometimes, he brings his camcorder. Sometimes, he’s asked to leave.

But there’s no prayer tonight at Geraldine High. And perhaps because of the rain and the desire to get the ball in play, the moment of silence is brief.

Pre-game prayers are just one of the religious practices Chandler has challenged in DeKalb County. The 46-year-old native and longtime educator alleges that the county public schools have a history of allowing clergy-led and student-led prayers at graduation ceremonies, the distribution of Gideon Bibles in schools, Christian devotionals at school assemblies, and teacher-led prayers in at least one classroom.

Pre-game prayers are just one of the religious practices Chandler has challenged in DeKalb County.

Besides such practices in DeKalb County, the ACLU included in the lawsuit an unidentified plaintiff’s challenge of prayers in another Alabama school district, the Talledega city system. The suit also challenges a 1993 Alabama law authorizing “voluntary prayer, invocations, and/or benedictions” by students during “compulsory school-related student assemblies, school-related sporting events, school-related graduation or commencement ceremonies, and other school-related student events.”

Some of the alleged practices cited in Chandler’s lawsuit, if they indeed took place, have been clearly unconstitutional for a long time. Classroom prayers have been off limits since the U.S. Supreme Court’s school-prayer rulings of 1962 and 1963. In several Southern states, prayers before athletic contests have been out of bounds since 1989, when the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit struck them down in a well-known Georgia case. And clergy-led prayers at graduation ceremonies were ruled unconstitutional in 1992 by a sharply divided 5-4 Supreme Court. In that case, Lee v. Weisman, the high court said school-sponsored prayers at a graduation ceremony carry a special risk of coercion for students in attendance.

But a few of the practices challenged here are hotly disputed legal questions of more recent vintage, particularly student-led prayers. Many conservatives argue the First Amendment’s clause barring any government establishment of religion clashes with students’ and community members’ First Amendment right to freely exercise their religion. One federal appeals court has found that student-initiated, student-led graduation prayers do not violate the First Amendment. Other courts have reached the opposite conclusion.


In many communities, these religious practices have gone on routinely for years.

The U.S. Supreme Court has not clearly ruled on that issue, but conservatives across the country have pushed the idea of voluntary student-led prayer at school events. Congress even got involved by looking at proposals to amend the Constitution to extend greater protection to student prayers in public schools. The proposals were shelved this fall amid Republican squabbling over what such an amendment should include.

What is clear is that in many communities, particularly small towns across the South, these religious practices have gone on routinely for years. They become a point of conflict only when someone is willing to go up against tradition. And more and more, someone is.

Daniel Weisman and his family in Providence, R.I., challenged clergy-led prayers in the district’s public schools. The suit resulted in the Supreme Court’s 1992 ruling in Lee v. Weisman.

Lisa Herdahl, who moved from Wisconsin to a small town in Mississippi a few years ago, wondered why her children were subjected to prayers over the intercom every morning in their public school. A federal judge earlier this year struck down the intercom prayers and some other religious practices in the Pontotoc County school system.

And Michael Chandler says he has complained about unconstitutional religious practices in DeKalb County for the better part of a decade. Last February, he decided to make a federal case out of it.


Interstate 59 virtually splits DeKalb County in half.

Interstate 59--which runs between Birmingham and Knoxville, Tenn.--virtually splits DeKalb County in half. This is Appalachian country. Sand Mountain stands to the west. Lookout Mountain to the east. About 55,000 people live in the county, mostly in or around one of its dozen small towns. Almost all the residents, about 97 percent, are white.

The county seat and largest city is Fort Payne, which, according to the sign on the way into town, is “The Sock Capital of the World.” It’s home to several big hosiery factories, as well as a rather large museum devoted to the country-music band Alabama, which traces its roots here.

If Fort Payne’s quaint downtown strikes visitors as New England-like, that may be because of the town’s brief mineral boom of the 1890s. Investors from the Northeast poured millions of dollars into mining companies in the belief that the surrounding mountains were as rich in coal and iron ore as those around Birmingham. The three-year boom led to the construction of banks and offices, railroad lines, and a luxury hotel. But with time, it became obvious that the quality and quantity of area minerals had been exaggerated, and the boom died out. DeKalb County was destined to remain a predominantly rural community.

Although the DeKalb County school system has its headquarters in Fort Payne, the city schools have not been part of the county system since 1957. The county system includes 13 schools and serves 7,300 students. Most of the schools enroll students in kindergarten through 12th grade, and most are small. Each school is identified with one of the county’s small towns, and people in those communities like it that way.

Today, a small black community and a growing number of Hispanic residents have laid down roots in the county, but there are few religious minorities. Chandler recalls having one Hindu and one Jewish student in his school in recent years.

Still, at the press conference announcing his lawsuit filed in federal district court in Montgomery, the state capital, religious leaders from around the state stood by Chandler’s side. They echoed the thoughts of the ACLU and Americans United about the importance of observing the wall between church and state. Fowziyyah Ali of the Committee of Concerned Muslim Parents in Huntsville spoke of the United States as a “diverse, pluralistic community of people with varied religious beliefs and practices.” Though Huntsville, the home of NASA rocket scientists, may be growing in religious diversity, few signs of such growth are visible 50 miles away in DeKalb County.

Maybe the county’s lack of religious diversity can explain, at least in part, local curiosity about Chandler’s own religious bent. People don’t know much about his family’s religious beliefs, and that appears to be the way Michael Chandler likes it. He denies what some people in the community whisper: that he is an atheist or an agnostic. But he politely states that his own beliefs are a personal matter.

The lawsuit “is just a constitutional issue to me,” Chandler says.

The lawsuit “is just a constitutional issue to me,” Chandler says. Asked if he considers himself liberal, he smiles and says, “I might say so. I don’t have the same ideas as a lot of people around here. But I’ve discovered in the past few months that there are a lot of people who agree with me, but they don’t want to take a chance at being harassed.”

Chandler’s wife, Barbara, who teaches at Fyffe High School, was surprised when two parents asked that their children be removed from her 1st grade classroom after word of the lawsuit spread. Other than that, Chandler says, the family hasn’t had any serious problems with people in the county. But, he admits, “there have been some looks of disgust.”

Some locals wonder privately whether Chandler’s religious-practices lawsuit was motivated by the fact that he was passed over for the principal’s job at Valley Head High two years ago. Chandler, though, is quick to point out that his complaints about religion in county schools date back more than 10 years.

However, Chandler is involved in a separate but closely intertwined lawsuit alleging job discrimination because he was not promoted. The job-bias suit alleges that Chandler has been denied a promotion to principal on several occasions, despite “outstanding evaluations,” because of his complaints about religious practices in the county schools. One school board member, Chandler says, even told a Valley Head High teacher that he’d never get promoted to principal because of “this religion thing.” The suit seeks back pay and other remedies allowed under the federal job-discrimination law.

According to Chandler, three principal jobs have come open in the county since 1991. “Those are positions I should have gotten because of experience,” he says. “They have passed over me because I complained.”

Chandler comes to the door in a polo shirt and casual slacks that make him look more like a professional golfer than a school administrator. His house, which lies just outside the town of Fyffe, sits at the end of a long driveway off an obscure back road.

In the living room, Chandler’s wife is helping their 13-year-old son, Jesse, with his homework. Chandler, a native of DeKalb County, has worked in the DeKalb County school system for 25 years. “We kind of fell into teaching jobs here,” he says. The school system is one of the better-paying employers in an area dominated by sock factories that pay little more than minimum wage.

Chandler started out teaching English and social studies at two other county schools. But he has spent the past 12 years at Valley Head High, where he’s now the assistant principal and a guidance counselor. He says various forms of prayer have been going on in the DeKalb County schools for as long as he can remember.

“I’ve been trying to get something done about this since 1989,” Chandler says. He pulls out a letter he wrote to the state chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union that year.


His first complaints, Chandler says, were about a local Bible camp that was allowed to send speakers into public school classrooms.

His first complaints to school officials, Chandler says, were about a local Bible camp that was allowed to send speakers into public school classrooms. “Anyone who didn’t want to listen, such as some Jehovah’s Witnesses who were in school, they let them stand in the hall for 45 minutes,” Chandler says.

According to the suit, the Fellowship of Christian Students at Valley Head High has also had evangelists speak to the entire student body. Students who did not want to attend were made to go to study hall.

Chandler wrote to the school board about the local Gideons, too. They have been allowed to distribute Bibles in the DeKalb schools for the past several years.

The lawsuit also alleges that a student read a Bible passage and a teacher sang a religious song at a 1994 graduation ceremony for a drug-awareness program at Fyffe High. Chandler’s son, Jesse, was in the audience. The suit goes on to charge that at 4-H club meetings held during the school day at all DeKalb County schools, students read devotionals selected by the county extension agent.

And, Chandler says, prayers and devotionals--usually broadcast over the loudspeaker--were a regular tradition at many football games and graduation ceremonies across the county.


Over the years, neither the DeKalb County school board nor the superintendent even acknowledged his complaints.

The ACLU did not jump to file a lawsuit in 1989 when Chandler first complained. Instead, the civil rights organization told him to document any constitutional violations by writing down the facts or making videotapes when possible.

Still, the ACLU took him more seriously than local school officials. Over the years, Chandler says, neither the DeKalb County school board nor the superintendent even acknowledged his complaints. Their attitude, he believes, is best reflected in the school system’s defiant response to the 1989 federal appeals court ruling on pre-game prayers. In the case of Jager v. Douglas County School District, the 11th Circuit court held that prayers delivered by ministers or by others selected at random violated the First Amendment’s prohibition against government establishment of religion.

The case--filed by the family of a band member at a Georgia high school--garnered even more attention when the U.S. Supreme Court refused to review the appeals court’s decision later that year. The Supreme Court’s action was not a ruling on the merits of the case and did not mean that the 11th Circuit court’s ruling was binding nationwide. But it was binding in Alabama, which lies in the same federal court circuit as Georgia.

After the decision, some DeKalb County school officials maintained that their tradition of pre-game prayers would continue. “I don’t agree with the decision, and we will continue to have them,” Sammy Clanton, who was then the principal of Collinsville High School, told the Fort Payne Times-Journal.

The principal of Plainview School had this to say: “We will continue to have devotionals unless there is opposition. The school reflects the attitude of the community, and in this community, it is accepted.”

In the summer of 1989, shortly before the football season was about to get started, Weldon Parrish, the new superintendent of schools, was asked whether the 11th Circuit ruling would snuff out pre-game prayers. He told the local paper that unless the state school board issued a directive to the contrary, it would be up to local principals to decide whether to continue such invocations. “In my opinion, if they want to have prayer, they can have it,” Parrish reportedly said. “It is tradition.”

Parrish is now about to wrap up his two four-year terms of service as superintendent. He’s not running for re-election. The race to succeed Parrish is between Claude “Butch” Cassidy, the principal of Crossville High School, and Richard Land, a school system administrator whose campaign slogan promises “Basics and Beyond.” Local observers say Cassidy, the Democrat in this heavily Democratic bastion, is the favorite. The prayer issue has not been a major campaign topic.

When the prayer suit was first filed, the superintendent denied any unconstitutional practices were being observed.

Parrish declined to comment about Chandler’s lawsuits. When the prayer suit was first filed, the superintendent denied any unconstitutional practices were being observed in DeKalb County schools. “Our policy here is that our schools are in compliance with state and federal rules and regulations,” he said at the time.

But Parrish and other officials have responded to some of Chandler’s allegations in court papers. School administrators admit, for example, that an outside inspirational speaker did address Valley Head High students last fall. But they deny that his speech was religious, as the lawsuit asserts.

The defendants argue that meetings of the Fellowship of Christian Students take place before the school day and not, as the lawsuit asserts, during school hours when no other student clubs are allowed to meet. And they deny that the county extension agent selects devotionals for the students to read during 4-H meetings.

School officials do acknowledge in court papers that football game and commencement prayers have taken place. And they admit that one of Jesse Chandler’s teachers at Fyffe High asked for volunteers to lead prayers and read aloud from the Bible. But the superintendent does not recall any complaint from Michael Chandler about the practice, the district’s court papers say. When Parrish learned about the practice from a newspaper article, he says he told the teacher to stop such classroom religious practices.

In regard to Chandler’s job-discrimination lawsuit, the school board’s response was terse. “Defendants neither admit nor deny that plaintiff has made his beliefs known regarding religious freedom and demand strict proof thereof,” the board states in court papers. “Defendants admit that plaintiff has applied” for principal’s openings but “deny that less qualified people have been appointed.”

Valley Head Principal Gary Talley landed the job that Chandler sought two years ago. As Chandler’s boss, he now finds himself working alongside the man who has filed suit against the school system. In fact, Talley is named in court papers as the person responsible for allowing certain religious practices--such as having an outside assembly speaker deliver what was ultimately a Christian message to students--to go on at the school.

But Talley is relaxed and gracious as he describes how he gets along with Chandler. “I work very well with Mike,” he says. “Personally, an individual’s beliefs are his own business.”


“I don’t think anyone’s religion should be forced on anyone else. But sometimes, we have to look at the best interest of our kids.”

Gary Talley, Valley Head Principal

As to the larger question of religious practices in school, Talley adds: “I believe in the separation of church and state. I don’t think anyone’s religion should be forced on anyone else. But sometimes, as adults, we have to look at the best interest of our kids. Morals and values are slowly going downhill, and school may be the only place kids get values.”

Some Valley Head teachers privately say they think Chandler and his lawsuit are making too much out of a few isolated incidents. Religious practices, they suggest, aren’t nearly as regular or serious as Chandler paints them, especially not at Valley Head High.

And Valley Head students seem to agree. Tenth grader Teri Campbell says she respects Chandler but, like her classmates, thinks it’s no big deal to let students pray before football games. “I feel he is standing up for what he believes,” she says. “But most everyone here is a Christian, and I think most people would rather be allowed to pray.”


“The only way we can live under the Constitution ... is to teach and live the ideals and beliefs that gave us the Constitution.”

Gary Carlyle, Sylvania High School Principal

Gary Carlyle, the principal of nearby Sylvania High School, has strong views on religion in schools and isn’t afraid to share them. Like many principals in the South, Carlyle is an ex-coach who appears to have a strong grip on his school.

A few weeks ago, he allegedly kicked Chandler out of a Sylvania High football game because he brought a camcorder with him to videotape any pre-game prayers. Chandler says Carlyle told him it was against the rules of the state athletic association to videotape games without permission, even though dozens of parents toted camcorders to the game to catch their sons in action.

In an open letter to local newspapers, Carlyle provides “one educator’s thoughts on the constitutionality of having Christian principles taught in school.” He cites a handful of Supreme Court cases from the 1800s, as well as quotes from the Founding Fathers, in support of the proposition that the United States is a Christian nation and its principles ought to be encouraged in public schools. “The only way we can live under the Constitution and have our children prosper under the Constitution is to teach and live the ideals and beliefs that gave us the Constitution and have these ideals and beliefs based upon the Christian principles,” his letter concludes.

“I’m not trying to hold Sunday school here,” says Carlyle, sitting in his office. “But I think in a school we must teach religious values.”

He asks rhetorically: “Who causes the most trouble in school, Christian or non-Christian kids? The law is getting twisted a little bit. Where Christian principles are taught, every person has value.”

Chandler says Carlyle was the only principal in the county to have prayers at graduation last spring, despite a temporary court agreement that barred commencement prayers as well as other religious practices at issue in Chandler’s case. And this fall, prohibited from having pre-game prayers, Chandler says Sylvania High has instituted moments of silence at football games and invites the band to play such hymns as “Amazing Grace.”

“I don’t want to live under [Chandler’s] restrictions,” Carlyle says. “Kids, just because they are in a public school, have not lost their constitutional rights.”

Both Chandler’s religious-practices and job-bias lawsuits are pending in federal district courts. On the religion suit, Chandler and his lawyers have asked a judge to decide the case based on what they see as clear points of law, without a trial. State officials, defending Alabama’s voluntary prayer law, argue that the case should go to trial. The suit is likely to drag on for at least several more months.

DeKalb County residents have become even more vocal.

In the meantime, with the start of another school year and football season upon them, DeKalb County residents have become even more vocal. On a Sunday afternoon in early October, some 3,000 students, parents, and residents packed into DeKalb County’s Rainsville Civic Center to rally in support of student prayers. The ministers who organized the rally told local newspapers they wanted it to be a positive event in support of prayer, and not a Chandler-bashing affair. And the strategy worked. Students chanted their love for Jesus, and a student from each of the county’s high schools gave a religious testimonial.

One student told The Gadsden Times that prohibiting prayers in schools is the way to let Satan in. “He doesn’t just come busting in the door saying, ‘I’m taking over here,’” the student said. “He’s taking over little by little.”

It’s almost halftime at the Geraldine High football game, and Michael Chandler is ready to leave. The rain has let up, but Chandler has seen what he came to see: the DOG/god T-shirts and the moment of silence. He doesn’t care too much about whether the Bulldogs prevail over Westbrook Christian on this night.

On his way out, Chandler stops to chat with a group of teachers he knows at Geraldine High, where he used to work. But before he can say goodbye, a woman approaches him and asks, “Do you believe in God?”

It turns out that the woman is married to his wife’s brother. “I believe religion is a personal matter,” he tells her. They have had the conversation before, he says later.

His in-law presses further, asking Chandler whether he reads the Bible. “I read my Bible every night,” he says. “It just may not be the same as your Bible.”

The woman hugs Chandler and starts to cry. “I am going to pray for you every day of my life,” she says. “I want us to end up together in heaven.” She turns and walks back to watch the football game.

“She is real serious about that,” Chandler says, walking away. “But I truly believe that religion is no one’s business but their own.”

A version of this article appeared in the October 30, 1996 edition of Education Week as Without a Prayer

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