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Ellery's Protest: How One Young Man Defied Tradition and Sparked the Battle over School Prayer

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Ellery Schempp was not a troublemaker. He was sixteen years old in 1956, a junior in high school with fine grades and no disciplinary problems. And yet he went to school after the Thanksgiving holiday determined to call attention to himself and to what he saw as unfairness within the school. It worked, and it wound him up in the Supreme Court. _Ellery's Protest: How One Young Man Defied Tradition and Sparked the Battle over School Prayer_ (University of Michigan Press) by Stephen D. Solomon tells the story of how Ellery and his family conscientiously changed public policy, helping define how church and state were to be separated in American public schools. Solomon, who teaches First Amendment law, has not only told the story of the Schempp family and their protest and the legal ins and outs as their case went to different court levels, but also has given an account of church and state conflicts back through European history, and has summarized the challenges currently faced by a society and a Supreme Court that can never have a complete solution to what will always be an ongoing conflict. This is a great book bringing a vast subject into focus as its one particular court case plays out.

The Schempp name is not nearly as well known as that of Madalyn Murray O'Hair, the fervent, loud-mouthed (and foul-mouthed) atheist whose similar suit was joined with that of the Schempps. They were not atheists, but Unitarians, who frequently discussed religious matters, especially the idea that government had no business supporting any particular religion or religious idea. The Abington school district instructed teachers that they were to comply with a Pennsylvania state law requiring that every day ten Bible verses be read without comment, and that this was to be followed by the reading of the Lord's Prayer. One morning, when it came time for the verses and prayer one morning, Ellery took out a Koran from his book bag, and began reading silently. He didn't stand for the Lord's Prayer. The homeroom teacher sent him to the principal's office. He wrote the ACLU to ask for help. Solomon describes an intricate process of the case threading its way to the Supreme Court, and the tactics used by the ACLU as well as by the school board and state government. It was not until 1963 that the court, by an eight to one majority that included three of its most conservative members, ruled that the schools as a government agency could not lead prayers.

Solomon's comprehensive account includes descriptions of what happened after the 1963 Supreme Court decision, which was extremely unpopular. The Abington school system itself had a model response: the superintendent explained that teachers should discuss with their students how the Supreme Court had interpreted the Constitution; thereupon Bibles were removed from classrooms and the devotionals stopped. Many other schools made no changes, and some states passed school prayer laws that were in flagrant noncompliance with the federal ruling. There was agreement from some religious bodies; the National Council of Churches registered agreement that public schools should never compel any specific religious practice, and that such teachings should come only from homes and from the churches themselves. Solomon's final chapter has to do with the future of the Schempp decision, and how some who favor school prayer are attempting to find ways to make it happen again. The history of that decision, and the history of church and state issues that led up to it, is given here with clarity and comprehensiveness; anyone interested in issues of church and state will find this book a rich resource.

With Ellery's Protest, Stephen Solomon has written a compelling and thoroughly engaging account of how one Abington family, with the help of the ACLU, made history by convincing the Supreme Court to strike down Bible readings in the public schools in 1962. Solomon not only tells us the story of how the Schempp family's protest within the Abington public schools made it all the way to the highest court in the land, but he also paints a much broader historic landscape. Solomon traces the evolution of religious freedom in the U.S. (so different from Europe's history of bloody intolerance) and shows how the inclusion of the free exercise of religion clause in the First Amendment gave rise to this country's defining belief in the separation of church and state.

The story Solomon tells is riveting, in large part because he takes the time to describe the colorful minor characters that populate this story - people like Madalyn Murray O'Hair, who sued the Baltimore schools and found herself and her son the target of vicious harassment and attack. (O'Hair's lawsuit reached the Supreme Court around the same time as the Schempp case and was considered along with it). Solomon vividly shows how such an historic decision hung on the leanings of one or two Supreme Court Justices, a timely reminder in an era when so many other civil liberties are at stake.

In Ellery's Protest, Stephen D. Soloman, clearly brings out Ellery Schempp's intentions and the thrust of the lawyers who used his protest as a vehicle for changing the landscape of public schools. The issue is not so much about the free exercise of religion, as it is limiting the influence of Christianity in schools. The private conversations recorded here are very telling. Schempp was an atheist and strongly opposed to Christianity. His goal was to provoke his educators. For example, he chose to read the Koran during a Bible reading period, not because he believed it, but because of the reaction he knew it would cause. He was not disappointed.
Despite the title of the book, Soloman, a First Amendment lawyer, spends the bulk of the book providing a detailed background of other church and state education cases leading up to and following the Schempp Decision by the U.S. Supreme Court. Like Ellery, he has a larger point that he wants to make.
For many, the extensive treatment of the lines drawn between the King James Version of the Bible and the Roman Catholic Douay Version will seem artificial - and they are. They are simply two English versions. At this point in time the distinctions have lost much of their force and, in this, Soloman lives in the past. In his historical litany of the cruelty of Protestant educators toward Bible reading protesters, it would have been fairer to have pointed out that corporal punishment was widely used in schools for non-religious issues as well.
While Soloman is scathing of the Religious Right and conservatives, he missed an opportunity to take them to task for choosing their battles poorly (such as Goldsboro). And if Soloman really does advocate the free exercise of religion in public schools, his failure to mention the development of extensive guidelines for religious clubs in public schools by the U.S. Department of Education under the Clinton Administration in the 1990s that brought a lot of peace to the schools and facilitated the free exercise of faith by more students is a curious omission.
Ellery's Protest is an interesting read that will probably confirm what you thought about Bible reading and prayer in public school before you read the book.