By Robert C. Heath
Founder of Kids for Christ USA, Inc.

Since January, 2001 when I began Kids for Christ USA, it seems as though whenever people hear that we are assisting parents and students to plant and facilitate successful Bible Clubs in the schools, I have been asked one question more than any other. “How are you doing that”?

The reason for this question is that during the last 43 years, we had heard so often that the Bible and prayer had been removed from our schools that we now believed it…myself included! Yet I knew there were certain things that were deemed as “constitutional” with regard to the Bible and prayer. Consequently, my teams and I simply took advantage of this knowledge by telling others.


In the past, I have paralleled United States citizenship with understanding the concept of “who and what the Bible says we are in Christ." I stated that the answer to “how we do what we do” lies in understanding our rights as a citizen of both the Kingdom of heaven and of the United States.

What I did not state was something that I did not yet realize myself. That is, Christians and United States citizens have this in common: More citizens do not truly understand their privileges than do. I think this is because the “church” and the “state” have something else in common: There is an unspoken belief that we should leave understanding of the Bible to preachers and understanding the Constitution to lawmakers. After all, the common man cannot understand them anyway. Consequently, we have made ourselves slaves to our own ignorance.

As you can imagine, I did do a significant amount of research when I began back in 2001 to see where I stood legally before I began this journey. Based on that research, I was very confident that we were functioning within the law.

As you might expect I do periodic checks to see if there have been any new precedents involving the schools. Back in December 2005 during one of these periodic checks, I went to the Internet to see exactly when prayer was removed from America's schools. I knew in my mind that it was either in 1962 or 1963. I typed into Google the phrase, “Bible and Prayer removed from America’s public schools.” I was shocked by this title: “Myth 8: O’Hare removed God / Bible / Prayer from schools.”

Naturally I was intrigued, so I followed the link to the article. I read something that I had never read before. The article told how Madelyn Murray O’ Hair and a Philadelphia man named Ed Schempp challenged mandatory prayer and Bible reading. The result was not as I had heard all my life - that the Bible, God and prayer were removed from the schools. It was and still is that Mandatory Bible Reading and Prayer were removed, BUT THE BIBLE AND PRAYER WERE NEVER REMOVED FROM OUR SCHOOLS!

Let me say that again: God, the Bible and prayer were never removed from America’s public schools!

Since this was the first time I had ever heard such a thing I continued to study. I noticed that I had been reading from an atheist site, so I quickly jumped off as if I had done something wrong. How could any self-respecting minister trust anything he read from an atheist site as truth? So I clicked another link in my “Google” search hoping to find a more credible source. I then found myself reading an article from another organization, the website of the “Americans United for The Separation of Church and State.” They stated, “Nothing in the 1962 or 1963 rulings makes it unlawful for public school students to pray or read the Bible (or any other religious book) on a voluntary basis during their free time.”

They also stated that “Judge Tom Clark said of the 1963 Abington decision, ‘It might well be said that one’s education in not complete without a study of comparative religion or the history of religion and it’s relationship to the advancement of civilization. It certainly may be said that the Bible is worthy of study for its literary and historic qualities. Nothing we have said here indicates that such study of the Bible or of religion, when presented objectively as part of a secular program of education, may not be effected consistently with the first amendment.'"

There is an interesting point I uncovered that only goes to prove that there is no way to tell how this distortion of truth began. While studying law, I went down a rabbit trail in which I found an article by Madelyn Murray O’Hare’s son, William J. Murray. In that article he described his mother as pure evil. He also stated that she often bragged about being the one responsible for single-handedly removing prayer and the Bible from America’s schools. So, I thought maybe I found the source, but then I remembered that I have also heard ministers and Christian musicians make the same comment.

The bottom line is that I grew up hearing and believing that statement. This distortion of the truth runs so deep in our society that most everyone you talk to, Christian or not, believes it to be true.

Based on my research, I have come to this conclusion: IT IS A DISTORTION of the ruling. We as believers have far more freedom in the schools than we have been taking advantage. It’s time we get active in reaching this generation of children who now walk the halls of America’s schools. It's our right!