I’ve been seeing tons of things flying around the internet bemoaning the lack of God in schools and how this is why we have school shootings. Things, specifically, like t-shirts with an exchange of letters between God and a concerned student, where the student asks God why he lets bad things happen in school and God responds he isn’t allowed in schools.
1) There is nothing stopping a child from praying in school. Obviously, there is a question of doing so at the appropriate time and without disrupting other students at work, but seriously. The laws are there to prevent teachers and administrators from pushing their personal religion on students or mistreating or singling out students based on religious differences. This actually works in favor of Christian students most of the time, so I don’t see why it’s a big deal. (No, your child may not be allowed to pray over the loudspeaker or with 10 of their friends in front of the flagpole, but if your kid needs a megaphone or a group of people to talk to god, I’d say there are some very serious things missing from your religious instruction at home.)
2) How exactly is it that an omnipotent God can be kept out of any place if he really wants to be there? This same God destroyed cities and turned people into pillars of salt when they did things he disagreed with. He really can’t get into a public school because of US laws? Really? I had no idea our laws were so powerful!
3) Assuming God is real, God “lets” bad, even horrible, things happen in all sorts of places, even those where he’s “allowed.” People were shot at a church just last month. Unless you buy into the belief that God only lets bad things happen to people he doesn’t like or who have wronged him in some way or who haven’t prayed enough for his help—and virtually all Christians in this day and age agree that this isn’t the case—then you can’t argue that the reason school shootings happen is because God isn’t allowed there. Horrible things can (and do) happen anywhere to all sorts of people.
4) This entire line of discussion is a distraction from actual things that cause school shootings: namely mental illness, how easy it is for someone to get a gun in this country, and how appealing our culture has made it to be a mass murderer. If you want to discuss the merits of public schools taking up the practice of religious indoctrination, that’s fine, but to place the blame for horrors like this from happening based on the bizarre idea that there is anywhere your all-powerful God can’t go because of silly human laws is absurd and honestly kind of spiteful, because if you reverse-engineer this line of thinking, it basically says that people who don’t share your beliefs and actively promote them deserve to be mowed down in schools and shopping malls because they don’t believe in your God. Gross.