The 14th Amendment applies the limitations to the States. So, state and local governmental bodies can't mandate Bible reading or study in schools, either.
But by using that argument, then my rights as a taxpaying Christian are being violated because secular humanism (basically the religion of atheism) is being forced on the kids in school and my taxes are being used to endorse a religion I don't agree with.
Schools should be religion-neutral. They should not teach or promote any religion nor should they promote atheism (of course, there is nothing wrong with discussing the effects of religion in history, literature or other relevant subjects).
Besides, teacher led Bible reading and prayer is not forcing the kids who don't want to participate to do so. Another fallacy.... that hearing something is the same as being compelled to participate. It's not.
It's promotion of one faith over another through the use of taxpayer dollars, which is unconstitutional. You are compelling non-Christian taxpayers to pay for Christian proselytizing. Would you object to a school in a heavily Muslim area having teachers lead in Koran reading and prayer during school hours?
Good luck with that one. I asked the same question a few days ago and never got an answer. I think it must be because the answer can only be that it's okay to have Bible study because the Bible is true, but it's not okay to have Koran studies because the Koran is false. The problem is that stating it that way makes its constitutional untenability obvious, so they just don't answer the question at all.
Allowing isn't mandating. But that's not good enough for the God haters. They consider allowing to be equivalent to mandating, which it's not, and will sue anyone who wants to exercise their Constitutional right to the free exercise of their religion into silence. Free exercise for me but not for thee.
It's promotion of one faith over another through the use of taxpayer dollars, which is unconstitutional. You are compelling non-Christian taxpayers to pay for Christian proselytizing.
What's actually happening is that you are compelling Christian taxpayers to pay for non-Christian proselytizing. It's promotion of one faith over another through the use of taxpayer dollars, which is unconstitutional.
The problems are that:
1) Atheists think and preach that atheism is neutral as far as religion is concerned and it's not. There can be no neutral position when there's only two sides to an issue. There's either God, or there's not. Either one is a belief system. Suppressing one is only giving the other a monopoly.
2)Atheists who suppress theists because they don't want someone forcing their views on them, sure don't seem to have any problem forcing their atheism on others just because they think they're right. Well, I think that I'm right so why I shouldn't I have it my way instead? Why should they have preference? Are they better than me or equal? What makes them think they should have favored status?
So we have the removal of Christmas break from the school calendar and have the atheist holiday of Winter Recess. Same with Easter and Spring break.
All in a nation based on the Judeo-Christian heritage; the same heritage that gives the atheists their rights in the first place. And then they spit in the face of those very people who gave them the right to follow their non-belief freely by using that very freedom those Christians gave them to take away the rights of other Christians.
Talk about ingratitude.