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The Freedom From Religion Foundation has ensured that a teacher in Georgia’s Jenkins County School System will not be able to force first-grade students to recite a prayer right before lunch.

A concerned parent informed the state/church watchdog that a first-grade teacher at Jenkins County Elementary School (in Millen, Ga.) was leading her students in prayer every day before they went to the cafeteria for lunch. FFRF learned that the teacher directed students to recite this explicitly religious prayer:

God is great. God is good. We will thank Him for our food. ABCEDFG. Thank you, God, for feeding me.

The parent who contacted FFRF explained that the situation “floored” them and their spouse as the teacher’s actions felt “so blatant.” “Whether Christian, another religion, or not religious, parents deserve to be in the driver’s seat of their child’s spiritual education. Math isn’t personal. Religion is,” the parent stated.

FFRF asked the district to investigate the situation and take immediate action to ensure that the teacher stopped leading her students in prayer. 

“The Jenkins County School System has an obligation under the law to make certain that its teachers are not violating students’ rights by proselytizing or leading children in prayer,” FFRF Staff Attorney Sammi Lawrence wrote to the district.

The teacher crossed the constitutional line by directing first-grade students to pray before every lunch, FFRF pointed out. Her actions signaled clear government favoritism toward religion over nonreligion, and Christianity above all other faiths. Students in first grade, as young as 6 years old, are extraordinarily impressionable and vulnerable to teacher influence.

Thankfully, the district was willing to listen to reason. 

A letter from the school’s legal counsel confirms that the district took corrective action.

“The superintendent and elementary school administration met with [the teacher] to discuss and explain the First Amendment as it relates to the Free Exercise Clause and how requiring children to pray prior to lunch could be a violation,” Cory O. Kirby has responded. “[The teacher] has agreed to refrain from requiring any such student recitation.” 

FFRF is always pleased to remedy First Amendment violations.

“It is an abuse of authority for any teacher to subject a captive audience of children in our public schools to religious worship, but the extreme youth of these students makes this situation especially egregious,” FFRF Co-President Annie Laurie Gaylor states. “Our nation’s separation between religion and government was designed to protect students from this exact sort of coercive proselytizing. Religious instruction belongs with parents, not our public schools.” 

The Freedom From Religion Foundation is a national nonprofit organization with over 42,000 members nationwide, including more than 600 members in the state of Georgia. FFRF’s purposes are to protect the constitutional principle of separation between church and state, and to educate the public on matters relating to nontheism.

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