Alberta town fights to keep school prayer

CALGARY • Parents in the small, predominantly Christian town of Taber, Alta., are marshalling forces against their public school board’s decision to stop reciting the Lord’s Prayer during class.

Taber’s Dr. Hamman School is believed to be one of the last public schools to recite the prayer, once a common ritual across Canada. The Horizon School Division decided to stop broadcasting the prayer over the school’s PA system after a parent complained that her child was disciplined for forgetting the words.

“I know that as a community, not everybody is of the same faith. But really, the foundation to Canada and the reason a lot of things were established was on the Christian faith,” said Abe Fehr, a pastor with the New Life Church in the rural town.

The pastor said the Lord’s Prayer is just a benign blessing, intended to praise the local community as well as the Lord.

“We would love to see it back in,” said Mr. Fehr. “I think it’s a real downer for the Christian community to see it not there anymore.”

A 1988 Ontario court ruling effectively nixed compulsory prayer in public schools across the country — except in Alberta and Saskatchewan, which negotiated a constitutional provision assuring their right to maintain religiosity in schools as part of their entry into Confederation in 1905.

Although the matter was long ago deemed settled in other provinces, prayer in schools is still a hot-button issue in rural Alberta, which is dotted with religious enclaves and devout communities. In 2011, a principal in the Edmonton suburb of St. Albert became a controversial figure after he suspended the Lord’s Prayer at Sturgeon Heights

It’s a real downer for the Christian community

School. The public school had been reciting the verse for more than four decades.

In Taber, parent Melanie Bell told the Lethbridge Her

ald that she wrote the school board about the prayer after her child was disciplined for not participating.

“I feel religion has no need in the public school system,” she said, adding that it wouldn’t be fair to ask her children to excuse themselves during the recitation.

Ms. Bell told the paper that she wasn’t motivated by a dislike of religion; her family has roots in Catholic, Mormon and Baptist beliefs. However, she felt that prayers should be better left to the breakfast table, or church.

More-religious parents in Taber show no signs of ac- cepting the school board’s decision.

Harry Unger, pastor at the Taber Evangelical Free Church, said several parents were organizing a petition to force the school board to reconsider. They did not want to speak to the media, he said.

“There’s many other schools that have chosen otherwise, to take the Lord’s Prayer out of the school’s daily routine, but in this division there’s a high concentration of parents who want that,” he said.

Although Taber is home to religious schools as well as the public one, Mr. Unger said the board should still be responsive to the desires of parents.

“The parents who send their kids to public school still value it,” he said. “Just because it’s a public school doesn’t mean they cannot have it. The school division should do what the constituents in the community embrace.”

Mr. Unger noted the community is religiously diverse: Taber boasts large Mormon, Mennonite, Protestant and Catholic presences.

According to Statistics Canada, 86% of Taber residents were identified with a Christian denomination in 2011; the other 14% had no religious affiliation. The NHS data recorded no Hindus, Jews, Muslims, Sikhs, Buddhists or people who followed aboriginal spirituality.

While some parents are clearly perturbed by the prayer issue, Mr. Unger said overall opinion has been mixed.

“The Christian community is hard to gauge because everybody is outspoken on the issue,” he said. “If there’s going to be a petition, that indicates there’s not a lot of joy [in the school board’s decision] but at the same time, we want to have the best result in the end and to speak for all parents, not just some.”

Representatives from the Horizon School District were unable to comment before press time.