Defend Our Religious Freedoms
We believe that an athlete’s success should be decided by the natural talent and practiced skill of the athletes themselves. We believe that a student’s success should be determined by the student’s own knowledge, preparation, and mental acuity. When a baseball player uses steroids to improve his performance, we say his success is unearned. When a student plagiarizes her essay or sneaks note-covered index cards into an exam, we say she cheated. In short, we believe that in competitive endeavors—whether academic, athletic, or something else entirely—peoples’ success ought to depend on their own personal abilities. Outside aid, whether from illicit drugs or hidden note cards, allows a person to perform better than he or she deserves, and so we ban such outside aid.
[pullquote]In short, we believe that in competitive endeavors—whether academic, athletic, or something else entirely—peoples’ success ought to depend on their own personal abilities.[/pullquote]
This has interesting implications for religion and prayer that I’d like to explore. A particularly devout student may pray for wisdom and success before taking an important exam. An especially devout athlete might pray for skill and his team’s victory. Ordinarily we think there’s no problem with that—people have the right to believe whatever they want, pray or not pray as they choose. But what are these prayers if not requests for outside aid? Surely, if God decided to act on an athlete’s request and grant that player the extra talent needed to win, that would skew the results of the competition. The miraculous extra talent isn’t one’s own, it’s given to the player from the outside, which is exactly what the player was praying for. If God acted on a student’s prayer and granted her wisdom while she took her MCATs, that success would be unearned, and her improved score would place her above many students who worked harder and longer and smarter. But I’m not writing to argue that students and athletes shouldn’t pray for success. I’m writing to ask a single, vital question: why are these types of prayers not treated as the cheating attempts they so clearly are?
The most obvious answer is that universities do not consider them realistic attempts to cheat. Picture a student who asks a friend to whisper him the answers during a test. That’s cheating even if the friend refuses the request. In the eyes of the university it’s the attempt that counts, so we can’t pick out a difference between prayer and more secular cheating solely from the actual success of the student or athlete. Now picture a student who asked his classmate to telepathically send him the answers to test questions, and who did so as a genuine, un-ironic attempt to receive assistance with the exam. He would not be penalized. Academic integrity committees do not regard this as an attempt that has any chance of success, which is presumably why the student is not punished. This attempt at telepathic cheating is blatantly absurd, and this leads us to the most likely reason that institutions do not treat prayer as cheating. They see prayers for success as similarly absurd, with similar chances of success.
Whether you’re religious yourself or not, you should be seriously offended by this. We have a right, both legal and moral, to practice any religion or none at all. Most of us value this right regardless of our personal religious view. By implicitly declaring our prayers absurd, by implicitly ruling that obviously a person cannot actually receive divine aid, these universities disrespect and discredit any religion with such a theology. If it were individual professors or individual university employees who held this view, that would be fine. It might be fine even if it were every professor and every university employee who held this view. But anti-religious sentiment should not be codified in a university’s rules and policies. Such institutional dismissal of religion is discriminatory and disrespectful in a way that our laws usually forbid, and in a way that our morals usually abhor.
[pullquote]Such institutional dismissal of religion is discriminatory and disrespectful…[/pullquote]
The only way for our institutions to avoid showing religion this implicit but profound disrespect is to prohibit such behavior as we prohibit other realistic attempts at cheating. Our universities must regulate the prayers of their devout students as religiously as they regulate other forms of academic dishonesty. Prayers for wisdom, for knowledge, for success on a test or in a sporting competition, for divine aid of any kind in any competitive endeavor, must for the sake of our religious freedom be forbidden. Only then will our fundamental right to worship be protected.
Do not be deceived: this form of religious discrimination goes far beyond attempted cheating, and even after we see this change implemented there will be work to do. Our next goal should be more ambitious; we must ensure that those who pray for the deaths of others are prosecuted for attempted murder. These individuals have avoided their just punishment long enough.
Jack Goldberg ’19 studies in the College of Arts & Sciences. He can be reached at jackgoldberg@wustl.