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Carl Esbeck, the R.B. Price Professor Emeritus of Law and the Isabella Wade & Paul C. Lyda Professor Emeritus of Law, was quoted in a recent article in Christianity Today. The article addressed potential legal issues with the Trump White House issuing a suggestion that all Americans pray for at least one hour a week.
Carl Esbeck teaches constitutional law at the University of Missouri School of Law and has authored Supreme Court briefs on many religious liberty cases over the years.
He recently published an essay about some of the recent state laws requiring the display of the Ten Commandments in public school classrooms. Those laws are an establishment of religion, he argued, involving a “captive audience” of minor age and the potential “loss of a government benefit if the religious observance was refused.”
In contrast, “the suggestion to adults to pray is not an establishment,” he said in an email to CT. But he added that since religious pluralism exists in the US, pluralism “suggests that at most times officials, when speaking in official capacity, not be about protecting only Christians from discrimination.”