The Power of Prayer, Denied

by Stephen L. Carter

Stephen L. Carter is a professor of law at Yale University, Connecticut, and is the author of The Culture of Disbelief and the forthcoming Integrity. Here is the text of an article he wrote for the op-ed pages of The New York Times of January 31, 1996. Reprinted with permission. Copyright © 1996 The New York Times Company.

When Thomas Jefferson described religious freedom as "the most inalienable and sacred of all human rights," he could not have imagined that the time would come when American citizens would be forced to pay ruinous damages for exercising it.

But that is the result of the Supreme Court's decision last week not to review the case of McKown v. Lundman. That decision let stand a Minnesota Court of Appeals ruling upholding an award of $1.5 million to the father of [eleven]-year-old Ian Lundman, who died in 1989 after his mother, stepfather, and [a] Christian Science practitioner tried to use prayer to heal his diabetes.

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