In another special report, NBC News presents the Supreme Court prayer decision.

The High Court's rulings on the mandatory use of the Bible and the Lord's Prayer

in the public schools of Pennsylvania. In 1962 and 63, the U.S. Supreme Court handed down a pair

of landmark rulings that some Americans celebrated as a fulfillment of the founding father's

original vision for this country, erecting what Thomas Jefferson called a wall of separation

between church and state.

Today, the United States Supreme Court ruled that it violates the Constitution to require

reading the Bible or reciting prayers as a religious exercise in public schools.

In Baltimore, each school day had begun with the reading of Bible verses

and recitation of the Lord's Prayer.

Others will be done. I will be done. On your blessed to the same. Others saw the rulings

in a darker light. They believed ending the century-old tradition of public school prayer

was an attack on America's Christian roots.

Today's decision,

instead of serving to protect

and to preserve religious freedom,

has rendered a decision

which is offensive to everyone

who wishes to keep this a religious nation.

To some conservative Christians, this decision, not slavery, was America's original sin.

They believed the court school prayer ban helped fuel what they viewed as America's moral decline

in the years that followed,

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