In 1982, some Christian denominations in Utah Valley explicitly asked that vocal prayer not be conducted in public schools.

According to the October 1982 issue of the Sunstone Review, a statement from the Utah Valley Ministerial Association said, “Religious ideas or doctrines are conveyed in vocal prayer and there is already pressure upon children in this area to conform to the predominant religious thinking.” The Association estimated that “75 percent of the elementary teachers do have prayer” and encouraged them “not to have vocal classroom prayer.”

The request was part of a larger effort to curb religious discrimination in Utah Valley. The statement also objected to school counselors encouraging seminary enrollment, announcing seminary activities on school intercoms and school calendars, and allowing seminary teachers to use school faculty lounges.

Another thing that rankled the Association was people using the terms “brother,” “sister,” “our bishop,” “our stake president,” and “our prophet,” in classrooms, at PTA meetings, and other public-school functions. During a meeting with the Orem Education Advisory Council, the Council commented, “The ‘Brother’ and ‘Sister’ talk is so very cultural here that it’s very hard for everyone to stop such talk. It’s the ‘our’ terms on bishop or prophet that indeed should be stopped.” However, they noted that, if LDS honorifics were dropped, so should “reverend” and “pastor.”

This was actually the second time the Association had issued the statement. It had been issued six years before, and though the Association said it had seen improvements, recent events showed that the issue needed to be raised again. They cited an LDS teacher flipping a crucifix an elementary-school student was wearing and asking why she was “wearing dead bodies.” They also noted incidents of teachers singling out non-LDS students in the classroom and asked that students not be “asked to identify and/or defend their religious beliefs in the public schools.”

The Association said it reissued the statement because it believed that the offenses “occur mainly out of naiveté, not belligerence.”