EDITORIAL : SCHOOL PRAYER - AGAIN HOUSE REPUBLICANS ARE TINKERING NEEDLESSLY WITH THE FIRST AMENDMENT.

A familiar election-year issue - school prayer - has resurfaced on Capitol Hill.

House Speaker Newt Gingrich and Rep. Dick Armey of Texas, the Republican majority leader, are calling for the adoption of a constitutional amendment on the subject. Two approaches are being discussed.

One explicitly authorizes ``student-sponsored prayer'' in public schools. The other deals with ``religious freedoms'' in more general terms.

Propelling the discussion are congressmen like Rep. Henry Hyde, an Illinois Republican who is chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, who said last week, ``Public school teachers, who accept reports on witches, forbid students from writing reports on Jesus. This is madness.''

Hyde would have a point if the First Amendment, which has been the last word on the subject for more than 200 years, compelled public school teachers to bar reports on Jesus - or any other religious figure, for that matter. But it doesn't.

The First Amendment, contrary to what some activists say, doesn't require the absolute separation of church and state. Its language (``Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof . . .``) instead seeks to make the government neutral on matters of religion. That's not the same thing as hostility or separation.

What's more, the Supreme Court has been doing a pretty good job of interpreting the First Amendment in a reasonable manner, walking a fine line between the constitutional ban on the establishment of religion on one hand - and the guarantee of freedom of religion on the other.

``Private religious speech, far from being a First Amendment orphan, is as fully protected under the free-speech clause as secular private expression,'' the court said last year. That language was part of a decision permitting a cross in a state park in Ohio where other types of private expression were allowed.

How the First Amendment seeks to ensure neutrality was illustrated again July 19 when the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals held that the practice of the city of Beverly Hills in allowing a Jewish group to place a menorah in a municipal park was unconstitutional.

The court agreed with the plaintiffs, the American Jewish Congress, that the policy violated the First Amendment. It said: ``The park was not an open forum for large, unattended private structures. The city granted an exception to one group.''

In other words, the city was playing favorites in dealing with religious matters. That clearly was wrong under the establishment clause. (There might, however, have been a different outcome if the city had had an even-handed policy.)

The First Amendment works. There is no need to fix it, especially at a time when the debate seems driven more by partisan politics than any demonstrated need for further federal action to protect freedom of religion.