KNEELING IN RESISTANCE; ALABAMA REGION IN UPHEAVAL OVER SCHOOL-PRAYER INJUNCTION.

Byline: Kevin Sack The New York Times

The students are demonstrating here, walking out of Boaz High School by the hundreds at the beginning of class Tuesday to form a ring of prayer on the tennis courts. The next day, 59 students at Alabama Avenue Middle School in nearby Albertville left their classes and marched to City Hall. They also prayed there. After the football game between Boaz and Crossville on Thursday night, students from both schools met at midfield to pray. There have been similar displays at Sardis High, Glencoe High and other schools across the North Alabama hill country known as Sand Mountain.

The turmoil is not limited to the schools. Ever since Oct. 30, when a federal judge issued an injunction against a 1993 state law allowing student-led, nonproselytizing, voluntary prayer in the public schools, politicians around the state have railed against the decision. Republican Gov. Fob James Jr. has harshly criticized the judge and said he will do all he can to restore prayer to the schools. The state attorney general, Bill Pryor, also a Republican, plans to appeal the ruling.

Also pitching in is Judge Roy S. Moore of Etowah County Circuit Court in nearby Gadsden, who already has won national celebrity for fighting, both in court and in the media, to keep a tablet of the Ten Commandments hanging behind his bench. Moore ruled this week that the injunction by U.S. District Court Judge Ira DeMent of Montgomery was not the law of Etowah County, and was an ``unconstitutional abuse of power'' by the federal judiciary.

James, for his part, issued a statement Tuesday pledging to ``resist DeMent's order by every legal and political means, with every ounce of strength I possess.'' He declined in a news conference to disclose how he might resist the order, but Alabamians are mindful that the governor threatened earlier this year to call out the National Guard to protect Moore's Ten Commandments tablet. Told at the news conference about the student prayer walkouts, James responded, ``I don't blame them at all.''

James' opponents accuse him of provoking disobedience, and they maintain that he is once again evoking the imagery of previous confrontations between the state of Alabama and the federal courts. The only difference, they say, is that the subject now is religion, not race.

``For the governor of a state to do this is exactly like George Wallace standing in the schoolhouse door,'' said Pamela L. Sumners, the lawyer for the plaintiffs who are seeking to invalidate the 1993 school prayer law.

With the help of James and Moore, the Sand Mountain region of Alabama has become the nexus of the latest crusade for the reparation of church and state. But it is by no means the only battleground in the South these days.

In Decatur, Ga., last month, school officials allowed the pastor of New Missionary Baptist Church to conduct a service at Southwest DeKalb High School during school hours after a student had been stabbed to death. The county's public safety commissioner, Tom Brown, a member of the church, told the students, ``We are here in defiance of the Supreme Court, calling the name of Jesus Christ.'' And in Greenville, S.C., this week, a group of evangelicals announced that it was giving up on public education altogether and was beginning a campaign to urge Christian parents to pull their children out of public schools.

In this part of Alabama, prayer has remained as common as pop quizzes in many schools, despite decades of federal court rulings against the practice. Until DeMent issued his injunction, sectarian prayers were commonly recited over public address systems at the beginning of the day, and at athletic events, assemblies and commencement ceremonies, said a number of school administrators and students.

``Everyone around here is God-believing,'' said Jermaine Davis, an 18-year-old senior at Boaz High. ``Everyone around here believes in Christ, as far as I know. Having Jesus in our school is something that we need. It gives us strength.''

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Photo: Students from Sardis, Ala., High School gather to pray in a protest of a U.S. District Court ruling defining religious practices allowed for schools.

Associated Press