Stormy weather.

Enough time has elapsed since the November 8, 1994, elections to allow us to get a picture of the new church-state weather map. Strong conservative gains in Congress, state legislatures, and state houses, greatly aided by Pat Robertson's so-called Christian Coalition and similar forces, translate into a forecast of unpleasant, even stormy conditions ahead for at least the next two years.

House Speaker Newt Gingrich has promised a vote in the House by July 4 on a proposed amendment to the Constitution to authorize some (as yet unspecified) type of government-sponsored group prayer in public schools. Televangelists and other conservatives continue to stir up support for such an amendment by obscuring the fact that individual students have never lost their right to engage in voluntary silent prayer in school in the manner and at the time of their own choosing. Fortunately, a broad coalition of responsible Christians, Jews, and others, recognizing that there is no such thing as a "one size fits all" prayer and that a healthy religion does not need government to prop it up, has formed to defend church-state separation. It now appears that Gingrich and his dittoheads will fall short of the votes they need to get an amendment through Congress.

Defeat of a prayer amendment will not be the end of the story. Senator Jesse Helms (Republican-North Carolina) will probably try again, as he did last year, to get Congress to amend a public-education bill to cut off federal funding to school districts that do not go along with his notion of allowing group devotions in local public schools. It was in 1984 that Congress, spooked by fears of retribution at the polls for having defeated President Reagan's school-prayer amendment, passed an "equal access" bill to permit religious clubs in public schools without adequate safeguards. Today, a reawakened fear of televangelists' wrath might lead Congress to pass additional legislation to further weaken church-state separation.

Another piece of mischief that could emerge from Congress, despite the budget-cutting mood, is legislation to provide tax aid to sectarian private schools through a voucher plan. Some politicians may feel that it is expedient to throw some sort of bone to the radical religious right, despite the fact that polls and referenda have shown that most Americans do not want to be taxed to support nonpublic schools which are not under public control, which practice forms of discrimination and selectivity not allowed in public schools, and which exist primarily (as Philadelphia's Cardinal Bevilacqua admitted recently) for the purpose of sectarian indoctrination.

Voucher plans are being promoted with ferocious intensity in Pennsylvania, Ohio, Wisconsin, Arizona, Texas, and other states. (Readers wishing to pass on or obtain more information about these voucher battles or other church,state issues may write to me at P.O. Box 6656, Silver Spring, MD 20916).

Conservative legislative shifts are likely also to lead to renewed campaigns to weaken reproductive rights. While there is no prospect that Roe v. Wade will be overturned, anti-choice forces in Congress and state legislatures will surely try to reduce access to abortion services by further restricting Medicaid funding for poor women. Curiously, efforts to reduce welfare spending are likely to increase incentives for abortion a fact that has induced certain splits within anti-choice ranks.

Meanwhile, Senator Helms and Representative Chris Smith (Republican-New Jersey) have indicated that they will try to get Congress to slash U.S. funding for international family-planning programs, despite the fact that the Clinton administration and most other responsible governments agreed at the United Nation's Conference on Population and Development in Cairo last September on the importance of bringing population growth into line with the carrying capacity of our planet.

The forecast, in short, is for rough sailing ahead. But where is it written that we are always supposed to have smooth sailing? In the words of the anonymous author of the medieval "Poem of El Cid," we must buckle on our swords and do battle.

Let me briefly comment on two new books in the church-state field.

Ronald B. Flowers' That Godless Court? Supreme Court Decisions on Church-State Relationships (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 1994; 188 pp., $15.99) is a lucid, authoritative, extraordinarily comprehensive, and yet concise introduction to the full range of religious freedom and church-state rulings by the nation's highest court. Flowers, chair of the Department of Religion at Texas Christian University, is a solid church-state separationist who presents the Supreme Court's work in this arena with reliable objectivity and balance.

Although this book stands alone, attorneys and other professionals might also care to have Toward Benevolent Neutrality: Church, State, and the Supreme Court by Robert T. Miller and Ronald Flowers. This compilation of the texts of Supreme Court rulings on church-state issues was published by Baylor University Press in 1992, with annual supplements.

Also useful is Finding Common Ground: A First Amendment Guide to Religion and Public Education, edited by Charles C. Haynes (Nashville, TN: The Freedom Forum First Amendment Center at Vanderbilt University, 1994; $9.50). This book, however, is some, thing of a mixed bag. On the positive side, the sections dealing with the law regarding religion and public education are written by Oliver Thomas, the constitutional lawyer who was one of the key figures in the campaign to get Congress to pass the Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993. And the rest of the book contains a great deal of useful information and guidance on what public schools may and may not do with regard to religion. The editor errs, however, in underestimating the difficulties and problems in teaching about religion with adequate safeguards and sufficient balance and objectivity. He also touts the seriously flawed curriculum Living with Our Deepest Differences: Religious Liberty in a Pluralistic Society (of which he is the principal author) as well as the Williamsburg Charter, which I have analyzed critically in this column and elsewhere.

Haynes writes in this book that "all stakeholders must be fully represented" in the development of policy regarding religion in public schools, yet Haynes himself admitted to me several years ago that he wanted humanists, Unitarian Universalists, and other "stakeholders" excluded from deliberations in Washington aimed at developing policy guidelines. In other words, his practice does not live up to his preaching. And in the book's acknowledgements, he pays first tribute to British writer Os Guinness, designer of the Williamsburg Charter, who hired Haynes to be the architect of the Living with Our Deepest Differences curriculum (and who declined to comply with a Pennsylvania court agreement to pay his first team of curriculum writers). With all its resources, the Freedom Forum certainly could have and should have hired someone more suitable to prepare this book.

Edd Doerr is president of the American Humanist Association and executive director of Americans for Religious Liberty. He has authored several books focusing on church-state separation.