If ever a decision embodied the heroic, countermajoritarian function we romantically ascribe to judicial review, it was the 1962 decision that struck down school prayer—Engel v. Vitale. Engel provoked more outrage, more congressional attempts to overturn it, and more attacks on the Justices than perhaps any other decision in Supreme Court history. Indeed, Engel’s countermajoritarian narrative is so strong that scholars have largely assumed that the historical record supports our romanticized conception of the case. It does not. Using primary source materials, this Article reconstructs the story of Engel, then explores the implications of this reconstructed narrative. Engel is not the countermajoritarian case it seems, but recognizing that allows us to see Engel for what it is: a remarkably rich account of Supreme Court decisionmaking that furthers a number of conversations in constitutional law. Engel adds a new strand to a burgeoning body of scholarship on the power of culture in general, and social movements in particular, to generate constitutional change. It presents a rare glimpse of the Justices explicitly engaging in a dialogue with the American public. And it exposes qualitative differences in the forms that popular constitutionalism might take, with implications for the theory itself. In the end, Engel still offers valuable insights about Supreme Court decisionmaking and the role of judicial review. They just aren’t the insights we tend to think.