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Will this change Knox County schools’ policy?
Posted By katie allison granju
I’ve blogged before about Knox County schools’ policy of allowing certain religious groups special access to schoolchildren during school hours on school property under the banner of offering “character building” activities.
Now a federal judge has ruled that a Middle Tennessee school can no longer do what appears to be pretty much the same thing Knox County has been doing.
“The overtly religious purpose of the group overshadowed any secular purpose it might have had,” the judge wrote in his 59-page decision. “The effect of the group’s predominant religious purpose was to advance Christianity at Lakeview.”
So the question now arises whether Knox County will pay heed to this ruling in allowing groups such as the Franklin Graham crusade into the schools.
What do you think?
May 30th, 2008
Maybe that’s a question WBIR should ask?
This is the right decision, Katie. Churches should not be using public school as their own mission fields. The kids are at school to get an education, not faith.
Faith is meant to be taught at church and in the home.
Being decidedly UNreligious myself, I personally have no problem with religious groups being allowed to come into schools and offer character building exercises, just as long as it is ALL religious groups that are allowed to do so and none are excluded.
If Christian groups can come in, then so too should Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, Pagan, Wiccan, Jewish and other religious groups be allowed to offer programs as well. All the programming should be voluntary for children who wish to participate and it probably should not be offered during regular class time, but it would be acceptable to have meetings after regular school hours.
After all, it’s only fair that if one religion is represented, then ALL religions should be represented. Of course, parents always have the option of keeping the religious teaching and proselytizing separate from a secular education by participating in Sunday School at the church or place of worship of their choice…
The Lakeview ruling from Mt. Juliet is finally in. I had been watching and waiting for that ruling for several months—thought it would never come at the snail’s pace the judge was following. If you had half a brain and had actually read the legal complaint that was filed with the court (as well as looked at the evidence presented), you would understand.
This was just another typical example of a Christian fundamentalist group using subterfuge and working on the sly to gain access to a captive group of school children in a public school to rescue them from either religous indifference or more egregious snares such as attending Sunday school at Catholic, United Methodist, Presbyterian, Episcopal, etc. churches. You see. Parents and certain churches cannot be trusted with the religious education of their own children because they do not hold to a thing called “right doctrine.” In simplest terms, right doctrine means “…we have the the one true way of belief and everybody else is wrong. Therefore, we are going to take over the government on the sly and eventually use the law and state police power to FORCE YOU TO BELIEVE EXACTLY WHAT WE BELIEVE OR ELSE YOU ARE REALLY GONNA GET IT BAD.”
Why is this “Lakeview Thing” happening so much over and over again in so many places around the country? Well, the short answer is that Christian fundamentalism as a system of belief is dying. This so-called resurgence of Christian fundamentalism since about 1979 is not a resurgence at all—although it might look like one on the surface. It is really a supernova, the last bright flare up of a star before it explodes from within and dies. One of the most frequent statistics to back this up is regularly quoted by the fundamentalists themselves. They claim that 88 percent of their youth leave their churches when they grow up and never come back again. They attribute this exodus to a hostile culture that refuses to believe that the world is only 5000 years old and that tolerates the existence of Budweiser—among many other similarly silly things. They never stop to think that they might be the ones running their own children away from Jesus with their pharasaic rigidity, whacky political shenanigans, hostility to science, and a faith that is very nearly devoid of the LOVE that Jesus and the Apostle Paul held to be of paramount importance.
The people who adhere to Christian fundamentalism are scared and desperate—just like their Muslim fundamentalist counterparts in the Middle East who are experiencing the same thing in the face of globalization. Feeling uncomfortable in the society around them and having nowhere to run, these people have decided that their only hope is to take over the government and bring people like you and me under their “dominion.” If you do not understand what that is, go to an on-line source, look up the term “Dominion Theology,” and do some reading. If you are a normal church-going person (or even if you are not), you will be amazed. Yes, these people are just plain nuts. However, the thing you probably do not know is that the leaders of the Southern Baptist Convention and a number of parachurch organizations are close friends with these dominionists, and some of the dominionists have actually infiltrated such organizations (and our government) and are even now actually influencing policy. This is not conspiracy theory. This is definitively known and documented by honest scholars.
What do we do?
1) Well, the first thing is that we support our federal courts in decisions like the one at Lakeview School in Mt Juliet. The constitution protects Catholic children, United Methodist children, Jewish children, and the children of other religious groups from the excesses of these fundamentalists—but only if you support the courts and stand behind them. The constitution that protects you can be eroded, and there are groups out their striving everyday to do just that. If you do not want to find yourself and your children one day as inmates of a religious concentration camp, you need to be vigilant. Yes, the Jews of Poland said that could not possibly ever happen in their country too. Look at what happened.
2) We remember that Christian fundamentalists are our brothers and sisters too. We let them know that they have a full American right under that same constitution to believe and worship however they wish. This is their right too. We must defend that too. However, we also make it clear that a line has been drawn in the sand. We will not, under any circumstances whatsoever, tolerate attempts from them to bully or otherwise coerce us or our children into believing what they do—and that we will never allow them to take over our government at any level so they can force their beliefs upon us.
3) My church is the United Methodist Church. The leaders and membership of the mainline churches in the United States (and other churches such as AME Zion, Greek Orthodox, etc.) need to step up to homeplate and make it clear that they are a united front against these fundamentalist attempts at coercion and that we are no longer going to be silent. We will work against them and rebuke them at every turn until they stop it.