No Free Bibles For You!
The Gideons are no longer allowed to distribute free bibles in Anderson School District 2. The School Board says they’re not legally allowed to encourage or discourage religion (separation of church and state and all that).
Why are they making the change now? Some parent complained about it. If it weren’t for that one parent, they’d probably still be doing it.
Upstate Gideon member Morris Locke said he’s disappointed.
“For many years now, we’ve been able to go into District 2, give students in fifth grade a copy of God’s word.” he said. “We don’t have prayer, we don’t read any scriptures. We just make the Bible available to students who’d like to have them.”
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OK, so you’ve been shut out of the schools. You’re going to stay shut out of the schools, too. That’s a dead end. Don’t pursue it.
Instead, you need to find some other place where kids congregate to give them free Bibles. Arcades, parks, etc.
Then, if you’re shooed away from there, why not go door-to-door offering free Bibles?
If you’re turned away from apartments with no solicitation signs, why not mail copies to each apartment?
If your goal is to get Bibles into the as many hands as possible, then you’ve still got options, if you’re willing to take them.
That said:
“I feel with all my heart that our religious freedom is being taken away little by little, step by step,” Rev. Arnold Hiette said.
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I get so sick of this. We are not losing our religious liberties. I mean, look at your President!! Not only that, but look at the fact that he’s appointing two Supreme Court justices! (But you’ll still complain about the “liberal courts” until the day you die)
You can still go door-to-door and witness. You can speak freely about Christ, or whatever else you want to talk about. You can own and read Bibles, in dozens of translations. No one will draw a gun on you if you pray. What right, exactly, has been taken from you?!!
At the same meeting, the school board also banned open prayer at school, but said that moments of silence are allowed.
Note who made this decision: The school board. Not the courts. Not the legislature. Just some petty, low-level government officials over-reacting to one parent’s complaint.
These are people that the parents put into office. If they don’t like it, they can vote them out in the next election.
Note also that a government-run school is not the same as your house. Banning kids from praying out loud for their food at lunch is not the same as the Spanish Inquisition.
Don’t cry wolf here. The government has not infringed your right to religion; save the alarm for when the government really is trying to take away your rights.
October 14th, 2005 at 10:56 am
Are you saying that because President Bush claims to be a Christian, we haven’t lost any religious liberties? If so, I don’t follow your reasoning.
October 15th, 2005 at 10:19 am
Here’s my reasoning: If the American government is so hostile to religious freedom as our pastorate would have us to believe, then we would never have such a religious man in the presidency, the highest and most powerful office in that government.
October 15th, 2005 at 3:46 pm
If the BIBLE is singled out as the ONLY thing not able to be distributed it IS an attack on religious freedom. If no distributions are permitted, then the limitation is against distribution, not religion.
Forbidding prayer (spoken, thought or otherwise) is clearly a violation of 1st amendment rights. Prayer is being singled out, i.e. certain types of speech are permitted, but not others. The government school should not be allowed to control the type of speech that is not UNIVERSALLY offensive, like profanity. If prayer is singled out by the complaint of a few parents then I should be able to demand than no one be allowed to talk about what offends me–movies, drugs, cats, etc.
October 17th, 2005 at 11:10 am
It may be true that your pastorate exaggerates the problem. However, when it comes to religious freedom I am more concerned about institutional policies than persons in office, because the policies last longer. In three years there probably won’t be a president claiming to be an Evangelical, but that school board will still be banning Bibles and teaching its kids to “separate” their public lives from their spiritual. The latter will have the most lasting influence, I suspect.
October 17th, 2005 at 4:49 pm
Just to clarify, I was speaking generally, as in (almost) all Christian leaders.
October 17th, 2005 at 5:10 pm
I haven’t researched this, but I imagine that the district doesn’t allow the distribution of any religious “advertising,” whether Christian or Muslim or Mormon or whatever. The idea, as I understand it, is that public schools are to take an entirely a-religious stance and to leave the religious indoctrination to the parents.
I agree, with exceptions. I can see why the schools wouldn’t want teachers leading prayers in classrooms, for the same reasons that they wouldn’t want teachers leading seances in classrooms. But teachers/students should be allowed to pray pray on their own or with a group of their friends. There’s nothing wrong with that.
Profanity is not universally offensive. There are quite a number of people who don’t think twice about profanity.
Prayer is different from conversation. One is a religious experience, the other is a casual communication among friends. One can be offensive to others, the other generally is not.
And, while I agree that people ought to be allowed to pray on their own, I don’t think we should have people leading others in prayer when they don’t want to be led in prayer, i.e. at an assembly, a football game, or a classroom.
What’s the alternative? You could pick a religion for everyone to believe, in which case you are have to either force teachers to pray to a god they don’t believe exists or discriminate religiously in your hiring practices.
You could allow teachers to lead your child in prayer whatever god they want to, but don’t complain when your child prays towards Mecca five times a day.
Or, you could have the public schools stay entirely out of the religious question, which is what we have today.
Is there another alternative that will allow for all of the religious diversity we have in this country?