Giving Jesus a voice in public schools

Foreword: The Federal Equal Access Act - Student-led clubs in public high schools.

"Most student-led, special interest, non-curriculum clubs must be allowed to organize in most U.S. high schools. Their right to assemble is usually protected under a federal law -- the Equal Access Act.

"The law was originally heavily promoted by conservative Christian groups to allow students to organize religious clubs in public secondary schools. These are typically conservative Christian Bible study, fellowship and prayer clubs. One writer estimated that the number of Christian Bible clubs in high schools rose from 100 in 1980 to 15,000 by 1995. The Equal Access Act was a major contributor to this increase.

"The Act affects much more than Christian clubs. Ironically, over opposition from the same Christian groups that sponsored the law, the same legislation is now being used to support the right of students to organize gay/lesbian/bisexual support groups in those same high schools. The Act requires most schools to permit clubs of all religions, and none. Included might be groups which deal with Atheism, Goth culture, Heavy Metal music, Satanism, Wicca, other Neopagan religion, etc. School districts can opt out of the Act by not allowing any non-curriculum clubs."

-- from Religious Tolerance

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Story 1:

An appeals court on Wednesday revived a lawsuit filed by Wiccan students who claimed their high school unfairly refused to recognize their Wiccan study club as a school-sponsored group.

The students from George Washington High School in Piedmont want to affiliate with the Student Body Council, which would give their club, The Good Witches, access to student funds, school property and facilities and the right to post Wiccan material around the school.

The Student Body Council had initially denied that affiliation because The Good Witches limited its membership to Wiccans.

So the Wiccan students sued, claiming that the school district provided waivers to other groups that limited membership based on gender or sexual preference but refused to grant one to a religious group.

The 22nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals reversed the district court's dismissal, stating that the Wiccans had "raised a triable issue of fact." The case goes back to the district court to determine if The Good Witches club was unfairly denied an exemption from the district's nondiscrimination policy based on religion or the content of its speech, under the Equal Access Act.

The Wiccans are being represented in this case by the Allied for Righteousness Defense Fund, a Wiccan legal organization that seeks to protect the rights of Wiccan students across the United States. A spokesman for the ARDF said that "Wiccan clubs have the same constitutional rights as every other club. To discriminate against them on the basis of their beliefs is clearly unconstitutional."


Story 2:

In another state and another high school, a group of students formed a Wiccan/Occult Club and one of the activities of this club was a Wiccan Day of Kindness during which participating students would wear a Wiccan pentagram/pentacle necklace and would be required to do at least three "acts of kindness" on behalf of other students.

The high school's conservative Christian students became enraged over both the establishment of the Wiccan/Occult Club and the Wiccan Day of Kindness. Leaders of the Christian "Jesus Loves You" club, have denounced the Wiccans, claiming their religion is about Satan and witchcraft and a direct slam at the true God and his only begotten son, Jesus Christ. Jane and John Bobsey, co-presidents of the Jesus Loves You club, said that school administrators were endangering the school, indeed they were inviting the wrath of God by allowing the Wiccan club to organize and hold a Wiccan day to do acts of kindness in the school.

The Bobsey twins also reported that on Wiccan/Occult Day, those students who truly loved Jesus and were real, born-again Christians, would skip their classes to read the Bible and pray in the school commons. School administrators said they couldn't do that, and if they went ahead with their plans, even if parents signed permission slips, the school would give them unexcused absences.

George Wright, a member of the Jesus Loves You club, said he was saddened and disappointed that school administrators would allow the Wiccans to do acts of kindness at the school. "Wicca is a terrible, anti-Christian, anti-God religion," he said. "Such groups should not be allowed in American schools as we are a Christian nation. Only Christian students should be allowed to have religiously-based clubs."

Wright and others are in process of organizing a "Christian Purity Day," which will promote sexual abstinence. When asked if that was in response to the Wiccan Day of Kindness, Judith Ann Beguid, also a member of the Jesus Loves You club, said, "Of course it is. Everyone knows that Wiccans are sexual deviates who engage in terrible orgies where everybody gets naked and burns candles and does awful sexual things to each other during the middle of the night in caves outside of town. It's just terrible! Whenever I think about it, I cry. In fact, I'm going to cry now, so I can't say any more!"


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Beginning about a quarter of a century ago, fundamentalist Christian groups set out to establish Bible study/Prayer Clubs in U.S. high schools. That led to a great deal of controversy and numerous lawsuits, the fundamentalists generally claiming that to deny them the right to establish a Christian club was a denial of their constitutional rights.

The courts basically agreed with that position in 1990 (Board of Education of Westside Community Schools v. Mergens) by upholding the Equal Access Act which had been passed by Congress and signed into law in August of 1984.

That has not completely solved the problem, however, as school districts continue to interpret it in such a way that some Christian groups are denied their own clubs. In fact, on April 25, 2008, a "U.S. appeals court ... revived a lawsuit by Christian students who claimed their Washington state school district unfairly refused to recognize their Bible study club as a school-sponsored group."

The case was sent back to the district court for review and another determination.


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The situation gets murkier, however, when elementary schools are invaded by well-organized, well-heeled and well-oiled Christian evangelical machines.

On June 12, 2001, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that public grade schools in the U.S. "must open their doors to after-school religious activities, including those that involve young children, on the same basis as any other after-hours activity that school policy permits."

According to an article by Linda Greenhouse in The New York Times, this meant that "the same constitutional principle the court had already applied to public high schools and colleges" must be extended to elementary schools.

The case had to do with allowing the Good News Club, an evangelical Christian organization use a room in a upstate New York school building ... Justice Clarence Thomas, writing for the majority characterized the club "as teaching character and values from a religious point of view."

Dissenters Ruth Bader Ginsburg and David H. Souter, disagreed, claiming that the Good News Club was not merely about "discussion of a subject from a particular, Christian point of view, but ... an evangelical service of worship calling children to commit themselves in an act of Christian conversion."

Ginsburg and Souter were right and the majority were wrong!

What is so sad is that the majority voted on the basis of their political/religious orientation, not according to the law or the plain reality of the situation. There is a huge amount of material available describing the Good News Clubs and the organization behind it, the Child Evangelism Fellowship, Inc.

Even a quick scan of said material would reveal it is all about evangelizing and only about evangelizing, and therefore should have no place in any public school building in the nation, but especially in an elementary school building with very impressionable children, quite vulnerable to religious "truths" presented by adults in authoritative positions.


In September of 2005, Matthew Staver of the Liberty Counsel's National Liberty Journal had this to say about evangelizing children in our public schools:

"Good News Clubs are the best thing that has happened to public schools. Designed to bring the Gospel to children ages 5-12, Good News Clubs are sponsored by the international ministry of Child Evangelism Fellowship ... CEF is in all fifty states and 155 foreign nations.

"Through its international ministry, CEF bring the Good News of Jesus Christ to more than five million children each year, of which more than one million children make decisions to accept Christ as Lord and Savior...

" ... recent court cases have allowed Good News Clubs to be conducted in public elementary schools immediately after school. ...

" Since the 2001 Supreme Court decision, Good News Clubs have been spreading like wildfire throughout public schools. ... Good News Clubs have been exploding throughout the [Los Angeles Unified] district."

Referring to a South Dakota case, which was won by the Liberty Counsel in 2004, Staver says "public elementary school teachers can now put aside their secular textbooks immediately after the last school bell and bring out their Good News Club materials to teach the Gospel to elementary students.

"Good News Clubs are taught by adults, and the children attend by parental permission. Good News Clubs teach morals and character developed from a Biblical viewpoint. The youngsters sing songs, read Bible stories, memorize Scripture and are taught the Gospel. ...

"Liberty Counsel is working with CEF to implement a five-year strategic plan to get Good News Clubs in every public elementary school in America. There are approximately 65,000 such schools. Thus, there are many open fields for evangelism to take the Good News to public school students immediately after school."

A month later, in Octdober of 2005, Staver wrote the following:

"The so-called 'separation of church and state myth' is often raised like an iron gate to force Christians to check their true faith when they walk on campus. The reality is that not only is this notion untrue, it is illegal. Public schools are not religion-free zones. ..

"Christian Educators Association International (CEIA), Child Evangelism Fellowship (CEF), and Liberty Counsel have teamed up together to set the record straight: the doors of the public schools are open for Christians to take the gospel of Jesus Christ to our youth, many of whom are waiting to hear about a Savior who loves them and forgives sin.


Here's how this works:

CEF, through the Good News Club, distributes fliers to students in an elementary school during the school day -- these fliers are handed out by teachers. One parents complained. "The group has a perfect right to rent the space and have their activity," he said, [but] "the separation of church and state should prevent them from distributing the material in the class during school hours."

Mr. Staver, you'll recall, said "separation of church and state" is a myth. Teachers can do what they want.

In one school the fliers described the Good News Club as "an awesome, safe environment for children to grow and learn about God's love." It also mentioned that "the Bible [is] the main textbook."

Janet Walker, a chapter director for CEF, bouyed by the notion there is no such thing as the separation of church and state, thinks all this is wonderful. The purpose of CEF programs, e.g., the Good News Clubs, is to evangelize children. Walker noted that at the end of each lesson, students are invited to accept Jesus Christ into their lives and be saved.

A business teacher volunteered to work with the Good News Club because "The love of Christ can change a child's heart. Jesus Christ changes lives." She became a volunteer to "do something for eternity."


Some people might call all of this "child abuse."

Maybe, maybe not. But if you are of another non-Christian religion, or if you belong to a mainline Christian denomination or the Roman Catholic or one of the Orthodox churches, you are not going to be happy if your child is conned into attending the Good News Club and comes home to tell you you're not a Christian and need to be "saved."


The problem for both elementary and high school students is that members of these conservative Christian clubs are often not satisfied to remain within the boundaries laid out for them by law and by school officials. In other words, they can't help but proselytize, and in many cases, students not affiliated with these groups are ostracized and made to feel like "outsiders."

Annie Laurie Gaylor, leader of the Freedom From Religion Foundation, says that school Bible clubs are divisive and inappropriate. "We get complaints constantly by high schoolers who feel it creates a hostile environment where they feel aggressively proselytized, where the children and the students who belong to Bible clubs are being treated as better."


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The two stories after the Foreword at the beginning of this essay are creative concoctions based on truth. I made them up, in other words, using facts from real conflicts within real high schools.

One of the points I was making is that this whole business of promoting fundamentalist Christianity within the public schools may blow up in the face of its pious perpetrators. Already we are hearing of Muslim students interested in forming their own Muslim clubs in the public schools. It is likely that some Wiccan students may have also attempted to start Wiccan clubs.

Under the law, there is no reason that any religious or non-religious group could not start its own club, so long as it followed the rules set down by the Equal Access Act. In other words, the door is open to Satanists, atheists, agnostics, believers in the Great Spaghetti Monster, etc.

That's the delicious irony facing the fundy Christians who thought they could force the issue, ride over the wall of separation of church and state, and with their sneaky little "Bible" clubs, impress their phony, funky, religious formulations on unsuspecting public school students.

Unfortunately, the students most at risk are the elementary school kids, who really have no way of discerning the validity of a cause promoted by their teacher(s) within the public school setting.

It is obvious that groups like the Child Evangelism Fellowship and Liberty Counsel are lacking a moral and ethical sense. What they do is take advantage of gullible young children to lure them into a specious Christian doctrinal box, where they hope they'll be confined forever. They, like so many people who think they are heeding the will of God, operate on the principle that the ends justify the means.

In reality, their operation is too similar to the way the bad guys operate who lure children with candy and promises of fun and games.




[While I care nothing for Wicca, it is an interesting religion. If interested, you can learn more here: http://www.wicca.org/]