eNews

"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech…" - First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution

Public schools across America are warming up again, and the smells of pencil shavings, new backpacks and cafeteria lunches will soon fill the halls.  With the sorrow of leaving summer behind and the excitement of new things ahead there comes a perennial question of how the US Supreme Court will allow God to fit into it all. After the landmark 1962 Supreme Court decision Engle vs Vitale, which ended school-sponsored prayer in American public schools, there has been confusion over whether students or teachers are allowed to pray, read their Bibles or engage in other religious activity on school grounds. 

 In August of 1995, the Secretary of Education issued guidelines on Religious Expression in Public Schools to clarify which activities were and were not constitutional and to prevent religious discrimination against public school students.

On February 7, 2003, then-Education Secretary Rod Paige issued a similar set of guidelines, updated under the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 to make adherence to the guidelines a requirement for receiving federal funding.  Under the guidelines, schools must annually submit in writing to their state education agency that they are following the guidelines in good faith. Those who fail to attest to their compliance in writing, and those who have been faulted for failing to obey the guidelines, risk losing their federal funding. The guidelines clarify the religious rights of public school students during school hours. They note:

"As the Court has explained in several cases [ie Santa Fe Indep. Sch. Dist. v. Doe (2000) and Board of Educ. v. Mergens (1990)], 'there is a crucial difference between government speech endorsing religion, which the Establishment Clause forbids, and private speech endorsing religion, which the Free Speech and Free Exercise Clauses protect.'"

Schools must neither encourage nor discourage religious expression, and they may not discriminate against activity simply because it is religious in nature. As long as students initiate the religious activity themselves, and as long as the religious expression falls within the schools' rules of order, it cannot be discriminated against.

According to the Supreme Court in Everson v. Board of Education (1947), the First Amendment "requires the state to be a neutral in its relations with groups of religious believers and non-believers; it does not require the state to be their adversary. State power is no more to be used so as to handicap religions than it is to favor them."

So, how does that fit into everyday life at school?

Free Time:
If students have free time during which they may engage in non-religious activities - recess, lunch-time, and so forth - then they may also use that time for religious activities such as prayer or Bible reading.

Class Assignments:
Students may express their religious beliefs in class assignments – written, oral, or art work - without discrimination because the work is religiously oriented. Teachers are to grade assignments based on their academic quality without penalty or reward for religious themes or content.

Clubs:
Students may form prayer groups or religious clubs "to the same extent that students are permitted to organize other non-curricular student activities groups." According to the Supreme Court in Good News Club v. Milford Central School (2001), that includes access to school facilities. If a school's policy only permits clubs directly related to the curriculum, like history or math groups but not jazz or sailing groups, then it could also prohibit a religious club that is not connected to school curriculum.

Advertising:
If schools allow non-religious school groups to promote their activities through posters or school newspapers, then religious groups, like Bible or prayer clubs, must also be allowed to promote their activities.

Teachers:
According to the Supreme Court in Engel v. Vitale (1962) and  School Dist. of Abington Twp. v. Schempp,(1963), public school teachers represent the state and may not lead classes in prayer or Bible reading.  Teachers also may not compel children to engage in religious activities. Yet, teachers do retain their First Amendment rights in the public schools. While teachers must remain neutral and neither encourage or discourage their students' religious expression, teachers may pray or study the Bible by themselves or with other teachers.

Student Speeches:
There has been a lot of controversy over how to handle student speeches that contain religious themes. The guidelines offer a position that might surprise a few people.  They say:

"Student speakers at student assemblies and extracurricular activities such as sporting events may not be selected on a basis that either favors or disfavors religious speech. Where student speakers are selected on the basis of genuinely neutral, evenhanded criteria and retain primary control over the content of their expression, that expression is not attributable to the school and therefore may not be restricted because of its religious (or anti-religious) content."

In Lee v. Weisman (1992), the Supreme Court prohibited schools from specifically choosing somebody to pray at assemblies, and schools cannot pick students to speak because of religious or anti-religious motivation. However, as the Supreme Court explained in Board of Educ. v. Mergens (1990), "The proposition that schools do not endorse everything they fail to censor is not complicated." That applies even to public settings with public audiences. If it dares, a school can offer a neutral disclaimer saying that the content of student speeches is solely their own and not the school's, freeing students to speak about religious or non-religious or anti-religious themes as they choose.

Kevin Hasson, president of the Washington-based Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, commented, "What the guideline says is that if [prayer] is truly student-initiated -- if it's not rigged by the school district somehow -- then the First Amendment protects it."

And if a school chooses strict pre-approval of all graduation speeches?  Families and students may pray and talk about God freely at baccalaureate services.

Schools and teachers, parents and students should discuss these guidelines and become familiar with the religious freedoms students have in the public schools. Americans need to know they do not "shed their constitutional rights to freedom of speech or expression at the schoolhouse gate."

Nietzsche's madman declared in 1882 that God was dead:

"God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him. How shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers? What was holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet owned has bled to death under our knives: who will wipe this blood off us?"

Nietzsche has been known ever after for declaring the doom of God. Yet, the madman mourned too soon. Faith continues to persist, despite the greatest efforts of Western civilization to demolish it. The problem is not really a lack of faith (humans are inherently spiritual beings) but the sorts of beliefs that fill the void when the Holy Spirit is absent.

A Gallup poll for the anniversary of Charles Darwin's 200th birthday showed that only 39 percent of Americans "believe in evolution" nearly 150 years after Darwin published On The Origin Of Species. Coincidentally, most Americans - even those who do "believe in evolution" - also believe in some sort of deity.

To be square, "Do you believe in evolution?" is not a very good question to ask, because people can define "evolution" in a number of ways. For instance, natural selection and survival of the fittest are perfectly excellent ideas for explaining why the finches on one island have bigger beaks than the finches on another island. Some people would call the ability of finches to adapt to their environments "evolution." Other persons would define "evolution" as the process by which dinosaurs turned into birds or apes turned into humans. How people answer that question depends on their internalized definition of "evolution." (Perhaps this accounts for the large number of people [36 percent] who responded that they had no opinion one way or the other.)

Despite this weakness, the poll still demonstrates that a significant portion of the US population is either ambivalent or outright antagonistic toward evolution in general. This is despite the fact that children are taught about evolutionary concepts from the time they open their first dinosaur picture books all the way up through their university textbooks. Even among college graduates, who survived years of having professors attempt to beat the faith out of them, a mere 53 percent of those polled said they "believe in evolution."

Of course, the people most prone to say they definitely did not believe in evolution were those who attended church regularly, and those most like to affirm evolution were those who rarely or never went to church. Education is not as great an issue in this matter as a person's religious views. And religion is getting to be popular again.

As John Micklethwait and Adrian Wooldridge note in a recent piece for the Fox Forum, "Today it is secularization theory that is dead rather than religion. Religion continues to flourish in the United States. Megachurches across the country are full to overflowing..." Books with religious themes sell millions upon millions of copies every year, and a mere 15 percent of the US population claim no belief.

That, however, does not mean that Americans are all reading their Bibles and following Christ. The God-shaped hole may exist in the human heart, but Americans often try to fill that hole at an whatever-you-can-eat religious buffet.  

Ivan Petrella offers the fashionable way of dealing with religion in today's world. He argues that religions are not false, but we need to get "progressive about religion." He wants atheists to stop battering religion. "Billions of people practice religions; in that sense they're true. Billions of people believe in God, in that sense God does exist," Petrella says.

That's nonsense, of course. The moon wouldn't be made of green cheese even if billions of people believed it. God exists whether or not anybody believes in Him. But, that's not the point. The point is what Petrella says he wants from progressive Christians: "From progressive Christians, I'd rescue the commitment to progressive understandings of faith and politics. But I'd reject their reliance on the Bible and Jesus."

And that is what the "religious" world wants when it doesn't want Jesus. For those who do not know Christ, who assume that Jesus is just another religious leader in a smorgasbord of equally "true" and valid religions, then it seems perfectly acceptable to ask Christians to get with the values of today's world and stop insisting that Jesus is the Way, the Truth, and the Life. If Christians are to be progressive, they must only commit to the comfortable parts of their faith, things like caring for their neighbors and forgiving their enemies. In the progressive world, ideas like sin and salvation have to go.

The world doesn't understand, though, that Jesus did not come to Earth to get people to be nice to each other. He came to Earth to save us. And if Christianity is to be powerful through the Holy Spirit in changing lives, in giving life, and in filling that God-shaped hole in our innermost person, then it cannot be watered down and progressive. It has to be full of the Spirit of Truth. We have to live it, so that we can be a witness to a world desperate to know the truth as long as we are able.

In the last chapter of 2 Timothy, Paul writes that people will reject the truth:

"For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but after their own lusts shall they heap to themselves teachers, having itching ears; And they shall turn away their ears from the truth, and shall be turned unto fables." -2 Timothy 4:3-4

In the last times, when the Beast rules, people will believe in him .  They will fall down and worship him (Rev 13:12-15).  It will be a "religious" world.   The world religion will simply be a false religion, a fake version of the real thing.

We see a lot of that today, but these times are still full of hope. There may be millions who enjoy getting their ears scratched, but there are millions more still hunting and seeking.  Christianity is spreading with a seriousness across Asia and Africa, even (and especially?) in those areas where there is persecution.   People are starved for God, seeking to find the One who will cleanse them and heal them, the One who will fill that hole in their hearts with Himself, the One who will give them true life.

God is not dead. He's very much alive, despite all progressive efforts to get rid of Him.

Iran will ask the International Atomic Energy Agency to ban pre-emptive strikes on nuclear facilities at its upcoming general conference in September, and has agreed to begin talks about its nuclear program. In the meanwhile, open protests against the conservative government have continued since Iran's controversial June elections, and reports that protestors have been tortured and raped have forced Iran to soften its approach in order to bring order back to its nation.

Iran told the Associated Press that it would propose a ban on pre-emptive strikes against all nuclear facilities across the globe, but made a point of saying the proposal was not motivated by fear of Israel.

"We are not worried about Israel," said Ali Asghar Soltanieh, Iran's chief envoy to the IAEA. "Nobody dares to do anything against Iran."

Iran can make that claim, but Israel isn't easy to shrug off. The Hebrew nation has made clear its willingness to bomb enemy nuclear sites without apparent concern for international disapproval. Israel destroyed Iraq's Osirak nuclear reactor in 1981 and attacked an alleged Syrian reactor under construction in 2007.  Right now Israel seems content to allow the US to try to work with Iran, but Israel has not taken back its threats to bomb Iranian nuclear plants in order to protect itself.

Israel is not Iran's only threat, however. The allegations that protestors of the June election results have been tortured and even beaten to death have caused Iran's top officials to show a little humanity. While the opposition says that 69 protestors were killed, besides those who died in prison, no security agents have been prosecuted for their abusive treatment. The head of the judiciary has finally offered to put on trial those security agents who have been accused of the torture, and some conservatives in the government have condemned the abuse. So far, only the protestors themselves have been brought before the judiciary.

Iran has been willing to admit the possibility of torture, but has loudly denied allegations that some of the protestors have been raped in prison. The reformist presidential candidate Mehdi Karroubi caused consternation by bringing up these embarrassing allegations recently. The government responded by attacking Karroubi, accusing him of "total slander against the Islamic system." He has been maligned and threatened with arrest, but Karroubi has remained stalwart.

"Insults and criticism won't make me silent," Mr. Karroubi said when the rape allegations were dismissed as meaningless. "I'll defend the rights of the people as long as I live and you can't stop my hand, tongue and pen."

The criticism of the government has reached all the way to the supreme leader himself, with a group of lawyers calling for an investigation of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei's qualifications. The supreme leader, whom people normally do not dare to criticize, fell from the popular grace when he blessed the controversial election results. Some protestors have even chanted, "Death to Khamenei," which would have never been done before.

Iran is in a tight spot, and it needs to do some maneuvering to keep from imploding.   President Obama has given Iran until September to respond to US willingness to dialogue, and Iran has stated it is ready to negotiate on the nuclear issue.  If talks fail, though, the next step for the United States is to push for stronger UN sanctions, which would hurt Iran financially and likely cause even greater unrest among the Iranian people.