Christian revival at school prompts student walkout in W.Va.
By: LEAH WILLINGHAM
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
HUNTINGTON, W.Va. (AP) — Between calculus and European history classes at a West Virginia public high school, 16-year-old Cameron Mays and his classmates were told by their teacher to go to an evangelical Christian revival assembly.
When students arrived at the event in the school's auditorium, they were instructed to close their eyes and raise their arms in prayer, Mays said. The teens were asked to give their lives over to Jesus to find purpose and salvation. Those who did not follow the Bible would go to hell when they died, they were told.
Tags
Who is online
76 visitors
Credit to Kavika for finding this. I knew it had happened from local TV stations' Facebook pages, but didn't realize it had made national news.
I guess some folks don't think much of the First Amendment.
Bizarre to say the least.
sounds a lot like the school indoctrination bullshit republicans are always whining about. f'n thumpers...
I bet most Christians don't approve of this travesty!
I'd be mad as hell if my kid was submitted to this...
Seems that someone at the school board meetings missed American History when they taught separation of Church and state.
Outrageous and unacceptable.
"Thought Question":
Which of those 3 books has caused the least harm to humanity over time?
I'm not sure, but I know it wasn't Spider Man...
I think this is kind of important in trying to understand what happened and why, especially the part about guest speakers. I'd like to know more about what that means. Then...
So, what probably happened is that the speaker at this event, believing everyone was there voluntarily, proceeded as if they were. I think this wasn't intentionally trying to force anything on anyone. It was just a misunderstanding.
Of course, for most of you, that won't be the point. Voluntary or not, you probably don't believe they should have been there for any reason. For me, it would depend on who these 'guest speakers' were before I made a decision on that. What sorts of things do these guest speakers talk about? I think that would be an important factor.
Ahh the voice of reason and research. Thanks Drak
[deleted]
I think they can be there, so long as the local mosque can also send speakers. Same with the local chapter of the Satanic Church. Hmmm, I wonder what the chances of an open-arm welcome for those two groups would be?
[deleted]
LOL, is that a trick question, sandy?
If you mean Christian reaction, it would depend on who you spoke to or have in mind, I suppose. I wouldn't be happy about the Satanic Church being there but I would not raise any objection to it because I understand what the Constitution has to say on the subject. Of course, there are those who would object to it and fight against it. For them, it isn't about what the Constitution says but what they consider true and right. You know, like pretty much everyone with a cause does in one way or another? Nothing unusual about it, really.
Personally, I think they took an unfortunate misunderstanding and tried to make a separation case out of it when it was never there to begin with. If this was just an accident then a little common sense on one's part should see it as such and just let it go.
wth Drak?
Would it be ok to have the local RCC Monsignor come in and have a Mass in a public institution?
Hell No.
SEPARATION of Church & State, means SEPARATION.
The Church of Satan is a religious organization dedicated to Satanism as codified in The Satanic Bible -- embracing not the occult but individualism, materialism and the ego. The Church of Satan was established at the Black House in San Francisco, California, on Walpurgisnacht, April 30, 1966, by Anton Szandor LaVey, who was the Church's High Priest until his death in 1997. In 2001, Peter H. Gilmore was appointed the position of High Priest, and the church's headquarters were moved to Hell's Kitchen, Manhattan, New York City.[2] The church's headquarters is now located in Poughkeepsie, New York.
The Church does not believe in the Devil, neither a Christian nor Islamic notion of Satan.[3] Peter H. Gilmore describes its members as "skeptical atheists", embracing the Hebrew root of the word "Satan" as "adversary". The Church views Satan as a positive archetype who represents pride, individualism, and enlightenment, and as a symbol of defiance against the Abrahamic faiths which LaVey criticized for what he saw as the suppression of humanity's natural instincts.
The Church of Satan considers itself the adversary to "organized religion", not to theists individually.
Yes, actually. That is, there's no legal barrier to it, anyway. Suppose that it was arranged by students that, in a particular room, before the first class started, there was a priest giving Mass to any student who cared to attend. Same goes if an Atheist speaker, brought in a similar way would also be okay.
Actually, it isn't the Separation clause, it is the Establishment clause, which says "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion." The meaning isn't ambiguous. It says that Congress cannot create a law where students have to attend a Christian worship period at school. It can't create a law identifying Christianity or any other religion as the national religion. It can't write laws that compel religious behavior. The idea is that there should be a separation of Church and State for the purpose of not mandating any individual's personal conscience and to avoid the State/Church entanglement that caused so much division throughout European history.
It does not mean no religious expression whatsoever in the public sphere. It cannot mean that without distorting the Establishment clause to exclude religion from the public sphere, which it was never intended to do. Trying to do so would actually be a violation of the clause in that it would be making Secularism the State sponsored religion.
Unfortunately, many think, or try to convince others to believe, that the Establishment clause means no religious activity whatsoever in the public sphere. Strangely, they don't see this as exactly the same thing they complain against. That is, they would have kittens if the school board members tried to include religious education in the curriculum but think nothing of trying to impose their own views concerning religion or the Establishment clause on the school board.
Thanks for sharing this information but I already knew all of this. Was there a larger point besides just information on your mind?
Are you suggesting that posting information here is somehow inappropriate?
The teachers who told the students to go to that assembly were the ones violating the Establishment Clause. They should be severely censored/admonished and given an assignment to research the First Amendment and write a 500 word essay on it
And made to apologize to the students in question, publicly.
I mean the reaction in general. Intelligent Christians know this was wrong. Some Christians are defending it on Facebook. I'm betting the intelligent ones would think the anti-American ones were getting their comeuppance.
Nope, just general info. Don't want people thinking the Church of Satan is actually a devil worshipping cult of Christianity.
No. I was literally asking him if there was something specific he wanted to talk about that I was missing.
Assuming they even knew what the assembly was for. They may not have, beyond thinking there was some required assembly.
[deleted]
Well, I think I'm a reasonably intelligent Christian. I think this was likely a misunderstanding, not wrong in the sense this was done intentionally. If it was, I would also agree it was wrong. Unfortunately, we don't get a lot of answers to obvious questions concerning this incident. Rather, it seems to be written with the goal of creating indignation, even though the article states that what happened was simply an accident. There certainly doesn't seem to be any evidence presented that shows this happened intentionally.
If the teachers knew what the assembly was about, I would agree. If not, then simply apologizing in the classroom should be enough.
Okay. Didn't want to leave you hangin if I was missing something.
Don't assume anything here. Students tend to do what they're told. If there was no agenda or information beforehand about this assembly, then the teacher(s) should have told them. IMO, the teacher that ordered them to go this assembly was probably a zealot. I had a few teachers in my public school that were zealots and tried to bring God into everything. Can you imagine a biology teacher that doesn't believe in the Theory of Evolution?
This kind of stuff happens in rural schools because everybody in the community is usually of a like mind. I have lived in rural communities all my life. I know what I'm talking about
Somebody in school administration knew that this was a religious event (or a particular denomination even) taking place during normal curricular times on school property and that students were told to attend.
Either that or it was an example of utter incompetence and miscommunications.
I'm going with a little of one but a whole lot of the other. And the other is not the incompetence.
That's good advice. But why, then, did you go on to write:
Personally, I'd like to have more facts. If it turns out that this was intentional then something needs to be done about the people who made it happen. If it really was an accident, figure out how to keep it from happening again. The goal should be to make sure rights aren't violated. Either the students who do not want to attend such things or the one's who do.
I said it was my opinion based on past experience.
It's not necessary to constantly repeat the same words over and over again
you're going to be disappointed...
I'm always disappointed. Nothing new
[deleted]
... bible thumping?
Yes there are always missing details so there is likely much more under the covers. But we can also discuss the seed as presented since it is brief and presents a principled question:
The principled question this yields is:
Is it a violation of the 1st amendment to use the authority of a public school to demand a student attend a religious indoctrination event?
Note, it is not a violation to have a religious revival (or an atheist club meeting) on a public campus. But this must be optional and take place during noncurricular time.
Yes, that would be a violation. Is that what happened, though? Can't tell from the article. You present the following evidence:
Questions that need to be answered concerning this.
In my opinion, making a decision on this from the article alone seems reactionary. I'd like to have more information before I came to a conclusion.
As I noted in my post, let's just take the seed as written and consider the principled question.
Again, Drakk, I specifically framed my point as a hypothetical that enables discussing a principled question. Why respond if you are going to ignore what I wrote?:
Why are you saying I ignored what you wrote?
Because your entire post after that focused on missing details that I upfront recognized as such. I expressed the futility of discussing this particular case based on the facts given we likely are missing plenty of facts.
You answered the principled question and then moved directly to “Is that what happened, though?” as the focus and near entirety of your post.
As I stated upfront, we do not know the details. We can speculate endlessly. All I can offer to the balance of your post is to simply state again that we do not know all the facts.
Okay. What else is there to discuss? Is there something not covered by "Yes, that would be a violation"? If you just want to discuss the article as written, where do you want to go from here?
No, there really is nothing left to discuss. Given we agree on the answer to the principled question, the only thing left is blind speculation. As I noted, I do not see how that is valuable.
Okay
[deleted]
Hmmm … how has this article not been spammed to death with anti-atheist memes by our resident Jesus freak? The truth is that atheism in the news is almost always a reaction to overt theism and the constant nibbling away at the Establishment Clause through actions like this one. Atheism isn’t an intrusion into religion, it is a defense to the intrusion from religion. If it wasn’t for offenses like this nobody would ever hear from atheists at all. We don’t go running around blathering that there is no god just because that’s what we believe, unlike the religious.
let him try. muah ha ha ha...
Give him time
check out whose courage threshold ends at voting up the self righteous.
see this
Tech Tip: If you type @6.2.15 (@ followed immediately by the comment number) the system will automatically generate a link to the referenced comment. The link you see in my comment was auto-generated.
Thank you!