An ACLU lawsuit against the Sumner County school board in Tennessee has succeeded in reining in some religious folk. They didn't see anything wrong with teachers leading prayer and bible study with students; saturating their school grounds with religious displays; and even inviting in youth ministers to preach to captive audiences.
Naturally, it's the ACLU that's depicted as trying to stamp out religious liberty.
So this was Pat Robertson's ACLJ two months ago, stoking the fire against 'the Left' supposedly trying to extinguish religious speech altogether.
As part of its continuing, decades-long effort to protect religious liberty in public schools, the ACLJ is representing the Sumner County, Tennessee, school board from an expansive and aggressive lawsuit brought by the ACLU. The goal of the ACLU lawsuit is to restrict religious liberty and free expression in Sumner County schools much further than the law currently permits. The ACLJ has not only been vigorously contesting the case, it has also turned back an ACLU injunction attempt at the beginning of the litigation.
A bit of a stretch for an organization founded in 1990, but I suppose they can (just barely) call it 'decades' now. Ironically, the wiki page on the ACLJ documents a number of cases where the ACLU has been on their side, even worked together with them. But that's not the message the believers wanted to put out that day.
Unfortunately for the ACLJ, things must not have gone their way, or this settlement would not have taken place. Contrary to the spin about restricting liberty, this was about reining in state sponsorship of religion through a misguided school board; this was about stopping people who had gone too far.
A news article from the Tennessean sums up the goings-on in Sumner County, so recently put to a stop. It's amazing, in a way, to consider that they found this sort of behavior perfectly reasonable free expression.
At a closed executive session Monday night, the Sumner school board hammered out a settlement without admitting any wrongdoing. From now on, teachers will not be allowed to pray with students, lead Bible study on school grounds, display crosses or other religious imagery in the classroom or otherwise engage in religious activities on public school property. Church youth ministers will no longer have access to the lunchrooms, unless they’re meeting with their own children.
Although the school board and the ACLJ tried to put their best spin on the settlement, the end result is still that overtly religious activities sponsored by the school board, through their permissions to teachers and youth ministers, are no longer permitted.
The Tennessean article also mentions hundreds of parents who fought against the lawsuit -- not seeing anything wrong with the prayer since, after all, it was for their religion. Oblivious to their own privilege. And in the aftermath of this settlement, it remains to be seen whether the school board, or the faithful parents, will hold to the letter or the spirit of the law. I guess there's some irony in these would-be preachers violating the spirit. The Tennessean quotes one of the skeptical parents:
“I’m trying to be objective and not react emotionally here, but I think there’s still a lot of room for disobedience on the schools’ part,” she said. “I’m no lawyer, but one of the things we see is family members who can come in and roam around the school, talking and proselytizing with the kids. There’s a lot of this ‘wink, wink, talk to the kids about stuff’ going on now. How do we know if that’s going to stop?”
They would do well to remain skeptical.
10:21 AM PT: I have a couple of links to add that seem relevant to the news story:
http://brianmills247.blogspot.com/...
http://brianmills247.blogspot.com/...
I understand these blog posts are from one of the youth ministers involved in this mess. Second one looks kinda dark in Firefox but technically readable. The first is, well...damning.