Our society’s social engineers are all in on exposing young children to sex in classrooms, which is why they’re currently up in arms over a Florida bill that would prohibit just that. But the same social engineers are also quite definite about what they don’t want in schools — faith in God, for instance.
Perhaps the latest battle on this front concerns a West Virginia school that recently held an evangelical Christian revival assembly. The event, at Huntington High School, inspired a Wednesday homeroom-period walkout by somewhat less than 10 percent of the pupils — approximately 100 of the more than 1,000-strong student body — and negative coverage by about 99.5 percent of the mainstream media.
The Washington Post reports on the matter: “The Fellowship of Christian Athletes organized a voluntary evangelical sermon at Huntington High School last week that was approved by the administration. Students who attended were asked to raise their arms in prayer and give their lives to Jesus so that they can find purpose and salvation. The speakers said that those who did not follow the Bible would go to hell when they died, students told the Associated Press.”
Of course, we don’t know if that’s quite literally how matters were framed (though it’s possible), only that the students the AP chose to quote said so. What we can know is that if the school took a leaf out of the sexual devolutionaries’ (the “LGBTQ” activists’) book, they not only would’ve conducted their in-school event but would’ve instructed teachers and staff to not tell parents about it.
“The mini-revival took place last week during COMPASS, a daily, ‘noninstructional’ break in the schedule during which students can study for tests, work on college prep or listen to guest speakers, said Cabell County Schools spokes[man] Jedd Flowers,” the AP also tells us.
The event probably wouldn’t have made national news, either, had an apparent mistake not been made. To wit: “Two teachers thought the Feb. 2 assembly was mandatory and took their entire classrooms to the Christian revival, forcing about 15 students who had not signed up to attend, according to the Huntington Herald-Dispatch,” the Post further relates.
The aforementioned Flowers was apologetic about this, saying, “It’s unfortunate that it happened. We don’t believe it will ever happen again.”
“But in this community of fewer than 50,000 people in southwestern West Virginia, the controversy has ignited a broader conversation about whether religious services — voluntary or not — should be allowed during school hours at all,” the AP then writes.
“The answer, according to the U.S. Constitution, is no,” the AP also claimed. “In fact, the separation of church and state is one of the country’s founding basic tenets, noted Huntington High School senior Max Nibert.”
Now, the citation of a 12th-grader as a source for constitutional rectitude is not surprising, as this represents a greater level of scholarship than most mainstream media figures attain, in a “Never let your schooling interfere with your education” sense. Yet if such “separation” was a “founding tenet,” it’s funny how the Founders never knew about it.
In point of fact, the Founding Fathers opened the first Congress, in 1789, with exclusively Christian prayers; this continued, and to this day our national legislature’s opening prayers are generally Christian.
(What’s more, while too much emphasis is placed on judicial “opinions,” the Supreme Court held in Town of Greece v. Galloway that such prayers are constitutional.)
In reality, the phrase “the separation of church and state” does not appear in the Constitution — and for good reason. As the late Judge Robert Bork once pointed out, it was not a “tenet” but a minority view at our nation’s founding.
What the First Amendment does state, and only states on this matter, is, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” (This merely refers to establishing a national church and making membership compulsory). And if “separation” is a founding “tenet,” it strangely took more than 150 years for people multiple generations removed from our founding to discover it. For it was then, in 1947, that Supreme Court Justice and ex-Klansman Hugo Black authored the “separation” opinion. (By the by, should it now be “canceled” because of Black’s past?).
Some may now point out that Thomas Jefferson wrote about “separation.” He did — in an 1802 letter to the Danbury Baptist Association. Yet Jefferson’s only goal, apparently, was to reassure the group that he wouldn’t as president impose his unorthodox religious views on them using federal power. Furthermore, he did not inveigh in the correspondence against the official state churches extant at the time.
This reflects the First Amendment’s language, too, which states only that “Congress shall make no law.” This specifying of the central government’s legislative branch is significant: It means the framers only meant to restrain the feds in this regard. If they’d intended the clause to apply to all levels of government, they would have written not “Congress” but “government.” They didn’t.
This First Amendment restriction was later applied to the states by activist judges via a lawyer-craft rationalization known as the “Theory of Incorporation.” And, of course, the powerful do get to impose their “theories.” But this doesn’t make them reality.
This said, it still wouldn’t be lawful for states to compel religious exercise because they have constitutions themselves that generally mirror our national one. But the point is that states’ actions in this area are none of the feds’ business.
Yet the above is only the legal “separation” reality. What of the moral/philosophical one? Is it possible that “religion” occupies such a unique category, for good or for ill, that it simply doesn’t belong in the public square at all?
Let’s consider it: If the religious ideas in question really have been handed down by God, Creator of the Universe and Inerrant Author of All, don’t we have a duty to infuse our public sphere with them? Is it not then an imperative that we immerse schoolchildren in this divine light? Of course, naysayers may now respond, “Not everyone worships sky fairies! These are just man-made beliefs.”
Alright, but if so, why say that the man-made beliefs we happen to call “secular” may be in the public square, but the man-made beliefs we happen to call “religious” may not be? If they’re all man-made, wherein lies the difference?
Conclusion: Either these beliefs are man-made, in which case they can share the table with other man-made ideas and may be in the public square.
Or they’re from God and must be there.
But all that is mere logic, which now is very much passé. Thus do we today have those who swear that whether from God or man, “religion” must not be in schools. But whether from man or Satan, “LGBTQ” must be there with bells on.
