Latest Challenges to the Teaching of Evolution

* The clergy, by getting themselves established by law and ingrafted into the machine of government, have been a very formidable engine against the civil and religious rights of man (Letter to J. Moor, 1800).

Spencer school district shapes policy on religion
(By STACI HUPP • Des Moines Register • July 8, 2009)

Public school students in Spencer will get to study the Bible and pray at graduation if school district leaders approve a proposed "religious liberties" policy, the first of its kind in Iowa.

The plan calls for elective classes such as "Critic of Darwinism," which includes arguments against the theory of evolution, and "The Bible in History and Literature."

School officials say they want to set clear rules for religious expression without discouraging students, for example, from writing "Merry Christmas" on holiday cards in class.

Spencer Superintendent Greg Ebeling said most public educators who fear lawsuits go too far to exclude religion from schools.

"We're going to have critics, but we're not out to cram religion down anybody's throats," said Ebeling, whose northwest Iowa district enrolls about 2,000 students. "It's just about what's the right way to handle it. The way we handle it right now is to avoid it at all costs."

Opponents worry that the policy could pave the way to school-sponsored evangelizing to a captive audience of impressionable children.

Ben Stone, who heads the American Civil Liberties Union of Iowa, said the U.S. Constitution already protects students' right to pray on their own or learn about religion in school.

"Where's the evidence that students in that district are having their religious freedoms curtailed by the government?" Stone asked.

"Because if that's happening, call us. They don't need to adopt a written policy."

Two Spencer school board members - one is a pastor - put the finishing touches on the policy, which they will take to the board today. A vote is not expected then.

Iowa's public school districts take a uniform approach to religion, "which is pretty close to a flat-out prohibition of it," said Mary Gannon, a lawyer with the Iowa Association of School Boards.

Spencer officials say they are the first in Iowa to spell out religious freedoms in schools, a concept more popular in Southern states such as Georgia and Texas. The district has not received complaints, but school board member Barb Van Wyk said confusion about religion's place in schools has created a gag effect.

Van Wyk, an Assemblies of God pastor who co-wrote the religious liberties policy, said her son's junior high classmates told him it was illegal to read the Bible at school in his free time.

"A lot of times students and teachers feel they have to check their faith at the door," she said. "That is not what the Constitution says."

Public schools walk a fine line between constitutionally protected freedom of religious expression and the separation of church and state.
Schools have been sued on both sides of the issue:

- In May, a judge ordered school officials in Santa Rosa County, Fla., to stop promoting personal religious beliefs after two high school students sued. The students said school officials led prayers at school events.

- A judge ruled in 2006 that school officials in Katy, Texas, could not stop elementary school students who wanted to hand out Valentine's Day cards with religious themes. The order stemmed from a lawsuit filed by parents.

- School officials in Odessa, Texas, agreed to eliminate an elective Bible class as part of a 2008 lawsuit settlement with the ACLU, which said the curriculum reflected a conservative Protestant bias.

The same Bible curriculum has been used legally by nearly 500 school districts in 38 states, according to the National Council on Bible Curriculum in Public Schools, which wrote it.

Spencer will be next on the list if the religious liberties policy is approved.

"It would be challenging for any school district to teach a Bible course in a way that satisfied all its constituencies, but this particular course is especially troubling," said Mark Chancey, a religious studies professor at Southern Methodist University in Dallas.

Van Wyk said she did not know about the Bible curriculum's controversial history, "but I'm not shocked."

"People that are hostile toward having anything to do with the Bible, they're absolutely going to cry foul," she said.

Spencer's proposed policy says schools must let students talk about their faith, pray on their own and distribute religious materials if they want to.

High school seniors would decide whether they want a student-led benediction at graduation. Most schools, including Spencer, do not allow the prayers now.

Religion classes "must be academic, not devotional," the policy says. Teachers could talk about their beliefs if students ask.

Kris Toay, a Spencer mother of two, likes the policy's message - teachers and students "shouldn't have to worry about what they say," she said. But the high school shouldn't offer a Bible class if it doesn't teach about the Koran and other books of worship, she said.

"That may possibly be better left for the universities," Toay said.

Civil rights activists say the best approach to religious liberty is knowing the law.

"If public school officials are properly trained, religious liberty thrives," Stone said.

Those are disingenuous platitudes.

I read that Mr Jefferson owned slaves.

The question before the human race is, whether the God of nature shall govern the world by his own laws, or whether priests and kings shall rule it by fictitious miracles? -- John Adams, letter to Thomas Jefferson, June 20, 18

But how has it happened that millions of fables, tales, legends, have been blended with both Jewish and Christian revelation that have made them the most bloody religion that ever existed?

When philosophic reason is clear and certain by intuition or necessary induction, no subsequent revelation supported by prophecies or miracles can supersede it.

Pope Spendius XXX will now start foaming at the mouth.