A youth mentor from Salem Heights Church was barred from volunteering at Straub Middle School after a student accused him of promoting Christianity and insulting her for being an atheist. The school’s principal, Laura Perez, said that Tim Saffeels, the church’s director of student ministries, will not be allowed back as a volunteer for the remainder of the school year…. “I decided that I’m not going to allow him in because to me there was a breach of trust there,” Perez said.
It’s a case of one person’s word against another. A middle school student says an adult volunteer referred to atheism as “wrong,” “bad,” “stupid” and “evil.” The adult says nothing of the sort happened. My particular bias being what it is, I’m more inclined to believe the student, whom I can’t imagine would have reason to make an accusation so specific without cause. The adult, also a youth mentor at a local church, may well have seen the cafeteria conversation as an opportunity to proselytize. Of course, there’s this little thing I like to call the “separation of Church and State,” which means that a public school is not a place of worship, nor is witnessing for Jesus Christ appropriate or allowable.
That the school’s principal felt it necessary to ban Tim Saffeels from volunteering for the remainder of the school year would seem to indicate that there was enough to the students’ accusation for it to be considered credible. If what Saffeels is accused of is true, it’s reprehensible. NO ONE has the right to tell another person that their belief is wrong, bad, stupid, awful, or any other pejorative. You might believe someone to be misguided in their belief, but this is still a free country, and a person is allowed to believe what they will. That doesn’t make them wrong, it just makes them American.
For reasons I can’t begin to comprehend, discrimination against atheists seems to be the last form of socially acceptable bigotry. Christians will decry what they interpret to be “Christian bashing” as the worst, most insidious form of religious oppression…even as they turn around and do they very same thing to atheists. Except that when Christians do it, it’s “spreading the Word of God,” or “spreading the love of Jesus Christ”…and they’ll be shocked to learn that anyone could accuse them of harboring a double standard.
Public schools aren’t to be considered target-rich environments for those looking to save souls. The separation of Church and State proscribes the theological equivalent of shooting fish in a barrel. I know that aggravates some who believe their faith trumps all mortal considerations, but all it really does is betray a distressing ignorance of American history and governance.
If you’re a committed, Evangelical Christian and you want to volunteer in a public school, then good on you. Our schools need all the help they can get. Just remember to leave your religion at the door; it’s the decent and American thing to do.
