MY NEW HERO
Jessica Greene
A Georgia mom was upset when her fifth-grade son came home from his public elementary school with a Bible, and she’s disappointed with the school and community’s response. Jessica Greene considers herself a Christian, but she doesn’t think Cloverleaf Elementary in Cartersville should allow Gideons International to hand out Bibles to students, reported WXIA-TV. Greene’s son, Leo Butler, said his teacher told the class that the evangelical group had volunteered to distribute Bibles, and the students formed a line in the library. Students were not required to take a Bible, the boy said, but children who did not wish to receive one were told to walk ahead of the line and stand on the other side of the room.
Let me start this discussion by asking a simple question: What if a group hand been handing out Qurans at Cloverleaf Elementary? Or, even better: What if Satanists planned to distribute coloring books?
Would parents have been so overwhelmingly supportive? Would they have summarily dismissed those who (rightly) inquired about violating the separation of Church and State and the pushing of religion at a public school where not all children are Muslim or Satanists? Would they have ridiculed someone who had the temerity to stand up against distributing the Muslim holy book (or a Satanic coloring book) to students? Of course they wouldn’t have…because they would have been apoplectic, beside themselves with anger over the idea that someone would dare to do that IN. THEIR. PUBLIC. SCHOOL.
If you seriously think for even a moment that parents would have been anything remotely approaching sanguine about their children receiving a Quran or a Satanic coloring book, you’re living in a fantasy world of your own creation. The hue and cry and weeping and gnashing of teeth would have been heard from Cartersville to Atlanta and beyond. Those parents who ridiculed Jessica Greene merely displayed their hypocrisy, a lack of commitment to the Constitution, and an astonishing ignorance of American history. Before you go off calling someone else foolish, you might want to first be certain the ice you’re standing on is solid. Ignorant people lecturing others for their views merely creates a target rich environment that makes it almost too easy to have fun at the expense of parents who were OK with Bibles being distributed.
Unfortunately, in the South there is no equality of religious representation. In the rare instances when schools announce they are open to non-Christian groups and someone calls their bluff and decides to distribute literature, what they’re allowed to offer students is usually strictly censored. Imagine the sounds of heads exploding when Satanists asked to be allowed to distribute comic books. Oh, to have been a fly on the wall at that meeting….
If I’ve said it once, I’ve said it a thousand times: America is NOT a Christian nation; it’s a secular nation in which 80% of citizens self-identify as Christian. That’s a BIG difference…and no matter how much you might rail against that fact, it doesn’t make it any less true. America is officially a secular nation; that was the express intent of the Founding Fathers, who knew all too well the disastrous things that could happen if Church and State were one.
Surely you haven’t forgotten that America was settled by religious dissidents look to escape from religious oppression and tyranny in England?
Greene posted her concerns on the school’s Facebook page but was pilloried by other parents before Cloverleaf disabled public posts.
“Some of the last comments I got before it was taken down from the page were, ‘You’re outnumbered here,’” Greene said.
Other parents posted, “I stand by Cloverleaf,” on the school’s page.
“You’re outnumbered here?” Really? THAT’S seriously an argument? “You’re outnumbered?” That leave me absolutely incredulous, because it’s quite possibly one of the most mind-numbingly stupid statements I’ve had the misfortune of coming across. Read your Constitution and your American history, y’all. Check things like the 1st Amendment’s Establishment Clause, Jefferson’s letter to the Danbury Baptists, and the Treaty of Tripoli. All of those things support the idea that American governance is secular and that there IS no official religion in this country. Yes, there’s a majority religion, but the beautiful thing about American governance is that the majority don’t get to force their religious beliefs on the minority.
“Majority rules” only works during elections. It doesn’t mean the majority gets to subvert the Constitution and establish their religious beliefs and moral standards as superior and thus force everyone to live by them.
What I find truly absurd is the school’s contention that “It is strictly voluntary and the library was the location where students could pick one up….” Ms. Greene’s son said students were told the Bible distribution was voluntary, but that students were instructed to line up in the library. Students who didn’t wish to receive a Bible were “to walk ahead of the line and stand on the other side of the room.” This would have meant that any student not wishing to receive a Bible would have had to set themselves apart from their fellow students for all to see. You don’t there would have been at least a little bit of peer pressure in play? If the distribution had truly been voluntary, the students not wishing to receive a Bible wouldn’t have been forced to self-identify by separating themselves from the group.
If the school district had also arranged for students to receive a copy of the Quran and the Talmud, they might have a defensible argument. The fact that the school’s superintendent couldn’t see his way clear to return a reporter’s repeated phone calls says everything we need to know about this travesty. They KNEW the Bible distribution was wrong, yet they went ahead and allowed it…because it’s Georgia and that’s what good Christians do, right?
Our public schools are for education, not indoctrination. They’re supposed to teach our children to think, not unquestioningly accept the dominant paradigm. Of course, if you live in the South, do you really need anything besides the Bible?
Evidently not.
