Attorney: 8th Circuit's Graduation Prayer Ruling Discriminates Against Christians

(AgapePress) -- A civil liberties attorney is objecting to a federal appeals court's decision to side with a former teacher who complained about prayers at a graduation ceremony in an Arkansas school district.

The Eighth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals recently ruled in favor of Steve Warnock in his dispute with the De Valls Bluff School District, but denied his request to stiffen penalties against the district. The ex-teacher had argued that a 2004 baccalaureate ceremony violated lower-court injunctions by including prayers by ministers, and the appeals court agreed with him, rejecting counter arguments that the baccalaureate ceremony was a student-organized event.

Warnock won an earlier lawsuit accusing the school district of discriminating against him because he is a non-Christian teacher. But attorney John Whitehead, president of The Rutherford Institute, believes it is the court that has shown bias in this case. He feels the Eighth Circuit's ruling discriminates against Christians.

Public events and speeches should not have to be censored or excluded "just because someone mentions Jesus' name," Whitehead insists. However, he points out, many special interest groups and liberal organizations like the American Civil Liberties Union apparently disagree and are willing to fight to make sure any Christian references to or expressions of Christian faith are silenced.

Such organizations purportedly fight for Americans' civil liberties, the Rutherford Institute spokesman notes, "but one thing that I think we really have to understand is that Christians pay taxes, and I don't think it's time for Christians to be second-class citizens." If freedom in America is to be maintained "for everyone, including Christians, Jews and others," he asserts, "we have to stand up and fight. This is not a time to be weak or to avoid an issue."

After all, Whitehead emphasizes, in cases like the one involving the De Valls Bluff School District and other school systems like it, Christians' right to pray or express their faith on campuses and in other academic settings is at stake, "and there are so many children in those schools." Based on the Eighth Circuit Court's ruling and similar ones, he feels the outlook for America's children and their children "does not look good."

The central issue in the debate, the pro-family legal advocate contends, is the question of whether Christians are going to be able to say Jesus' name in public in America. "And if you want to be able to do that," he says, "you're going to have to fight the cases."

Hopefully, Christians can win those cases, Whitehead adds, "but it's going to be uphill. It's going to take time. But anything worthwhile takes time, and it usually takes a fight." And, although the Eighth District erred in siding with Steve Warnock, the constitutional attorney points out that the courts have not always decided in the former teacher's favor.

Last year, Whitehead notes, in Warnock's case against the Arkansas school district that had employed him, a federal jury ruled against the former teacher. The jury found that he had failed to show he was fired by the district because of his allegations of religious discrimination and complaints about Christian prayers.

Prayers UP! Thanks for the post.

And the people know that it is impossible to rightly govern without God and the Bible." -- George Washington - April 30, 1789

"This great book [the Bible]...is the best gift God has given to man...But for it we could not know right from wrong." -- Abraham Lincoln

"The existence of the Bible, as a book for people, is the greatest benefit which the human race has ever experienced. Every attempt to belittle it is a crime against humanity." -- Immanuel Kant

"The Christian religion is, above all the religions that ever prevailed or existed in ancient or modern times, the religion of wisdom, virtue, equity and humanity, let the Blackguard [scoundrel, rogue] Paine say what he will." and again later to John Paine: "The people of New England, if you will allow me to use a Scripture phrase, are fast returning to their first love. Will you excite among them the spirit of angry controversy at a time when they are hastening to amity and peace? I am told that some of our newspapers have announced your intention to publish an additional pamphlet upon the principles of your Age of Reason. Do you think that your pen, or the pen of any other man, can unchristianize the mass of our citizens, or have you hopes of converting a few of them to assist you in so bad a cause?" -- John Adams, Regarding The Age Of Reason

History will also afford frequent opportunities of showing the necessity of a public religion...and the excellency of the Christian religion above all others. -- Benjamin Franklin

"You do well to wish to learn our arts and ways of life, and above all, the religion of Jesus Christ. Congress will do everything they can to assist you in this wise intention." -- George Washington

from WND:
"In his speeches against tyranny, Patrick Henry said he believed God governed the affairs of men and would intervene on behalf of the colonies. He advocated a federal government with internal checks and balances with a written Bill of Rights that would protect the freedom of each man before God.
Henry believed in absolute morality. He taught "the eternal difference between right and wrong does not fluctuate." (Needless to say, Bill Clinton is the antithesis of Patrick Henry.)
Patrick Henry believed in the authority of the Bible. He held that "eternal law was reflected in nature and written in the Bible" as the surest foundation of social and political life. He also believed, as does President Bush, that authority comes from God.
We do not have Patrick Henrys leading us today because Christians have been careless. Even though we say "God Bless America" with our lips, we often reject God by our actions. We have elected men and women who have ousted prayer from our schools. We have elected men and women who adhere to the "right" to abort unborn babies. We have elected men and women who uphold homosexual lifestyles that God calls abomination.
We must become prudent with our votes, supporting only candidates who -- like Patrick Henry -- adhere to biblical values. It's time to get serious. We must pray that God will again send us leaders like Patrick Henry who will fearlessly hold God's hand while leading this nation. And we must be willing to wholeheartedly support them.
God Bless America!" -- R. Jerry Falwell

"We know what works: freedom works. We know what's right: freedom is right. We know how to secure a more and just and prosperous life for man on earth: through free markets, free speech, free elections and the exercise of free will unhampered by the state." -- George H.W. Bush, January 20, 1989

"We go forward with complete confidence in the eventual triumph of freedom. Not because history runs on the wheels of inevitability; it is human choices that move events. Not because we consider ourselves a chosen nation; God moves and chooses as He wills. We have confidence because freedom is the permanent hope of mankind, the hunger in dark places, the longing of the soul. When our Founders declared a new order of the ages; when soldiers died in wave upon wave for a union based on liberty; when citizens marched in peaceful outrage under the banner 'Freedom Now' -- they were acting on an ancient hope that is meant to be fulfilled. History has an ebb and flow of justice, but history also has a visible direction, set by liberty and the Author of Liberty." -- George W. Bush, Inaugural Address, Jan 20, 2005

"We have staked the whole future of American civilization, not upon the power of government, far from it. We have staked the future of all our political institutions upon the capacity of mankind for self-government, upon the capacity of each and all of us to govern ourselves, to control ourselves, to sustain ourselves according to the Ten Commandments of God." -- James Madison

"The history of liberty is a history of limitation of government power, not the increase of it." -- Woodrow Wilson

The only sure bulwark of continuing liberty is a government strong enough to protect the interests of the people, and a people strong enough and well enough informed to maintain its sovereign control over the government. -- Franklin Delano Roosevelt

There is danger from all men. The only maxim of a free government ought to be to trust no man living with power to endanger the public liberty. -- John Adams

"Propaganda is a means to an end. Its purpose is to lead the people to an understanding that will allow it to willingly and without internal resistance devote itself to the tasks and goals of a superior leadership." -- Joseph Goebbels

"The spread of evil is the symptom of a vacuum. Whenever evil wins, it is only by default: by the moral failure of those who evade the fact that there can be no compromise on basic principles." -- AYN RAND

"To remain silent when they should protest makes cowards of men." -- THOMAS JEFFERSON

The Liberty Bell has a Bible verse engraved upon it: "Proclaim liberty throughout the land unto all the inhabitants thereof." LEVITICUS 25:10

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