Gospel Choir in Public School Does Not Violate Seperation of Church and State

The student singers in Garfield High School's gospel choir, their director, principal and assistant principal were all "bouncing off the walls" with jubilation last Friday afternoon.

"It feels like the end of 'It's a Wonderful Life'! The program is not only saved but launched! This renews my faith in humanity," e-mailed choir director Carol Burton.

Hallelujah! Word had just arrived that the racially integrated, uplifting, high-energy choir, which had been doomed to disband due to lack of money, had been saved.

A few calls came early that morning to this column from ordinary, everyday people with no connection to Garfield or to gospel. They came from readers such as Diane Spaulding, who is retired and lives on a fixed income but had found a little something to send the choir anyway.

"What a great project they have," she said. "I hope you have a follow-up so those of us who have never heard gospel can go and hear their music. It's a good thing for Seattle -- oops, that sounds like Martha Stewart!"

There's a follow-up all right. Spaulding may not seem to have much in common with Gene Colin, chief executive officer of Ferguson Construction, the biggie builder who puts up all those Costcos and Home Depots in eight states. But the connective tissue between the two of them is what this season -- and the Seattle Post-Intelligencer's Readers Care Fund -- is all about.

It's about that million bucks feeling you get by giving and making a direct difference in someone's life, whether you have a million bucks or not.

As soon as he read the column Friday morning, Colin called the school with the offer of an $8,000 check to save the choir. By noon, Ferguson vice president Tom Balbo was on his way to Garfield. And, by late afternoon, there was a thank-you banner at the construction company signed by every kid and teacher involved in the group.

The amount of the money is relative. There may be hundreds of people out there, Colin said, who can throw $25 million at a cause. And others who can send 25 bucks. But the feeling you get from helping is priceless. "To some people, $8,000 is a weekend trip to Palm Springs, to others it's all the money in the world," Colin said. The key is doing what you can for a cause that makes life tangibly better for someone else.

In fact, an additional $900 in individual contributions has come in, accompanied by heartfelt notes from the givers.

Colin, who was recruited by Gov. Gary Locke to serve on the Higher Education Coordinating Board, is passionate about education. He saw the choir gift as a chance to have a direct and immediate effect on high school kids who were making a beautiful noise but in danger of being silenced unless something happened fast.

"Checks might have dribbled in over time, but someone had to wrap their arms around this now, before it was too late," he said.

It's a song of many verses that plays every year as I write this column -- a song that never fails to make me squeeze back tears and swallow hard. People of large and of meager means reaching out with gifts of help for those who could use a boost about now.

It happened last June when I wrote about the bleak and boring summer facing the students of First Place School for homeless kids. While other children were heading off to camps, these kids were going nowhere, until, within one week, individual readers sent over $127,000 in camp scholarships. Suddenly children who had never paddled a canoe or petted a pony were having the experience of a lifetime.

The same gratifying feeling followed a column on The School Bell, the "store" in Wallingford where more than 1,000 kids from financially strapped families "shop" for free school clothes each year because of donations to the Operation School Bell program of the Assistance League of Seattle. Envelope by envelope, readers sent over $30,000 so children in need could board the bus looking just like everyone else.

But it isn't always easy for even those with the best intentions to connect with a credible cause.

We're busy and stressed and maybe a little uncertain about how much good a check to a charity will really do.

That's where the P-I Readers Care Fund can help you to help others and give you that "making a difference" feeling in return.

WHO GETS THE HELP The following charities will benefit from the Seattle Post-Intelligencer's 2003 Readers Care Fund drive. All are smaller than those funded by major sources, so they rely more heavily on the generosity of individual donors.

# Rise n' Shine helps children and teens affected by HIV and AIDS, providing Christmas presents, access to support groups and a free week of summer camp.

# The Forgotten Children's Fund buys, wraps and delivers food, toys and coats to needy children in King, Pierce and Island counties. Last year, the fund played Santa to 2,500 children in 500 families.

# New Futures helps children and families in low-income apartment complexes in White Center, Burien and SeaTac. It offers preschool and after-school programs and helps families achieve more stability. This is the first year New Futures will get money from the Readers Care Fund.

# Powerful Voices' STAGES ("Strength Through All-Girl Education and Support") program offers counseling and discussion groups for girls in and out of juvenile-detention facilities, covering such topics as health, drug abuse and job readiness. The program says more than 70 percent of incarcerated girls have been victims of abuse and that their rehabilitation needs are more likely to be overlooked.

# Southwest Youth & Family Services, which offers counseling, education and support to residents of White Center, South Park, Delridge and West Seattle. It takes some services to homes and schools rather than requiring clients to visit an agency, and it offers those services to a diverse population through staffers who speak Spanish, Arabic, Somali, Cambodian or Vietnamese.

Susan Paynter's column appears Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. Call her at 206-448-8392 or send e-mail to susanpaynter@seattlepi.com.

Hallelujah! (meaning "I am a witness", and not to a car wreck but to Jesus Christ and His Saving Grace) and Amen are used in this article, clearly this choir is a Christian spiritual choir. However I would wager that in spite of the fact that they are singing Christian songs, most of the choir members are not Christian. The white members probably join for the "ethnic expierence" and black members join because it's what they grew up with and it's more fun than the chess club. The liberal standard for "religious tolerance" seems to be "If your white you can express religious beliefs in a publically funded building/program but only if we think you really don't believe in it and only if your doing it as an ethnic expierence. Black people and other monorities can express any religious belief they want well, because their black or a minority. Religious expressions from people who really believe in what their saying shall be limited to Muslims, Wiccans, etc. everyone but white Christians."

The ACLU gives minorities more leeway in regard to religious expression. Some minority churches actually tell their congregations to vote DemocRAT. I guess it is one of the benefits for being shackled on the RAT plantation.

That's it exactly. American Blacks are not classified as Fundamentalist Protestants or Biblical literalists even though they are. Their Fundamentalist Protestantism and "Bible-thumping" are considered quaint trinkets of a "revolutionary" culture. Never mind that poor Southern rural whites have the same "call and response," the same sweaty, bellowing preachers . . . and suffer from the same poverty.

Of course, this can't be pointed out without in justice admitting (as too few conservatives are willing to do) that it was the conservative white Fundamentalists who first insisted that the two groups were too disparate to be united by a common religion. Liberals merely took the ball and ran with it when it came their turn to be racists (ie, when racism served their purposes, just as many conservatives underwent a conversion to "colorblindness" at the exact same time).

One problem is that Black Fundamentalists are insulated from their quasi-allies. Most FReepers refer to this as alliance as "the plantation," though I prefer to see it as similar to the old Ottoman millet system in which all ethno-religious-cultural groups are given a quasi-independent status (except for the Abstract Host Population, of course). The thing is, they are insulated from recognizing what they are allied with not only by the liberals but by conservatives as well. For some reason that I have never understood conservatives concentrate solely on racial and economic issues when it comes to Blacks. The common religious beliefs are almost never invoked. What is it about the appearance of Jesse Jackson or Al Sharpton (both allegedly Fundamentalist preachers, though not classified as such) that causes the evolution/creation issue or homosexuality to vanish from conservative brains? The appearance of any Black liberal for some reason entices only cries of "poverty pimp!" and "racial hucksterism!" Why does no one ever bring up evolution or Biblical literalism to these people? At least it would put them in a no-win situation where they would have to alienate one of their two constituencies (Blacks and the left wing). But for some reason this never ever happens. I despair that it ever will.

Of course I differ from most FReepers in not being an "economic conservative." I feel social Darwinism and materialistic capitalism are just as "leftwing" and un-Biblical as atheist socialism, and that poor whites have been forced into a quasi-alliance with laissez-faire that is just as unnatural and just as destructive to their own interests as Blacks with the left. Howard Dean has actually made a small step of progress in pitching his leftist social message to poor whites based on its being tied to "economic liberalism." When will someone on the Right make a similar overture to both Blacks and poor whites based on commonality of religious and moral beliefs and that once and for all breaks the artificial association of social Darwinism with moral conservatism and "economic liberalism" with moral nihilism?

Unfortunately most Black conservatives (some notable exceptions) are non-religious social Darwinist economists. The Black Fundamentalist masses remain quasi-allied to the moral Left. When will this be corrected?

PS: No, I am not a "liberal," even in economic matters. But I honestly feel that radical capitalism is extremely corrosive and advocate some investigation of right wing alternatives (distributivism, mutualism, social credit, etc.). In fact, if you didn't know me any better, you'd assume I'm a "palaeoconservative." But of course by definition I can't be one of those; I'm pro-Israel, and that alone disqualifies me!

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