Posted on 01/10/2008 4:38:55 AM PST by Stoat
ST. LOUIS — A rural school district's long-standing practice of allowing the distribution of Bibles to grade school students is unconstitutional, a federal judge has ruled.
An attorney for the southeastern Missouri school district said Wednesday he will appeal the judge's injunction against the practice.
For more than three decades, the South Iron School District in Annapolis, 120 miles southwest of St. Louis in the heart of the Bible Belt, allowed representatives of Gideons International to give away Bibles in fifth-grade classrooms.
The American Civil Liberties Union filed suit two years ago on behalf of four sets of parents. In August, a three-judge panel of the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a temporary injunction against the practice.
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
The Biblical text(s) which refers to salvation are still there. The “commentary” (written by man, not God) summarizing how YOU can make this a reality in your own life by praying TODAY to trust Jesus Christ as your personal Lord & Saviour are omitted.
The Biblical text(s) which refers to salvation are still there. The “commentary” (written by man, not God) summarizing how YOU can make this a reality in your own life by praying TODAY to trust Jesus Christ as your personal Lord & Saviour are omitted.
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Why? So...The Gideons can “sneak” it past the government censors? If so they have just taught the kids that Christians are sneaky, lukewarm, and timid.
Be brave! Do what is right! Close the down the government schools. That is the solution that is needed here.
No, what I mean is a plan that is included in some of the NT’s outside of the Bible text. It’s included just inside the front or back flap (right now I can’t remember which). It’s simply a little step by step plan referncing certain verses (something like the Romans Road) which explains admission of sin, repentance and acceptance of Christ’s atoning death, burial and resurrection.
The plan of salvation is not edited out of the biblical text nor is anything else. It’s the very same NT Psalms and Proverbs and that is all that is necessary. They just didn’t add the Plan of Salvation which is helpful for those who have no Bible knowledge.
The Gideons base their work upon the following promise;
So shall My word be that goeth forth out of My mouth: it shall not return unto Me void, but it shall accomplish that which I please, and it shall prosper in the thing whereto I sent it. Isaiah 55:11
No, they wouldn't. Schools and the districts thereof are administered by the local school board, elected by the people of the community, with some input by the state. The federal government is not the ruler of local school districts. The local community ought to be allowed to decide curriculum, personnel, building sites, and policies.
Now, if the locals wanted to give out Qurans, fine.
This judge should have said, "This is not a federal issue. Take it back to your states." I can only hope the appeals court will turn back this latest overreach of the federal judiciary.
Sure is a far cry from the great days of our country where school opened with Bible reading and prayer every day.
Isn't it amazing the stuff that we have come to accept in our culture today. The frog continues to boil slowly.
Sorry, but you're wrong on all counts (as is the judge). There is nothing wrong with a NON-TAXPAYER FUNDED group passing out anything at all. It's not the job of the school to be "gatekeeper" on ANY topic. If the kid's parents require them to toss whatever freebies they get, then THAT is the correct way to handle the problem. As long as the Bibles weren't purchased by tax dollars, then, as far as I'm concerned, it's perfectly OK to allow them to be distributed .
You’re exactly correct. That’s the way it’s been handled for decades. Some school boards allow the classroom distribution, others won’t allow it and so a sidewalk distribution is necessary. In that way what goes on inside the classroom more closely reflects the desires of the community.
This is one of the reasons we need school choice so parent’s tax dollars can go to support the type of education they desire rather than having federal mandates rammed down their throats.
I lived in St. Louis during my 4-7th grade years and remember the Gideons coming and distributing the New Testament pocket books. (We also had a moment of prayer at the beginning of the school year during those years.) What I don’t recall is whether the Gideons proselytized (sp?) at the time of the distribution. I also don’t recall whether the Plan of Salvation was included.
To avoid the appearance of religious bias maybe they should have a table where books, including the Koran, be kept and students could take one or all as they saw fit.
It is not OK for the local voting mob to herd other people’s children into local government indoctrination centers and subject them to a religiously non-neutral indoctrination. Remember that behind every government school teacher and employee is a police gun. ( real bullets in those guns on the hip.)
Please read post #33.
Solution: Complete separation of School and State!
Adults and foreigners get one message. The kids in our country that are imprisoned in our “schools” get the “sneaky” message.
Solution: Get government OUT of the education business!
Get serious here and stop fixating on the Bible. Do you want planned parenthood (a non-taxpayer funded group) to pass out condoms, masturbation instructions, abortion literature? How about CAIR and Korans? How about NAMBLA passing out (use your imagination)? Of course the school is the gatekeeper. They have a legal responsibilities when children are entrusted to their care. Just because you want children reading Bibles doesn't mean you bend the rules JUST for your cause.
I would agree that the Feds need to get out of the Education business. There is no constitutional mandate for the federal government to be involved in education. Same can be said for a number of other federal agencies and deaprtments, IMO.
I agree, BUT some action will be taken.
It's an all or nothing proposition in a government run school.
Who's fixated on the Bible?? I've got no problem with anybody passing out anything, as long as there are NO restrictions on what can be passed out, and none of it is funded by taxpayer dollars. Guess what---most kids are already well aware of those "forbidden subjects", courtesy of the Internet (if the school's themselves aren't passing out the materials--WITH taxpayer funding--and that I "do" have a problem with). As far as "shielding" them---it's already way too late. The only real remedy is to see that they get exposed to ALL SIDES, so they can make an informed personal judgment. And that is REALLY what education is supposed to be about.
That’s just impractical and to be perfectly honest I don’t believe you when you have no objection to passing out NABLA literature, condoms, free firecrackers, korans, Mao’s little red book, Democratic literature, etc., etc. Children are in school to learn the 3 R’s. We don’t need to open up the place to anything anybody wants to do as long as it isn’t done with tax money. Your argument is unworkable.
? The local voting "mob"? "Government indoctrination centers"? "subject them"?
Holy Cow. That isn't at ALL what was going on.
You seem to go suggest there is extreme behavior on the local side, when the real extreme behavior was on the federal side.
Local parents and local school boards generally have the best interests of their communities at heart, and they especially know their communities better than an ACLU lawyer or a federal judge sitting in some courtroom a state or two away.
The founding fathers figured this out, too. Incidentally, I think during the earliest years of our Republic there was regular Bible reading in the schools. No law forced schools to do it, and no atheistic lawyer protested it.
I don’t believe that in my large suburban school district they handed out copies of the NT, however.
Regardless, the knowledge, understanding and appreciation stayed after the presentation.
We saw the school district as supporting established institutions, rather than tearing them down. And the local Gideons saw the importance of sharing their work of distributing bibles in hotels, motels and public spaces for ready use as further communicated to those who might use it in later life.
We likewise had charitable groups of all sorts explain what they do and we thought this made sense as an educational function.
We had Protestants, Roman Catholics, Eastern Orthodox, Reformed Jews and perhaps a Hindu or two in our school and thought nothing of hearing about the functions of various institutions.
We would have been surprised if a bible was handed out by one group or another. If the Jewish groups that attended assemblies had distributed items that would have surprised us as well.
We were ten or eleven and we understood that you went to church or synagogue to hear the details of your faith and practice it.
The public school district was right in letting the Gideons explain the nature and works of their group and wrong in letting distribution of bibles be a part of that presentation.
If given the choice of asking for the reactionary change of privatizing all schools tomorrow or mildly reforming schools to more like they were in the fifties, I will take the later as more sensible.
That being said, I think that if the local school board felt Bible distribution was inappropriate, then they could stop it, too.
Doesn't federalism require this issue to be resolved LOCALLY and not by a government judge? I think so.
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