Posted on 12/13/2009 7:30:38 AM PST by markomalley
Fifteen-year-old Katarina Keen won't sing along to "Silent Night" or "Listen to the Stars," two Christian songs planned for her choir's upcoming Christmas concert at Borger High School. But she will sing "Jingle Bells" and "A Carol in Winter."
Katarina and her family are Wiccan.
The Borger High choirs have given a concert every December, with traditional religious Christmas songs, but this is the first time in director Johnny Miller's 23-year career that any Borger student had issues with the religious themes in the music, he said.
A concert at 2:30 p.m. Sunday will feature a ninth- and 10th-grade choir and an 11th- and 12th-grade choir, with each ensemble singing five songs. The concert will take place in the Borger High auditorium.
"We're doing our best to accommodate everyone's wishes," Miller said. "It's just difficult, because it's a complete 180 of what I have always done."
Every year, in communities across the nation, Christmas activities in public schools spur conversations regarding religion in schools, said Charles Haynes, a First Amendment scholar who has spent 20 years helping communities find common ground.
"Many Americans understand that a lot is at stake on how we handle religion in public schools," said Haynes, senior scholar at the First Amendment Center in Washington, D.C.
Students began preparing in October for the concert in Borger, and Katarina said Miller had planned for the choir to sing Christian songs. She and her mother, Jean Keen, told Miller she couldn't sing those songs because she's Wiccan.
The Keens also have raised concerns this year about prayers in class and a prayer board posted in the choir room.
Miller said he gave students permission to lead prayers in class Mondays, at their request. The prayer board was a student-led activity, he said. Miller revamped the concert to include a wider variety of secular songs for the holiday season.
As a Wiccan family, the Keens worship Mother Earth.
"We don't believe in Satanism," Jean Keen said. "We worship trees, the solstices."
Wicca began in the early 19th century as a religion that emphasizes growth through harmony in diversity, knowledge, wisdom and exploration, according to a Web site for the Church and School of Wicca.
While their Christian peers in Borger celebrate Christmas, the Keens are preparing for one of eight Wiccan holidays, the Yule, in celebration of the winter solstice Dec. 21.
"It's not a very pushy religion," Katarina said. "It's really easy to worship. We accept everyone, and we don't diss anyone. We don't put any other religion down. We accept them while other people just judge them."
The music selected for the Borger choir concert is standard choral literature, even though some pieces are religious in content, said Miller, a member of the Texas Music Educators Association and the Texas Choral Directors Association. The choir has produced all-state singers, choral directors and garnered awards in concert performance and sight-reading from the University Interscholastic League.
"Choral music has its roots in the church. In order to teach it accurately, you have to teach it from whence it came," Miller said. "I teach the foundation or the building blocks so these students can go out with a well-rounded foundation in choral music."
Some school districts have staged concerts that mirror a church service, while others have excluded religious content entirely, Haynes said. Either scenario can result in conflict, the former creating a potential issue with the First Amendment and the latter producing a community backlash.
The better solution is to make a "good-faith attempt" to teach religious material in the context of discussing cultures and traditions, being careful not to promote a particular theology, Haynes said. Schools also should provide a reasonable, limited opt-out policy that is specific to certain songs or a lesson, he said.
"Sometimes being religious comes with a price, and it makes the student feel like an outsider," he said. "A school cannot avoid all of that. A family has to make a decision what kind of school environment they want. In a public school, (there are) certain things a child is exposed to."
Randall High School's choir concert Sunday will include "Of the Father's Love Begotten," "Jesu Bambino" and an arrangement of "Deck the Halls," director Marcus Bradford said. The choir will end, per tradition, with the "Hallelujah Chorus" from Handel's "Messiah."
"I try to vary styles of literature, sacred and secular literature," Bradford said. "We're not teaching a theology of anything. We're really teaching music history and culture."
In Borger, Katarina won't have to sing compositions that are counter to her faith, Superintendent Clifton Stephens said.
"We've bent over backwards to be cooperative with (the family)," Stephens said. "We've always taken time to listen to concerns they have."
For Katarina, though, the experience this year in choir isn't the fun class she had envisioned, where she would learn songs in a team environment.
"This is school and not church," she said. "I was the one kid that stood out."
"Hell's Bells" was one of the bestselling records in the country in the summer and fall of '32. Indeed, it would make for good cartoon music.
"Witch Doctor" generated some answer songs, such as "Which Witch Doctor?" by the Vogues and "The Purple People Eater Meets the Witch Doctor" by Big Bopper, both from 1958.
Where did I claim to be sinless?
God is fairly clear where He stands on the matter of worship that is directed to anything but Himself - I didn’t make the rules.
I am grateful for the salvation freely offered to me when I don’t deserve it. I have accepted that salvation and try to live out my faith with His help
If you don’t like the rules, talk to the One in charge, not me. But everyone will bow before Jesus at some point. For some it will be the fulfillment of a lifetime of faith, for others the beginning of terror without end. I know which side I am on.
Keep to your own rules. We don't want them forcing their rules on us, let's not do it to them no matter how "right" you think you are.
I don’t believe I have said one word in judgement. I have not tried to force my rules on anyone else. There is only one Judge.
I don’t understand the personal attacks on my purity or putting words in my mouth, but there you go...
Have a nice evening and I hope you resolve your bitterness toward Christians.
Just what does that mean to you?
And you have a tagline “Think Critically”? Interesting...
The ACLU has eyes on this case....now “Think Critically”.
BTW... I'm an agnostic. God is big enough that he does not care what labels we afix to him. Ascribing merely human limits and aspirations to him takes away from what he is.
Less than you can possibly imagine.
Let me get this straight...because I'm an atheist and don't believe in Satan, I'm actually a Satanist?
I don't believe in Allah, Zeus, or Krishna either...does that make me a Muslim/Pagan/Hindu?
Guilty.
Merely considering a course of action does not create precedent. Only doing something creates a precedent. All that has happened so far is that a girl decided not to sing some Christmas songs with the rest of her choir. That doesn't seem too dangerous to me.
In what way could this situation have been resolved that would NOT cause you to fear for your freedoms? If I'm missing something, please help me connect the dots. Should the girl have been forced to sing the songs? Kicked out of the choir? What would have been the proper course of action, in your opinion?
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