If we were all Muslims this wouldn't be a problem...
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."
Oh what a precious little thing! I remember singing Jewish songs in my high school choir even though I wasn’t Jewish. I was happy to. This girl is just another spiteful, intolerant, anti-Christian bigot.
Next up on Channel Five, instead of talking of ANYTHING else of substance, a fluff piece on why water is wet.
The MSM is doing everything it can to avoid talking about Climategate, the complicit asshattery being perpetrated by Congress in the downfall of our economy, etc...
I didn't think that this was possible any more.
Mark
And avoiding talking about Zero’s ‘tanking’ popularity!
-19 and falling!
It says so right there in the article.
Says they worship trees and things. I don't imagine if some misguided
folks decide to worship some inanimate object that it must then
follow that they are automatically worshiping Satan.
How about Jews & Hindus? What about the Christian sects that don't celebrate Christmas? Should they be exempted from federal holidays too?
Mark
From Wikipedia:
“Wicca is typically a duotheistic religion, worshipping a Goddess and a God, who are traditionally viewed as the Triple Goddess and Horned God. These two deities are often viewed as being facets of a greater pantheistic Godhead, and as manifesting themselves as various polytheistic deities. Other characteristics of Wicca include the ritual use of magic, a basic code of morality, and the celebration of eight seasonally based festivals.”
Hmmmmmm.... a ‘horned god’?
If we were all Muslims this wouldn't be a problem...
Hmmmmmm.... Wikipedia?
Accepting doesn't mean that she has to participate in those beliefs. She can simply let the others be, which is what she's doing. Should I, as a Jew, who does NOT believe that Jesus is my savior nor the Messiah, sing songs of praise to Jesus? When I was in school, or at Boy Scout Camp, when prayers "in the name of Jesus" were offered, would just sit quietly and respectfully while the other prayed, and offer my own prayer.
Mark
Our school orchestra and choir always performs religious hymns for Christmas and no one has made a fuss... yet. What used to be the prayer before football games is now the announcer reading the rules about why we can't have prayer in a frustrated voice followed by a moment of silence while the band plays Amazing Grace. Many times I've heard the opposing team state they liked it and wished their school did the same.
My Jewish cousins would have a Christmas tree (more presents!). We'd go over there for Hanukkah and they'd spend Christmas Eve at our house. No biggie.
Was that "Jewish member" required to sing the lyrics "Christ the Savior is born," as opposed to just playing the music? Remember, she's a member of a choir. How religious is he? An Orthodox Jew wouldn't sing that lyric.
Mark
A wiccan I knew in college assured me they worshipped Diana the goddess of the hunt and her lover, the horned god. I asked if that wasn’t satan and she was horrified as she answered absolutely NOT. (Yeah right. Kalee rolls eyes.)
Quite frankly I thought the group at college just wanted to go to the local cemetery, smoke pot, get naked and you know.
From that site:
“Because we have and love our own Gods, Wiccans have nothing to do with other people’s deities or devils, like the Christian God or Satan, the Muslim Allah or the Jewish Jehovah (reputedly not his real name). Christians often deny this fact because they think that their particular god is the only God, and everybody else in the whole world must be worshipping their devil. How arrogant.
They’re wrong on both counts. “
“Well she has been part of the group practicing for months and now she has a problem.”
Exactly. The one time a school choir gets any attention at all is at the Christmas concert. The list of probable songs should be presented at the start of the year and the rule should be you sing them all or you’re out. The Left and their fellow-travelers have already reduced Christmas to “Happy Holidays” and “Festivus” etc. I’m sure these people would come up with a reason not to sing patriotic songs at the Fourth of July of the choir was involved.
That being said, I know some pagan/wiccan folks and they’re mostly good patriotic people who don’t indulge in these antics.
What a wonderful sentiment to post here... Sometimes I wonder if maybe that huge bore, BOR isn't right when he claims that FR is a "hate site." I've been here quite a while, but when someone posts a story about about something that really shouldn't be news (i.e. that people are NOT complaining about a CHRISTMAS CONCERT AT A PUBLIC SCHOOL), and aren't suing the school district, and we get a bunch of nasty, snarky, and I'll use the 'H' word: HATEFUL comments like yours, I don't wonder why people who are NOT of your particular Christian sect or other religions may not trust Christians in general. Give that a bit of thought during the Christmas season!
Mark
Frankly, I'm ashamed of all the haters posting here. She's done nothing. She's merely excusing herself. At least Wiccans are peaceful and don't believe in honor killings, beheadings, and crashing planes into skyscrapers. Try to keep some perspective here people.
“Christians often deny this fact because they think that their particular god is the only God, and everybody else in the whole world must be worshipping their devil. How arrogant.”
Not arrogant! True!
Idolatry IS devil (Satan) worship. Whether they believe it or not!
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