Posted on 08/09/2013 3:28:00 AM PDT by xzins
A New Hampshire mother has been banned from praying at her kids' high school.
Lizarda Urena has two children enrolled at Concord High School in Concord, N.H.
She started praying on school grounds in 2011 after two bullets were found in a restroom at the school. Urena said she prayed aloud as students entered the school every morning.
She was recently told by school officials that the prayers were not welcome after someone filed a complaint with the Freedom From Religion Foundation.
"They told me, no, no more," the mother of two said, with tears in her eyes. "I stand up, lift my hands to praise the Lord with my Bible holding and sometimes kneeling."
Urena said said she will continue to pray for the school, just no longer on school grounds.
To the extent they allow other parents on the grounds, then she should be allowed on the grounds. To the extent they allow other parents to talk while on grounds, then she should be allowed to talk.
However, I see no reason to allow the government to ban people from people-owned property. Security checks? Sure.
But, to refuse parents the right to monitor or be involved in their child’s education is tyranny.
Yes that is her religion...but atop the slippery slope we climb here. Using the same logic how could a governing entity (let’s say a small town) prevent the “Muslim Call to Prayer” being broadcast via loudspeakers five times a day? What’s to stop Muslims bring their prayer rugs to the outside of the school bldg as well? Or a EcoCult praying to a beloved tree (or school property) daily?
I’m not saying her religion is “unacceptable” in her beliefs or her right to believe to worship as she sees fit; I see the theatrics of her daily ritual as no different than the prayer rugs unrolling in airports and offices 5 times a day.
It’s not to who she is praying to or what she is praying for, it’s her very public demand that HER prayer be accommodated to by everyone else. Kinda like the loudspeaker “call to prayer” DEMANDS IMO.
In the minds of school officials, public prayer is offensive. In their minds, whether they acknowledge it or not, neutralism in religion means atheism, but that that, after all, is the default between theism and atheism.
They are militant atheists.
I don’t mind if a muslim brings a prayer rug, and I don’t mind if they speak their faith while they are there on school grounds. First, when the bell rings, the kiddies need to be inside. Second, a school does have a legitimate interest in controlling the level of noise in and around school grounds. Announcements, bells, and education must be allowed to be heard, and that cannot happen when being drowned out.
So, if this school puts in place a decibel level policy, then I have no problem with that. It is a reasonable expectation for a school given the need to have education take place. Also, it would be equally enforced. Does that mean this woman might not be able to SHOUT! That’s ok. God has good ears.
So far as Islamics and others, I doubt seriously their numbers in the population will have that be a common occurrence anytime soon in most of America. And, if there’s a place where they have a majority, then I would be surprised if the prayers I heard WEREN’T mostly Muslim.
Religious rituals are not theatrics whether we share them or not but the expression of a religious culture. Since the ‘60s, more and more the schools have taken to suppressing all expressions of the Christian culture of its students, which is to say, of the families who send their children to the schools.
Home School!!!!!
Don't send your kid anywhere God isn't welcome. If you are waiting for something good to happen, your child will go through 12 years of school, enter and graduate from college, then get married and a job, before you realize that nothing gets better,....it always gets worse.
Christians mistakenly think they can send their Godly children into a hell pit, and somehow their kids will have a positive effect on the other kids. With a ratio of a hundred to one, your child will be the changed one.
You had your child,....Raise them!!
Why isn't this a slam-dunk, open and shut case?
Not only is what you said true, there is a glaringly obvious Constitutional provision stating her right to practice her religion:
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof
I found a bullet in the 6th grade boys restroom and gave it to the principal. He threw it in the trash and the day went on as normal. Of course, this is Texas where we don’t get our panties in a bunch over such things and kids proudly show off pics of the deer they got over the weekend.
Yeah, I guess they figure she is single-handedly establishing a State Church.
I truly believe Mrs. Urena has the best of intentions and the last line of your original post speaks to me...she continues to pray for the school, just not on school grounds. And that is what is needed, prayer lifted in His name for intention she mentions.
I, however, DO mind that prayer rugs ARE permitted to be unrolled and all activity must cease five times a day ANYWHERE it is demanded (be the space public or private). I MIND because it is the creeping of Shari’a into our secular culture and the public/govt acceptance and acquiescing is IMO a defacto endorsement.
You are very correct that TODAY Shari’a is a non-issue in most of the US, but with birth rates of 8 plus children per family it WILL be an issue in less than one generation. The compliance with all things Shari’a must STOP in this generation or our grandchildren (Christian/Jew/atheist) will he Dhimmis. Look at England!
I applaud Mrs. Urena’s daily devotion to lifting the safety of the HS community up in prayer, and I hope that w/the publicity some Pastor will open his doors and has other parents or community members pray together.
Daniel continued his customary praying despite the legal prohibitions against it. And God heard his prayers.
He wasn’t praying “to be seen of men”, as Jesus described the Pharisees; he wasn’t putting his prayers on display. But neither was he going to hide the fact that he was breaking the law by praying to Jehovah. His focus was on God, not on what men permitted or prohibited.
The founders may have intended that the law recognize our freedom to worship God. That’s fine. God uses both good and evil men to accomplish His will. But Christians answer to God, and will pray no matter what those men intended nor whether that legal freedom is eventually denied us.
We have freedom to worship God not because the founders decreed it, but because God reigns over His creation. And He will still hear our prayers even if we’re removed from the public square by force and law.
I will put my trust in God, because He is in charge. I will pray to be allowed to worship Him unmolested, and will let Him decide. And I will submit to His decision, whatever it may be - just as Jesus did, and Paul, and Peter, and Daniel, and so on. (And God give me the strength to do so.)
It blocks the national government. Several states collected taxes into the 19th century on behalf of certain sects.
Hitting the nail on the head.
There is no "freedom from religion," neither in the Constitution nor in the world. The established religion in the West is "the religion of non-religion," a wholly illusory position much like that of the Coyote floating in the air off of a cliff in a Warner Brothers Road Runner cartoon.
When we choose not to decide, we make a decision, and mere agnosticism is a faith-based religious outlook.
As long as God's people surrender the ground to this hostile religious outlook, we will lose that ground, not recognizing the true issue in these small skirmishes, where some judge ultimately gets away with favoring a hostile religion over the religion its followers oppose, is the Church's legal right to exist.
Will they stop the thugs from throwing f-bombs and the N word around on campus as well? That offends me and others.
They couldn’t touch her if she went across the street, could they?
Yes they do, and they are laughing at how easily they can shut us up with threats of lawsuits. I suspect they are having a grand time imposing their evil on us.
If students can pray at school functions, then parents can pray over the school.
I think she should continue to go pray at the school, silently but moving her lips so everyone still knows what she is doing. She should also call some of the legal groups that fight this kind of thing to see if they are interested.
There is nothing the atheists can do about that. These people need to be smacked down by a court. It is the only thing that will stop their bullying.
But, going across the street is agreeing that she has no right to pray on public land.
This is utter madness. . . our country has been given over to a reprobate mindset. People better wake up. God is on the throne. . . Jesus is coming back soon. . . there are NO gray areas in God’s eyes. . . .Heaven or Hell. Everyone has a choice NOW to believe in Jesus or not. “To die is to be present with the Lord”(Philippians 1:23) “The wicked shall be turned into hell, and all the nations that forget God.” (Psalm 9:17)
the words are “freedom of religion” not “freedom from religion”
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