“Students, teachers and local pastors are protesting over a court case involving a northern Florida school principal and an athletic director who are facing criminal charges and up to six months in jail over their offer of a mealtime prayer.”
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/aug/14/criminal-prayer-case-stirs-protests/?feat=home_headlines
The whole article is quite a window into the view of the state on Christianity.
A few observations,
1.) This article is an argument for getting your children out of pagan schools. When you send your children to government schools the government employees hold the position of “in loco parentis.” This means that the State, when your children are at government schools, are considered the parents of the children and have the rights of parents. In this case the government employees are not acting consistently with what the government parent (the State) desires and so are being prosecuted with the possible consequence of 6 months jail time for saying a prayer.
2.) We must continually keep before us that the opposition to the Christian religion being expressed in the School does not mean that the school is being operated apart from religion. By putatively seeking to sanitize the public square of religion the ACLU is only removing the opposition religions that compete with the religion favored by the ACLU. The religion favored by the ACLU is religious humanism complete with the religious premises of materialism, atheism and relativism. The ACLU is the most successful religious organization operating in America.
3.) We should not want Christian prayer in government schools, if only because the price of such prayer being present in the government schools will be allowing overtly pagan prayers in government schools. (I say overtly because I am fairly confident that “Christian” prayers in government schools would be covertly pagan prayers.) There is little difference between a school system that communicates that all religions are publicly endorsed and the school system that communicates that no religions are publicly endorsed. The end result that is communicated with both approaches is the idea that the State is the god over all gods.
4.) Christians, really must come to understand that the State is viciously opposed to their convictions. Now, some will respond to this by saying, “Well, we have to understand that in order for a school to operate it’s only ‘fair’ that either all the religions get to have expression or none of the religions get to have influence.” We have shown repeatedly that it is impossible to have a school setting where no religion is having any influence, and we have shown repeatedly when all religions have a influence in such a way that some entity is establishing just how much of an influence those religions can have, then the entity establishing just how much of an influence those religions can have is the entity that provides the God and the religion of the school. Remember Rome, where all the gods were allowed as long as all the adherents saw the State as God of the gods.
5.) All religions are totalistic, including the secular humanism of the ACLU. American schools are charged with taking the Christian Steve, the Muslim Muhammed, the Hindu Kartik, and the Jew Levi and turning them into the Secular Humanist Pan. One would think that common ground could be found among the variant religions if only in the idea that each is opposed to having their children wrenched from the god of their fathers in order to serve the god that is the American State.
6.) “He who takes the King’s coin is the King’s man.” Those who will be on trial have taken the King’s coin (their salary working for government schools) and having taken the King’s coin they should not be surprised when the King throws them into jail for not doing the King’s bidding.
7.) The schools have their own religion. That religion is decidedly not Christian. If you send your children to these religious schools you must not be surprised if they end up abandoning the Christian faith to become practitioners of the religion taught by those schools.
