Texas School Board Fights Church-State Separation
Among the many decrying discrimination of all stripes at Wednesday’s public hearing of the State Board of Education was Terry Ann Kelly, who came to protest the persecution of a kindergarten girl reprimanded for singing “Jesus Loves Me” and an older girl yanked from the school talent show for interpretative dance that included a Christian cross.
The stories from the homemaker and mother of five from Grapevine and provided the underpinnings for a church-state showdown set for today’s meeting in Austin, when board members will again dive into hot-button amendments to Texas’ social studies curriculum. The SBOE's ...
Comments (19)
Evelyn White via Texas Tribune on Facebook
Barf!
Barry Dallman via Texas Tribune on Facebook
The wall needs to come down. A letter from Jefferson is not a "constitutional" mandate.
Waunelle Laird via Texas Tribune on Facebook
Church has had the biggest part in forming this country. It would not have made it if it were not for the Churches when is this country going to wake up to that fact!
Dillon Smith via Texas Tribune on Facebook
Only facts should play any role in teaching kids. If parents want to brainwash their kids let them do so on their own time.
Cynthia Casper Robertson via Texas Tribune on Facebook
Sorry to say that it looks like it led down the valley of doom by that moron Don McLemore.
Joe Estep via Texas Tribune on Facebook
There is no common sense on either side of this.
Evelyn White via Texas Tribune on Facebook
Barf!
Luis Vela Guevara via Texas Tribune on Facebook
Pen-de-jos.
Gary D. Askins via Texas Tribune on Facebook
Ultimately, America's (and Texas' )answer to the intolerant man is diversity, the very diversity which our heritage of religious freedom has inspired. Tolerance implies no lack of commitment to one's own beliefs. Rather it condemns the oppression or persecution of others.
It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.
Kim Batchelor via Texas Tribune on Facebook
I am a Christian and I want that wall up. The ideology being expressed by the Tx State Board of Education is exactly the reason why. I don't recognize Christianity in anything they (the "Christian" board members) are advocating, which is exactly why that wall exists--to protect all religions and all of us from religions like the one being advocated in Austin this week.
Michael Neinast via Texas Tribune on Facebook
I'm atheist but I think it's important to keep this wall up. But I also think it's important to start teaching FACTS about religion. Not preach about religion, facts. In other words, we need to have a required comparative religions class in high school, along with biology. And by the way Waunelle, this country was not founded on the church, this country was founded on religious freedom. If you knew more about the founding fathers, you would also know the majority were nonreligious or deists, which is pretty much says that God doesn't interfere in everyday life, hence the state of the world.
Scott Chase via Texas Tribune on Facebook
There's a big difference in believing that our belief in God was the source of our country's exceptionalism and believing that the Bible was that source. Our Founding Fathers knew that even if McLeroy doesn't. And since Jefferson was there, I tend to believe him rather than some zealot.
Stacie Engeling via Texas Tribune on Facebook
That makes me want to throw up a little. For any and every law or principle, you can find instances where it was enforced poorly. The deliberate misrepresentation that because there are cases where separation of church and state is enforced to mean eradication of religion in public, that this is the meaning and purpose behind the concept of separation of church and state, is unconscionable. Those instances of extremism should be dealt with individually as incorrect actions, and kept separate from this debate.
ughhh.
kirk holden
I can see why evangelicals get the bible so garbled when I see them attempt to read the constitution. There is no mention of god in the constitution. Madison wrote the foundation document for the state, which he determined was the provenance of men alone; separate in every way from the supernatural. The constitution does not include the phrases "this document is written in English" or "this document is written in ink" or "this document separates the state from the church" because these characteristics are self evident to the literate.
Karl Pallmeyer via Texas Tribune on Facebook
It saddens me that people get so angry over something that simply doesn't exist. You can believe in whatever nonsense you choose, but please keep your delusions away from me and out of our schools.
Steven P. Anderson via Texas Tribune on Facebook
Define "exist".
Karl Pallmeyer via Texas Tribune on Facebook
exist: v, 1. To have being or life, be or live. 2. To occur.
WUSRPH
Someone should give a little quiz to the SBOE "conservatives":
1. How many times does the word God appear in the U.S. Constitution or any of it amendments?
2. How many times is religion, in any form, mentioned in the U.S. Constitution or any of its amendments?
3. How would you characterize the treatment of religion by the U.S. Constitution or any of its amendments?
For good measure, throw in another question:
4. What was the reaction of the delegates to the Constitutional Convention to a suggestion that the convention have a chaplain?
The answers should convince any person open to reason that the "Founding Fathers" DID NOT WANT to intertwine religion with the new government....or, as several expressed it; they wanted the churches to handle religion and the government to govern.
(Answers: 1. NEVER. 2. Twice--in the "no religions test" in the original constitution and in the First Amendment which, as Jefferson expressed it and Madison wrote it, established "a wall of separation between church and state". 3. Negatively in that the only references are intended to bar any interference with government by religion and/or any interference with religion by government. 4. They REJECTED IT with several suggesting that it would be a disruptive act to have a chaplain as all the churches would squabble over which Church should have the job.)
Jacquelyn Boyet via Texas Tribune on Facebook
Um... I believe the point Jefferson was trying to make was that in England, there was, (and is) one state-sponsored church. The head of the Church of England is the Queen of England. The Queen is the state. Definitely no separation there. The constitution states that we shall not establish a state religion," Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof." Meaning that we will not have one religion that EVERYONE MUST FOLLOW! And that everyone can worship as they please. Jews, Buddhists, Christians, Scientologists, whomever. So as anyone can worship as they please, (or not), why on Earth do Christians, (and I am one) assume that Christianity is the ONE religion that everyone wants to be taught in school? Does it not smack of religious intolerance, which our forefathers were trying to escape?