Christians and schools

Seems that we’ve got some exciting news in Rhode Island.

The ACLU has filed a lawsuit against the city of Cranston, asking them to take down a banner in the auditorium that shows the “school prayer.” The banner has hung there, across from the school motto, since the 60′s. The school (like others across the country) used to have a recitation of the school prayer or the Lord’s prayer each morning. That practice stopped, eventually, and at this point the banner is a sort of relic. Last June, people started making requests that it be taken down from its prominent place in the auditorium. The argument is straightforward – a public school has no business with “prayer,” one way or another. The matter made its way to the school board in March of 2011. After a public hearing, the school board decided to *not* remove the banner, and now we have a lawsuit to force them to do it.

So far, so good. Oddly, one of the most sensible comments on this issue came from the generally hard-line Bishop Tobin:

“Surely no one’s preventing that free exercise of religion … The rise and fall of religious faith, Christian or otherwise, in our nation, or even in Cranston, doesn’t depend on the fate of the banner. If it has to be removed, so be it. Faith will survive and the free practice of religion will go on.”

There’s a deeper issue here though and it shows in the public reaction to the lawsuit.

Reading the comments on the news article above reminded me of why I never read the comments on news articles. The unfiltered internet is a horrifying thing to behold. So filled with rage and hatred. When you combine anonymity and a large audience, the conversation tends to drop off a cliff. There are gems of sense in there, but also some glimpses into a cloistered bigotry that I like to imagine as a distant echo from a bygone age. The most horrifying comments are the ones who jump straight to an incredibly lowbrow sexism. They try to intimidate the plaintiff and anyone else who disagrees with them because (in their words) she’s just some dumb girl.

The primary plaintiff is Jessica Ahlquist, a sophomore at the school. She is a brave young woman who has become the face of the lawsuit. I cannot imagine that level of scrutiny myself, and I’m a self confident and successful person in my 30′s. To be under the halogen lights in one’s teens, already an insecure and formative time, would be an incredible amount of pressure. I respect her courage. She had to be removed from some of her classes because other students are threatening to harm her. From the tone of the comments on the Providence Journal (and on this website), those students are not alone in their violent urges. There seems to be a substantial contingent of people online who would prefer that women act in a docile skirt-wearing god-fearing sort of way.

So here’s my point in writing all of this: I was going to stay quiet about the banner. I have faith that the legal system will churn through and come to the correct answer. However, when people start to publicly intimidate, shout down, and threaten a high school sophomore for having the nerve to speak up, the game changes. When they bring their intolerant hatred out in public and pretend that it’s a virtue – at that point I feel a civic and moral duty to push back.

I’ve written and spoken before about the fact that we should deal with larger social issues of religion first. Some examples that matter are the sheltering of pedophiles in positions of authority, the misguided attacks on scientific progress and public health, the institutional sexism and homophobia, the tax evasion and fraud, and the wars. If we could get to the point where this banner was really just a historical relic – I would be willing to declare victory and go home.

To me, the banner itself is a small deal in the larger world. Yes, it should come down. It should probably have come down decades ago. This should have been an administrative thing. The real problem is that when someone finally raised the point we saw the underbelly of intolerance that still exists in the country. That intolerance is worth fighting.