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March 08, 2007

Christian Persecution at Heritage High?

When I first learned that 12 Christian students had been expelled from Heritage High School in Vancouver, WA for praying, I was outraged. How obvious a violation of the First Amendment is that? But it seems the case has a few wrinkles that makes it both more interesting and more complex.

The students are mostly Russian immigrants who came to the United states seeking religious freedom. According to the Christian press, the students requested permission to start a prayer club and were denied the use of a private room in which to pray. Another Christian source, however, says the school administrators gave the students brochures about their rights and responsibilities and told them they could pray in school only if they had a club advisor (that seems to me to be a prior restraint problem, but I don't know for certain). In any case, the story goes, the students instead gathered in the school cafeteria to pray together. A student who claims to be a Satanist reported the Christians to the school's vice principal who then told the students that they must pray outside in the rain, but could not do so in the school building. The students refused to go outside and were then suspended from school.

The Conservative Voice says, "Once again, Christians are persecuted in the United States." And if the story I just relayed were accurate, the concern about religious persecution would be correct. The First Amendment prohibits regulating speech based on the speaker or the content. If other kids are allowed to gather in the cafeteria on their own time and talk about whatever they want, then these kids must be allowed to gather on their own time and pray. If they are not being allowed to pray, but other groups of kids are being left alone, then you have a content-based restriction on speech and it is absolutely unconstitutional.

In fact, the First Amendment expressly protects this country from facing the sort of "secular humanist" takeover that many Christians so fear. If indeed the school administrators are attempting to enforce secular humanist views on students and, therefore, are intentionally suppressing Christian speech, there is nothing like a civil rights case and paying attorney fees to the students to wake them up. I have no doubt that if this case is as the Christian community is presenting it, the courts will not allow the school administrators to infringe on these students' right to pray together. People can say pretty much whatever they want in this country and no secular humanist can stop them.

So what are those "wrinkles" I mentioned?

The Oregonian interviewed several of the supporters of the students who had gathered to pray at the school this week and found that at least some of them believed that Jesus and prayer should be put back in our schools. So it would seem they don't understand the Constitution any more than the school administrators do. Not that that should have any bearing on the legal case, but it adds some flavor to the story.

Another wrinkle – school administrators warned the students several days earlier that their prayer sessions were blocking traffic. The cafeteria is crowded, and students were complaining about the traffic obstacle being created by the prayer group. They say they offered the group a classroom in which they could meet during non-school hours with limited supervision, but the students declined the offer. It was the defiance and disruption that earned the suspensions, they say, and not the fact that they were praying.

One administrator also said he believed some people from outside of the community were pushing the students to make this an issue. He said it is district policy to allow students to pray "unobtrusively" any time they want to, so long as it doesn't interfere with normal school instruction. But in this case, the students were insistent upon gathering in a group in the middle of a high traffic area and other students could not get around them. They defied administrators' requests to move to an area where they would not pose a disruption and were, therefore, suspended.

One of the suspended students said that the prayer group did not want a club designation, nor did they want to be "secluded" in a classroom. She said the prayer circle's purpose was visibility and they wanted to pray in public so as to encourage shy students to be more open about expressing their own faith. "If we're in a secluded room, they can't just join in," she said. That statement would tend to support the administrators' position, rather than the students' position.

I don't believe the students should have been forced to pray in a secluded room, but surely they could have found a place against a wall or in the hallway or something where they could gather and be seen without being an obstacle to others. After all, didn't Jesus tell his followers to pray in their closet rather than wearing their holiness on their sleeves like some trophy? Had the students been more respectful of their classmates and teachers, not to mention Jesus's own teachings, they would likely not have been suspended, and Christians the world over would not today be hearing bogus reports of Christian persecution in the land of the free.

Posted by Becky at March 8, 2007 11:14 AM