The June 2009 (American Family Association) AFA Journal carried a article about the Mount Vernon City School Bible on the Desk controversy. This is the same school district that is trying to terminate the contract of one of its prized teachers, John Freshwater, for refusing to follow his supervisor’s order to remove his bible from his desk.
The following is the article as found in the current issue of AFA Journal:
Bible ban lifted for Ohio public school district
The Mount Vernon City Schools are again the center of controversy over Bibles. During the last school year, John Freswater, a 24-year veteran teacher, was suspended on other issues after a conflict arose when school officials found a Bible on his desk. This school year, the public school staffers, in the small community of Mount Vernon, Ohio, were ordered by administrators to remove all religious materials and displays from their rooms, including their Bibles.
In April, one middle school teacher, Lori Miller, was confronted about personal devotional materials on her desk and was directed to remove them. When she asked for support from her local and state union (affiliated with the National Education Association –NEA), she was told that she had no legal grounds for her grievance and it was justified via a legal opinion from the state level. Locally, the union insisted she comply and tried to block her from filing a grievance due to what her own union termed her violation of “separation of church and state.
“I was outraged when I learned that Lori, one of our members was experiencing such obvious religious harassment from her employers and was being roadblocked by local and state unions professed to be advocates for educators,” said Finn Laursen, executive director of Christian Educators Association International (CEAI). “We encouraged Lori to move forward with a grievance and had First Amendment attorneys waiting in the wings should litigation be needed.
On April 14, Lori Miller received a first level grievance hearing in which her right to have a Bible on her desk was affirmed “for the present time.”
On April 16, many students brought their Bibles to school as an exercise of their religious freedom and as a show of support for their former teacher, John Freshwater, who is till fighting to get his job back.
“The lesson here is clear. It is imperative that Christian educators, students, and parents remain willing to step forward to insist on the rights our forefathers guaranteed for future generations in the Frist Amendment of our Constitution,” said Laursen.
www.ceai.org, 4/20/09
There definitely appears to be a real effort to silence the Christian voice in our school systems. Where once Christ and Christianity were welcomed and an integral part of the classroom and curriculum, they are now banned in preference to a godless hedonistic secular humanistic religiosity.
Monday, June 01, 2009
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