Christians Chase Jewish Family out of Delaware School District
The Daily Times explains that the Indian River School District has refused a deal that would end the obviously unconstitutional prayers:
Many held signs urging the board to keep prayer in school, and about an hour into the closed session, someone started to sing a hymn: “Take Everything to God in Prayer.” Then they sang “God Bless America” and “My Country, ‘Tis of Thee,” “Onward, Christian Soldiers” and “He’s Got the Whole World in His Hands.”
Is there any doubt that the purpose behind keeping prayers is to promote Christianity? A 2004 report from the same newspaper stated “Many begged the school board not to take Jesus away from their children. Others read scriptures from the Bible citing instructions given by Jesus.” In other words, it was the position of local families that official Christian prayers during school board meetings at which students were present was a way to give Jesus to their children — and that the school board, not just a church or pastor, had the authority to decide how and when Jesus would be presented to children.
[Indian River School Board member Reginald L. Helms] ... said he believed “my freedom of speech is too important to compromise or risk its loss. Our court case, where we have been standing up to the ACLU, provides the opportunity for the federal court to permanently uphold my right not to be treated as a second-class citizen, or to have to move to the back of the bus.”
Reginald L. Helms just doesn’t get it. When acting as a government official, he doesn’t enjoy all the same free speech rights as he does when he is acting as a private citizen. He doesn’t have the right to use his position of authority and power to promote his personal religious beliefs. He can publicly pray all he wants when he is just a private citizen, but he doesn’t have a right to hijack official government meetings to pray. This is analogous to how a police officer does not have a right to pray with or evangelize people he stops for speeding violations, but he does have a right to stand on a street corner while in his civilian clothes an on his own time to pray all he wants.
Reginald L. Helms’ use of the language of civil rights is offensive. He’s no better than a white person who asserts that they are being treated like a second-class citizen because they are being forced to sit near black people in the front of the bus. Helms also said that “tolerance is a two-way street,” but apparently when he says “two-way street,” he only means that minorities must “tolerate” the majority using the government to promote their religion; the majority, in turn, only has to tolerate the presence of a cowed and submissive minority that doesn’t speak out for equal rights. For some reason, this “tolerance” of the minority ends as soon as the favored religious practices of the minority are challenged.
Jews on First has details about the extensive harassment and intimidation which local Christians have engaged in. Things got so bad that the family finally had to move out of the school district, two hours away, out of fear over what their good Christian neighbors would do to them.
Among numerous specific examples in the complaint was what happened at plaintiff Samantha Dobrich's graduation in 2004 from the district's high school. She was the only Jewish student in her graduating class. The complaint relates that local pastor, Jerry Fike, in his invocation, followed requests for "our heavenly Father's" guidance for the graduates with:
I also pray for one specific student, that You be with her and guide her in the path that You have for her. And we ask all these things in Jesus' name. [emphasis added]
In addition to this graduation incident, Jews on First lists several more issues brought up in the complaint
These are just the actions involving the school board and school officials and they display considerable civility and restraint when compared to the actions of the rest of the loving Christian community around them. At an August 2004 board meeting, Christians formed a mob that sounds like it was close to getting out of control:
The complaint recounts a raucous crowd that applauded the board's opening prayer and then, when sixth-grader Alexander Dobrich stood up to read a statement, yelled at him "take your yarmulke off!" His statement, read by Samantha, confided "I feel bad when kids in my class call me Jew boy." ...
A former board member suggested that Mona Dobrich might "disappear" like Madalyn Murray O'Hair, the atheist whose Supreme Court case resulted in ending organized school prayer. She disappeared in 1995 and her dismembered body was found six years later.
Christian students in the school did a good job at reflecting the Christian love taught to them by their parents, pastors, and churches:
Classmates accused Alex Dobrich of "killing Christ" and he became fearful about wearing his yarmulke, the complaint recounts. He took it off whenever he saw a police officer, fearing that the officer might see it and pull over his mother's car. When the family went grocery shopping, the complaint says, "Alexander would remove the pin holding his yarmulke on his head for fear that someone would grab it and rip out some of his hair."
Barack Obama recently said that "I think we make a mistake when we fail to acknowledge the power of faith in the lives of the American people." Well, I don't know of anyone who denies how powerful faith is, but I do know that people like Barack Obama consistently fail to acknowledge just how harmful that power can be. A Jewish family in Delaware has been harassed and threatened because of faith. This is a form of faith-based terrorism, pure and simple, because fear is being used in order to achieve a political goal for the sake of a religious agenda.
Barack Obama also recently said that "Not every mention of God in public is a breach to the wall of separation - context matters." He's right, context does matter — but he makes the serious error of only imagining a very narrow context. He should look at the larger context, a context which includes Christians harassing, intimidating, threatening, and sometimes assaulting minorities who do don't fall in line behind or who challenge "voluntary" religious observances. Here we have Jews who were chased out of their homes by Christians who thought they owned the community. In Oklahoma, recently, a community tried to chase an atheist family out of the state — and then tried to get the father convicted under false charges of assault when he stood his ground.
Not every Christian agrees with such actions, obviously. I'm sure that Barack Obama would condemn them in half a second — but it's not enough to simply condemn them when they come up. It's also necessary to refuse to be complicit in creating the conditions that allow such incidents to happen. That, however, is just what people like Barack Obama do when they encourage the ability of the majority to have their religious beliefs endorsed or supported by the government — even in ostensibly "voluntary" rituals.
Context matters, and the fact is the overall "context" is an America where Christians have been privileged, have abused their power over others, and have been accustomed to the idea that they and their religion should be treated as superior to all others. Christians are reacting so violently to challenges to government-endorsed religious rituals because they don't like losing those privileges — it's precisely the same sorts of reactions America saw when whites started to be denied their special race-based privileges. When a group is privileged long enough, they end up seeing their privileges as their rights (or stop seeing the privileges at all) — and when minorities demand equal treatment, they are derided as demanding "special rights."
What if Barack Obama had said "Not every expression of white privilege in public is an infringement of civil rights — context matters." Would he be right? Yes — but he wouldn't say it because he recognizes that white privilege is wrong. He doesn't yet recognize that Christian privilege is equally wrong. Every official government mention of "God" is an endorsement and expression of support for a particular conception of a particular god and, therefore, endorsement and support for a particular religious position held by some but not all Americans.
People who happen to share that conception of this god generally don't recognize the fact they are thus being privileged because their god usually plays an important role in everything they do — it's an unconscious ideology that prevents them from seeing anything amiss with one more expression of their beliefs from a different source. Such privileging of one religion is a problem, though, because it sends the message that adherents are politically privileged. In the long run, this message of privilege becomes a message of superiority, and it creates a situation where people are willing to employ violence in defense of their privileges. It's only to be expected because people construct most of their personal and communal identities around those privileges.
Whites have used violence to defend white privilege; heterosexuals have used violence to defend heterosexual privilege; men have used violence to defend male privilege; Christians have used violence to defend Christian privilege. The story is always the same, all that changes is which group is being unjustly privileged. It's the duty of liberal, democratic governments to not only tear down such privileges, but to protect the minorities who might suffer from retaliation.
Separation of Church & State:
- Separation of Church and State 101
- Secularism 101
- What is the Separation of Church and State?
- Religion's Place in the Public Square
- Myths About Church/State Separation
- Church and State News
- Church & State Polls
Christian & Religious Privilege:
Religion in Public Schools:
Comments
It appears all politicians believe they have to “sell their soul” go get elected.
That’s strange that they call the Bro and Sis Jordan and Jamie Doe. My name’s Jordan and my bro’s name is Jamie…
Those unbelievers shuld be chased out of the US of A