In Florida, staff at the Brooksville Elementary School thought it would be a good idea to "address" disciplinary problems by "anointing" the students' desks with "prayer oil." Apparently, secular and sensible approaches just weren't good enough — they preferred instead to go with superstition. Why not sacrifice a chicken or goat?

They prayed and blessed their students' desks with prayer oil. While the Christian prayers and anointing took place after school hours on Friday, Feb. 2, the oil was still on desks the following Monday when teachers opened their classrooms.

Some felt the extra help crossed a line. "We thought it was vandalism. It was greasy. It was oily," said fourth-grade teacher Chris Becker, who resigned later that week to take a teaching job in Citrus County. "One of my colleagues said she was told by one of the secretaries it was prayer oil," he said. "I was very offended by that because I'm not a Christian." ...

But an official with the American Civil Liberties Union said the religious group crossed a constitutional line, effectively imposing their beliefs by leaving prayer oil on the desks for children and staff members to see. "If the principal and teachers want to have some kind of prayer after hours, that's not a constitutional problem," said Rebecca Steele, director of the ACLU office in Tampa. "But they did leave tangible evidence of their religious activity, (and) that was troubling to people."

Source: St. Petersburg Times (via Pharyngula)

It might sound rather harsh to suggest that these teachers might as well have sacrificed an animal as anointing desks with prayer oil, but that's only because sacrificing animals isn't currently part of popular religion while prayers and oils are. There's nothing inherently reasonable or sensible about anointing desks with prayer oil; there's nothing inherently less rational or less reasonable about sacrificing small animals. It's all equally irrational and unreasonable. It's all equally out of place in modern society.

The legal question is more interesting: holding religious rituals in a public school after hours is not necessarily unconstitutional, but does leaving evidence necessarily change things? Accidentally leaving something behind shouldn't be, I suppose, but what if leaving behind evidence is part of the religious ritual itself? That sounds like a way of incorporating others' reactions into the ritual itself, and that's certainly unacceptable. Imagine if a pentagram was left behind after Wiccan ceremonies — would Christians accept this? I doubt it, but leaving behind evidence of Christian rituals is supposed to be OK?