With the knowledge that I have been a staunch secularist for a while, a friend of mine sent me an article from CNN online describing a small town in Virginia and its fight for public schools to have weekly Bible classes during regular hours.
The article reported that Heather and Logan Ward, a couple from New York, moved to Staunton, Va., to find that 80 percent of their kindergartner's class left once a week to go to a church and study the Bible.
The Wards and other parents in the community confronted the school board about the classes, and the school board said that it would review the classes, but they would continue. More than 1,000 people in the small community supported the decision with a petition to keep the 60-year old tradition.
According to CNN.com, the lessons were moved to a local church from the classroom after the Supreme Court ruled that the lessons violated the nation's policy of separation of church and state.
The president of the group that conducts the lessons said to the CNN reporter that the children need the lessons to get a good moral structure that can help them combat drugs, sex and pornography.
Children in other places are able to stop from doing these "immoral" acts without weekly Bible lessons. Why should students who do not believe in the words of the Bible wait for 80 percent of their classmates to return from Bible study so that class can continue?
They should not. The Supreme Court ruled these classes legal in regards to the First Amendment, but the time has come for the justices to review that decision.
"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof."
These first words of the First Amendment say all they need to say. The government financially supports the public school in question; therefore, to give Bible lessons during school is to violate the First Amendment.
The public school system should be secular. The household should be religious. If the parents would like their children to take religious classes, they can choose to send the children to a parochial school, to bring the children to Bible study outside of school hours and to teach the children about their family's religious beliefs in the home.
Secularists cannot keep their children from being exposed to the Bible in the public school classroom, but public school is supposed to be the closest they can come to the ideal.
Many argue that the secularists are the minority, and the majority should not suffer for the minority. However, the country was started because of a minority. The laws were made to protect the minority, and it is with that original thought process that the First Amendment should be used and interpreted in this country.
Write to Jessica at jfkerman@bsu.edu
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