Montana’s highest court has ruled in favor of a former Montana high school valedictorian who was banned from speaking at her graduation because her speech contained religious references.
Among Renee Griffith’s planned comments were such statements as: “I didn’t let fear keep me from sharing Christ and His joy with those around me” — and “I learned not to be known for my grades…but for being committed to my faith and morals and being someone who lived with a purpose from God with a passionate love for Him.” She was ordered by school officials to replace “Christ” with the words “my faith”; and to amend the other statement to say she “lived with a purpose, a purpose derived from my faith and based on a love of mankind.”
Griffith, a co-valedictorian of her 2008 senior class, refused to do so and, consequently, was prevented from speaking at the ceremony.
[…]The Rutherford Institute helped to argue the case on behalf of Griffith. “Renee wanted to mention Christ and God in her graduation speech, and the school said she couldn’t do it — then she insisted that she be able to do it,” explains Rutherford’s president, John Whitehead.
“She was actually forbidden from even participating in the graduation ceremony at all,” Whitehead continues. “So I think this [ruling] sends a shot across the bow of all these other cases that have happened across the country — and it’s a reaffirmation that we still have some freedom in the United States.”
A lower court had ruled previously that Griffith’s civil rights were not violated, and the school district had argued mentioning Christ or God in a speech is a violation of the alleged “separation of church and state.”
“But the [Montana Supreme Court] actually addresses that and says that’s not true — this is just basically free speech and students should have a right, as other students have a right, to mention what’s important to them and their lives when they’re up before the students speaking about graduation,” says the spokesman for The Rutherford Institute.
Whitehead says the ruling affirms to Christian students that mentioning the name “Jesus” in a speech is not taboo.
W. William Leaphart dissented from the majority of the judges – he ruled against Renee Griffith. He was opposed to Christians exercising their religious liberty in the public square.
This is a good lesson about how the public school system tries to force their secular worldview onto Christians. Can you believe that? The National Butte School District #1 actually told her what to say so that she could sound like them. They wanted her to pretend to believe what they believe. And they thought that suppressing her views would cause her no harm at all. That it was OK for her to be suppressed. That is was a good thing to silence her. That her rights could be breached so that their feelings would not be hurt. So that they wouldn’t have to realize that Christianity isn’t stupid, that it might even be true, and that smart people believe it.
The best thing Christians can do is to encourage their children to do well in school and to study apologetics. The atheists really hate the idea that smart people can be Christians. They really hate being confronted by smart Christians. Dumb ones they can accept, but the smart ones make them very angry. That’s what we want.
Conservative and liberal justices on the Supreme Court dueled verbally over whether a student religious group has a constitutional right to receive state college funds while excluding homosexuals and others who violate its beliefs.
The case, argued Monday, stems from San Francisco, where the University of California’s Hastings College of the Law says its policy requires that student groups seeking benefits such as school funding or preferred access to meeting rooms admit any interested student.
Hastings refused to accept the Christian Legal Society as a registered student group because, starting in 2004, the organization has held members to a “statement of faith” prohibiting “fornication, adultery and homosexual conduct.”
The society sued, contending that the Hastings antidiscrimination policy violated its First Amendment right to associate with those it chooses and to select members and officers committed to promoting its beliefs. Lower courts agreed with Hastings, setting up a Supreme Court argument with both sides represented by lawyers who gained prominence during the administration of President George W. Bush.
[…]The student group was represented by Michael W. McConnell, a conservative scholar who has challenged prevailing views requiring a rigid separation between church and state. President Bush appointed him to a federal appeals court, but Mr. McConnell stepped down last year to head a center at Stanford Law School and litigate cases like this one.
“If Hastings is correct, a student who does not even believe in the Bible is entitled to demand to lead a Christian Bible study,” Mr. McConnell told the Supreme Court. While the school could bar discrimination based on “status”—such as race—it could not stop a student group from limiting membership to those who pledge fealty to its beliefs, he said.
And what about the wise Latina, who was appointed by Barack Obama, and hailed as a moderate?
Liberal justices said Hastings’s policy reflected a wish to avoid parsing the specific form of discrimination each student group might employ. Outside groups could still use campus facilities even if not officially registered, they said.
“Your group is not being excluded or ostracized completely,” Justice Sonia Sotomayor said. “You can meet in the cafeteria, you can meet in open spaces in the school.”
Elections have consequences.
Now I guess that there were apparently some people who thought that voting for Obama was consistent with authentic Christian faith. But look at how Obama’s judges like up on the issue compared to Bush’s judges. Real Christians are having their fundamental rights attacked by the secular left on campus, and the judges on the Supreme Court and going to decide what happens to those real Christians. University campuses are run by secular humanists who have no reason at all in their worldview to care about protecting anyone else’s rights – morality on naturalism is survival of the fittest and might makes right. They have no principles.
I vividly remember having a talk with two “Christians” who were heavily into NBA basketball and memorizing movie dialog in the parking lot of our office prior to the 2008 election. They assured me that all that was necessary to be a Christian was to attend church and to have a good time at church. They would not listen to a word I said about policies that were consistent with the Christian worldview – not even on abortion or traditional marriage. Obama had the right color of skin, and that’s all there was to it. And now we see the results of their voting. What will happen when they meet the authentic Christians they helped to persecute in Heaven?
In addition, let this be a lesson to Christians who are interested in making a difference in the world – we need more experts in the law like McConnell who have top tier credentials. Don’t waste your life – think about the most effective thing you think you might be able to do, and do that thing. It’s not meant to make you happy, it’s self-sacrificial service.
Back in high school, I was holy rollin’ like a 80-year-old on a Rascal. I knew for sure I was going into the ministry and was entirely prepared to spend the rest of my life in the service of God. Several things happened about which I would write a book (and might one day). The short version is, my church was populated with small-minded, bigots. The church split twice and once because of a situation I was involved in. A poor black woman living out of an old rusted mustang barely survived two lots down while the church sent money to missionaries in Honduras. By the time the church had sucked my soul from me and spit me out, I turned my back on it all.
Fast forward to now. I have two children and I live in Texas. They will be exposed to Christianity in some form. We visited many churches (and synagogues since they are technically Jewish) and nothing appealed to me. The primary problem I have is that traditional worship is a broken record, especially when handled by Southern Baptists. There is only so much of the same catch-phrases, slogans, and cliches I can take before I hit toxic cynicism. The other problem I have is with modern worship. There is only so much canned slides, unfamiliar songs, and slick (but only re-purposed traditional) sermons I stomach. Where others claim tradition, I claim “rut”. I was on the other side long enough to see all of these things as meaningless.
I kept myself at such a distance from religion for so long, that aplogetics is entirely new to me. Christian apologetics is a discipline (and I would argue a culture as well) within Christianity where Christians defend their faith through logic, reason, and even science. Yeah, I know, sounds crazy. But here’s the kicker:
In my entire life, not once have I ever seen or heard a Christian say these words: “I’m not afraid for anyone to question me about my faith. I have nothing to hide [intellectually].”
Keep in mind, growing up Southern Baptists means growing up knowing very little about your own faith and spending time around other people who are openly hostile to those who don’t believe the same way.
For me, I don’t know what I believe anymore. I feel burned by a long history of disappointments by my own faith. In a nutshell, God to me is very similar to my own father. He came around, did his business and is long gone. I don’t and probably will never believe God is much more than a designer who set up some sophisticated systems that still work today but has moved on to other interests. I frankly think it’s absurd to believe God takes the time to help somebody have the strength to make it through a job interview while somewhere else around the world a child is sold into a life of sex slavery. But I digress.
So my attendance at the conference is me intrigued by the kind of intellectual topics presented because that’s not the Christianity I know or see on TV.
He summarizes the conference and then ends with this:
So the conference was great. So great in fact it occurred to me if actual mainstream Christianity was like that instead of the feelings-based judgment frontal assault I grew up with, I might have never left the church. However, the conference seemed to be geared toward two types: believers (meaning Christians who want to defend their faith) and atheists, who comprise the main apologetics boogie man. “Atheist” was used constantly to refer to the kind of people they needed to stay prepared for.
As a guy who lost his faith long ago, I never doubted God’s existence. However, since I think he is a deadbeat dad, I have many questions and am looking for meaning without being convinced God is real. My struggle with faith has lasted me about 25 years. I would like to have seen a session on reconciling the Bible as a whole. For instance if Intelligent Design is really using science as I heard, how do they address the Adam and Eve question? I also would like someone like Dr. Moreland to discuss why he gets three angels and conversations with God directly when clearly God never bothered with me to begin with.
The premise on which they build many of their arguments is their belief. I don’t have that. So while I enjoyed the conference overall, I walked out of there with more questions. But isn’t that kind of the point? For the first time in over two decades, I felt mentally stimulated by a religious event. In that, I’m intrigued.
And what do we learn from this?
Well, I will try to be civil, but what I really want to do is rant against the postmodernism, irrationality, mysticism, pietism, relativism, inclusivism, universalism, hedonism, etc. that has got us to a point where something like 70% of young Christians who grow up in the church abandon it as soon as they go off to college. The church is a club that is run by people who want nothing to do with the honest questions of people who are less interested in feelings, intuitions, amusement and community and more interested in truth. And we are failing these honest questioners, because we are too busy having fun and feeling happy.
I have a very good idea of why the church is losing all of it’s young people. And we need a tea party revolution in the church to get people to come back.
So here’s my stand:
The church believes that belief in God’s existence is divorced from logic and evidence, but I believe that God’s existence is knowable, rational and supported by publicly-accessible evidence
The church thinks that people become Christians because they like Christianity, but I believe that people become Christians when they think Christianity is true
The church believes you can seek happiness without caring about the moral law, and their job is to make you feel accepted no matter what you do, but I believe that we need to set out clear moral boundaries and explain to people using non-Biblical evidence what damage is caused if those boundaries are broken
The church believes that reading the Bible and attending church as therapeutic, but I think that the Bible and church are for clarifying my obligations in my relationship with God and for setting out the broad goals that I will use when I develop my life plan to meet those goals by solving problems using my talents in the way that *I* think is most effective – and my plan doesn’t involve making you feel happy, by the way
The church thinks that the Christian life consists of singing, praying and not disagreeing with anyone or thinking that we are right about anything, but I think we should get off our duffs and start studying to think about how our Christian convictions apply to the world around us in every area of life, from politics to economics to foreign policy to marriage and parenting and beyond
The church believes that Christianity is true for them while other religions work for other people, but I believe that religions are assessed by whether they are true or not – and that other religions can be mistaken where they make false claims
The church believes that evangelism is done without using apologetics or focusing on truth, but I think we should all be prepared by watching debates, holding open forums, hosting speakers and conferences, and generally training ourselves to engage with the outside world in the realm of ideas
The church thinks Christianity is a faith tradition, but I think Christianity is a knowledge tradition
Anyway, check out these other posts for more snarky defiance.
WINTERY KNIGHT 