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Christian Living
Louisiana
Public Education
Church and State

“I still feel strongly that America is a Christian nation,” Shelby Ainsworth, principal of West Monroe High School, told WAFB 9. “I want our high school youngsters exposed to as much as that as possible.” - Christian Headlines

Discussion

Tue, 08/13/19

We haven’t been a “Christian nation” in that sense in a very long time… and were never intended to be a nation where government run schools use the power of government to require deference to a particular religion. It was all just going with the flow back when nearly everybody was at least culturally theist, but we’re not there anymore and plaques on the wall are not going to change that—they’re only going to generate lawsuits that the plaque-posters will lose.

Local districts — for government run schools — should be allowed to reflect the faith of their communities. They should not be required to reflect any faith at all. I don’t see how it can pass the first amendment test.

Views expressed are always my own and not my employer's, my church's, my family's, my neighbors', or my pets'. The house plants have authorized me to speak for them, however, and they always agree with me.

Tue, 08/13/19

I am always bemused by the fact that the same Christians that have the political muscle to get these theocratic things passed are often the same ones moaning about Christian discrimination and persecution in America. You can’t have it both ways…

Tue, 08/13/19

….Christians ought to act as if they do trust in God. Putting the sign up in every classroom hearkens back to the 1950s, when overt religiousity (often faked) was a sign that we weren’t Godless commies. And then you get kids whose friends/neighbors/relatives spend their Saturdays at the honky-tonk or strip bar (or wherever), and they figure out that “In God We Trust” in their classroom is a mockery.

In other words, a misplaced assertion of trust in God is equivalent to an inoculation against faith. Nasty reality there.

Aspiring to be a stick in the mud.

Tue, 08/13/19

I’m reading a book about evangelicalism in America, and the author explained how Eisenhower tried to institute a civil religion in the mid-1950s to counter the Red Scare and to instill civic pride. This is where “In God We Trust!” comes from. Graham was a key ally.

Tyler is a pastor in Olympia, WA and works in State government.