Like most Americans, I feel great pride when I look at the stars and stripes of our nation’s flag, and reflect on what it stands for; a Union of 50 states, supporting a Constitution that guarantees liberty and justice for all. As a parent of a natural born Texan, having lived in this great state for half a decade now, I even feel some of that same pride for our own state’s flag.
This past Rosh Hashanah, while we were gathered in prayer here at the temple, another prayer service was happening. Various Christian ministries were engaged in evangelizing students around our public schools’ flagpoles under the title of “See You At the Pole,” (styled as SYATP). They stood beneath the flags that represent our precious American (and Texan) freedoms, and preached a single religion. For legal purposes, SYATP is officially a spontaneous, student-lead activity, and officially does not evangelize.
The reality could not be more different. It is not a spontaneous, grassroots student-lead group. It is a strategic and well-funded organization, supported by over 100 Christian institutions, such as such as Promise Keepers and Focus on the Family. SYATP provides pastors and Churchgoing teachers everything they need to recruit, organize, and publicize the event each year, under the auspices of a perfectly legal “student initiative,” including detailed checklists, prerecorded radio spots, and press releases. Despite the many legal protections we have under our Constitution’s First Amendment, SYATP is just one of many groups who have been skirting the edges of the law for decades.
Evangelical Christian organizations will stop at nothing to get their foot in the door of our schools and public institutions. Their goal is to make every student Christian, and establish Christian norms in national life. Unfortunately, that means any child who’s not Christian (or even the wrong kind of Christian) gets less of a voice, and less of a place in our public schools. They are incrementally transforming Public Schools into Private Christian Schools, paid for by you and me. School teachers and counselors are being turned into missionaries, and religious displays are being mandated in our children’s classrooms.
That makes it all the more disturbing that the legal protections against religious evangelism in our public schools are eroding even more.
Earlier this year, our legislature passed and our governor signed into law Senate Bill 11, which allows schools to mandate prayer times in schools. This bill further alienates any students who do not subscribe to Christianity, and further advances tax-subsidized Christian coercion.
What does this bill do?
First of all, students and teachers already have (and have always had) the right to pray or read religious texts in schools. However, teachers did not have the right to recruit, preach, or encourage a particular religion or practice. This bill has changed that. Under this new law, teachers and administrators are free to preach their faith in schools, during class hours.
We have seen how Christian groups already pushed their agenda through abuses of existing laws. Now they have total legal coverage to advance their crusade directly into the classroom. The law is careful to include language prohibiting a teacher or administrator to “require or coerce” participation.
Don’t be fooled.
The Law also mandates that anyone who opts out must waive of their right to take any legal action in defense of their First Amendment rights. I’ll repeat that: the law only allows students or their parents to opt out of these mandated prayer periods, provided they waive their constitutional rights – in writing. Of the many attacks on Freedom of Religion in our schools enacted recently, this is the most brazen and pernicious yet. Christian Nationalists are celebrating this new legal permission to bring their particular form of Christianity into classrooms. Rest assured, there will be well-funded programs and resources for teachers to advance their personal religion carefully calibrated to strain the limits of the law.
With parents and teachers who opt out forced to waive their rights to bring a legal complaint, and with the force of the Texas Attorney General’s Office provided to defend this law, there is little to stop anyone from abusing this law, just as they have abused others in the past.
There is something you can do.
This policy must be approved by every individual school district or charter before being implemented. Schools are now within the legal window to choose whether to adopt this policy or not. When enacting this policy, schools are choosing to detract from precious school resources, to alienate minority students, and to provide an open platform for evangelism of our students. By declining to participate, our schools will be protecting our children.
RAC-Texas is offering an opportunity to learn more about this new law and how we can engage our local schools. You can register here.