Florida school district sued for banning Bible give-away

The Collier County Public School District, for years had an unholy relationship with World Changers, an evangelical, grass-roots, Florida organization with the goal of restoring the country, mostly through its school children, to God. World Changers was allowed, each year on Religious Freedom Day, to distribute Bibles to public school students in the county.

Wising up, the county put restrictions on the group, forcing them to not directly hand Bibles to students, but place them on a table with notice that the school and its administration was not associated with the group. Finally, the school district realized that setting up a table with religious literature in a public school is unnecessary, intrusive, and crosses the line of separation between religion and government.

The Collier County school district told World Changers' founder Jerry Rutherford he and his group may no longer have access to other people's children in the public school. They now have to compete for clients outside the schools, as it should be.

Naturally, evangelical Christians are not happy with this decision. It's not enough for them to be free to practice their religion in their homes and churches, they demand access to our children in the schools.

The Liberty Council, on behalf of World Changers, has filed a lawsuit against the school district claiming it has abridged the group's "rights to free speech, free press, free exercise of religion, and equal protection guaranteed under the First and Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution."

The defendant "prays for nominal damages."

Horatio Mihet, senior litigant for Liberty Counsel, told WINK News Now that "the separation of church and state does not apply in this case. 'Because it is not the school board who is distributing these Bibles. It is a private community group.'"

This is exactly where the separation of church and state applies, however. Public schools are, in essence, government schools. Our children are a captive audience in those institutions and religious groups have no legal rights to use them as fonts from which to cull recruits.

Mihet adds, "Once you open up a forum to community groups, you cannot exclude some groups just because they happen to have a religious belief."

On the contrary. The military (though it can be argued there is a conflict of interest), 4H, the Humane Society, have no religious agenda, and therefore may be allowed access to public schools. The Boy Scouts, however, as a Christian organization that denies membership to gays and atheists, has no place in our schools. Neither would any religious group of any kind, as religion is exclusionary and their presence interferes with the rights of parents to teach religion at home.

Jake Jones, our Evangelical Examiner, claims, "The school district, like many others, suffers from a misunderstanding of the First Amendment. The Establishment Clause does not prohibit private religious speech or literature; under Supreme Court case law, it prohibits only government religious speech. The distribution of Bibles by World Changers is private speech."

He goes on to add, "As the Supreme Court has stated: 'There is a crucial difference between government speech endorsing religion, which the Establishment Clause forbids, and private speech endorsing religion, which the Free Speech and Free Exercise Clauses protect.' Collier County does not appear to understand this crucial difference."

Unfortunately it is Jones and other evangelicals who do not understand the crucial difference in this case, i.e: it concerns individual speech in a government school.

The article, Religion in the Public Schools, at SocyBerty (where Jones likely got his quote), explains further: "Students may pray or use religious expressions with other students during the school day on the same terms and conditions that they may use in any other conversation or speech. Student comments cannot be attributed to the government just because they are made in a public school setting. Students do not 'shed their constitutional rights to freedom of speech or expression at the schoolhouse gate.'"

The Supreme Court refused to abridge the rights of students in openly discussing and sharing their beliefs.

Outside organizations do not have the same rights as students do while in the public schools, just as teachers and administrators, acting as representatives of the government while on the job, must refrain from pushing their religious agendas onto students.

Craig Portwood, our Bible Prophecy Examiner makes a grievous error when he equates religious freedom with the freedom to proselytize to other people's children on school grounds.

Religious freedom does not, in any way, grant religious groups access to anyone on government, or on their private, property. Evangelical Christians insist on twisting the meaning of freedom because they can not seem to grasp the idea that their rights are for themselves only. They have the freedom to believe what they will. They do not have the right to use the government to spread that belief.