State/Church Bulletin

Texas Bible Classes OK’ed

Members of the Texas Board of Education voted 10–5 on July 18 to approve elective bible classes at all public high schools. The board declined to adopt specific rules or require state standards, as requested by a House committee. Courses, according to the board, may not “endorse, favor, or promote, or disfavor or show hostility toward, any particular religion or nonreligious faith or religious perspective.”

Legislators approved the bible elective last year. About 25 Texas schools already offer courses.

A study by the Texas Freedom Network found that most bible courses taught in Texas public schools are devotional in nature, that most teachers had no academic training in biblical, religious or theological studies and were unfamiliar with constitutional issues.

Editorialized the Austin Statesman (July 22): “Texas school districts will be wrestling with the Legislature’s folly for years to come.”

Texas Protects Exorcism

The Texas Supreme Court in late June ruled in favor of an Assembly of God Church in Colleyville, saying church members involved in a traumatic exorcism that injured a young woman are protected by the First Amendment.

Laura Schubert sued the church over efforts to “cast demons out of her” in the mid-1990s when she was 17. She was awarded money for mental anguish, but a majority of the Supreme Court reversed the ruling.

Chief Justice Wallace Jefferson dissented, saying: “The First Amendment guards religious liberty; it does not sanction intentional abuse in religion’s name.”

“I Believe” License Challenged

With four South Carolina clergy and the Hindu American Foundation, Americans United filed a lawsuit in June in federal court challenging South Carolina’s “I Believe” license plate. The words are accompanied by a large, bright yellow cross on a stained-glass church window. The legislature is sponsoring the specialty plate.

Christian U Wins Lawsuit Appeal

In a blow to state/church separation, the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in July that Colorado’s higher education board “discriminated” against Colorado Christian University in denying it state funds for student aid because it is “pervasively sectarian.” The appeals court overturned a 2007 ruling by a district judge.

State law excluded pervasively sectarian colleges from eligibility for student scholarships administered by the Colorado Commission on Higher Education. The Board’s criteria include whether students must attend religious services and take required religious courses that “indoctrinate or proselytize.”

The appeals court ruled that the board discriminated among religions in differentiating between “sectarian” and “pervasively sectarian” institutions. The ruling said the board was overly intrusive in judging whether course work indoctrinated or proselytized.

Update on Jeremy Hall Case

The government in July sought dismissal of the lawsuit filed by Foundation member and Army Specialist Jeremy Hall, who is scheduled to receive the Foundation’s second “Atheist in a Foxhole” award in October.

The government claims Hall and the Military Religious Freedom Foundation lack standing to sue the Pentagon.

Hall charged the military with religious discrimination after his rights as an atheist to hold an approved meeting with other freethinkers was abrogated in Iraq last year.

After the lawsuit was filed last fall, Hall was threatened with “fragging” (murder by fellow soldiers) and was moved to Ft. Riley, Kansas. A prominent news segment on CNN TV in July featured Hall and the lawsuit.

Faith-Based Federal Scandals

ABC News reported in June that a former top official in the White House’s faith-based office received a lucrative grant from the Department of Justice, at the request of two senior Bush administration appointees.

The $1.2 million grant was to be awarded jointly to a consulting firm run by Lisa Trevino Cummins, who formerly headed Hispanic outreach for the White House faith-based office, and Victory Outreach, an evangelical group based in California. Cummins, who heads a consulting company, was slated to get a third of the pot of money for helping Victory Outreach spend the grant. Victory Outreach describes itself as a “church-oriented Christian ministry called to the task of evangelizing and disciplining the hurting people of the world, with the message of hope and plan of Jesus Christ.” Victory Outreach ultimately rejected the funding, deciding it was unqualified to handle such a large grant.

Some Justice Department career staff objected to the award. The Justice Department is probing an allegation of irregular contracting practices within its own ranks involving seven suspect awards.

One of Cummins’ senior employees, Kelly Cowles, who was set to oversee the federal funds, mismanaged funds through her consulting company in designing a $22-million, two-year statewide faith-based initiative for the Ohio Governor’s Office. The governor terminated her contract for mismanagement in March 2007.

A federal juvenile justice office fired on June 24 is accused of helping select organizations apply for Justice Department grants past the deadline. Michele DeKonty, former chief of staff at the U.S. Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, recently pleaded the Fifth Amendment when asked to speak with investigators from the House Committee on Oversight. DeKonty is a graduate of Regent University, started by Pat Robertson and described as “America’s preeminent Christian University.”

Military Proselytizing Continues

Students and staff at West Point and the Naval Academy are charging institutional promotion of religion, three years after a similar scandal broke at the Air Force Academy over the evangelization of cadets.

Nine midshipmen asked the ACLU to petition the school to abolish daily prayer, during which they are required to stand, at mandatory weekday lunches. The academy refused.

Complainants told The New York Times that cadets who didn’t attend religious services during basic training were referred to as “heathens.” Mandatory banquets begin with prayer, often bible-reading. Maj. Gen. Robert L. Caslen, the academy’s top military officers, peppers speeches with God talk.

“Nowhere does it say that you have to be a good Christian officer or Jewish officer or Muslim officer: You need to be an officer dedicated to the Constitution of the United States,” West Point grad Steven Warner told The Times.

In a related development, the U.S. military hurriedly withdrew a trooper from duty in late May, after he handed out coins inscribed in Arabic promoting Christianity to Muslims in Fallujah, Iraq. One side asked: “Where will you spend eternity?” The flip side quoted John 3:16: “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.”