The Freedom From Religion Foundation is insisting that Byron Center Public School Board members stop imposing at board meetings their personal religious beliefs on district students, parents and community members.
A concerned Byron Center Public Schools community member has informed the state/church watchdog that on Oct. 7 during a school board meeting, board member Thalia Tilma told a story about allegedly convincing a child not to transition that included references to her allegiance to Jesus and belief in the devil:
I one hundred percent love all kids, and that’s why I serve on this school board. And Jesus does, too. So, I’m just gonna say that. One time I had a wonderful part of a ministry that prays with kids and I had a wonderful opportunity to pray with a little girl. And there was many that had prayed before her so I can’t claim. I just got to do this once. … She had already, you know, made the decision to start a transition and she had cut her hair and was wearing boy clothes and binding her breasts and stuff. She was talking with me and another gal who wanted to pray with her about how she was feeling and she was talking about these thoughts that she was having. I just felt led to reach over and like hold her hand and I just told her … those thoughts that you’re having are not your own.
Tilma said that she later told the child, “You can tell the devil to shut up and that’s OK.” She continued, “I’m a big believer the devil doesn’t play nice so I don’t play nice with him.” She further elaborated that attendees at the public meeting needed to rally around children in love and tell them “we accept you. So does Jesus, and you know, Jesus came to set the captives free. So if He’s in us, we can do that for them.”
“While Tilma is certainly free to express her religious beliefs in her private capacity outside of her role as a board member, it is unconstitutional for school board members to push their personal religious beliefs during school board meetings,” FFRF Legal Counsel Chris Line writes to the Byron Center Board of Education.
Our Constitution’s Establishment Clause — which protects Americans’ religious freedom by ensuring the continued separation of religion and government — dictates that the government cannot in any way show favoritism toward religion, FFRF emphasizes. As the Supreme Court has put it, “the First Amendment mandates governmental neutrality between religion and religion, and between religion and nonreligion.”
A public school board is an essential part of the public school system. Public school boards exist to set policies, procedures and standards for education within a community. The issues discussed and decisions made at board meetings are wholly school-related, affecting the daily lives of district students and parents.
While board members are free to promote their personal religious beliefs as they wish in their capacities outside of the school board, as government officials, they cannot be allowed to impose their personal religious beliefs on district students, parents and employees in their capacity as board members. The school board ought not to lend its power and prestige to religion, amounting to a governmental imposition of religion that marginalizes and excludes the 37 percent of Americans who are non-Christian, including the nearly one in three Americans who now identify as religiously unaffiliated and the nearly 50 percent of Generation Z who have no religious affiliation.
FFRF urges the board to uphold the rights of conscience of students, families and other community members and to refrain from promoting their personal religious beliefs at board meetings in the future.
“School board members with their vital public mission are obligated to use their time and energy to tackle educational issues, not to proselytize,” says FFRF Co-President Annie Laurie Gaylor. “It is not only improper to impose a sectarian religious perspective at a public school board meeting, it is also very bad manners.”
The Freedom From Religion Foundation is a national nonprofit organization with 40,000 members across the country, including more than 1,000 members in Michigan. FFRF’s purposes are to protect the constitutional principle of separation between church and state, and to educate the public on matters relating to nontheism.
