Despite a warning from the Freedom From Religion Foundation that a Christian evangelist and illusionist was planning to proselytize students, a South Carolina school district nevertheless allowed the evangelist to target students at a recent school assembly.
FFRF learned from a concerned district employee that Socastee High School in the Horry County Schools in Conway, S.C., was planning to partner with Christian evangelist and illusionist Bryan Drake to proselytize students through a school assembly on Oct. 30. Drake describes his program as “driven by one clear and overriding passion, to share the Gospel with this generation.” Drake employs a combination of “comedy, mentalism and illusions” that “holds [the audience’s] attention and prepares them to see God’s plan from a new perspective.”
FFRF warned the district that Drake must not be allowed to proselytize, discuss religion, or use the event to invite students to a more explicitly religious event held outside of the school. The latter tactic is regularly deployed by Christian evangelists who target public schools. They often put on school assemblies billed as being on secular topics during the school day, then invite students to an explicitly religious worship event held outside school hours and off school grounds.
Despite FFRF’s clear warning, Horry County Schools allowed Drake to put on his performance for students. As FFRF predicted, Drake used the event to promote GroundZero, a religious ministry that promotes cultivating the lives of teenagers through faith as well as a “free to attend” event held the next day. Drake repeatedly directed students to come to this religious event and handed out tickets to students. Religious representatives from GroundZero were at the school during the assembly. At the off-campus event, Drake attempted to convert students and delivered “a clear presentation of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.”
It is inappropriate and unconstitutional to take away instructional time from students in order to expose them to Christian preachers. Even though the school assembly didn’t include overt proselytizing, by giving a Christian evangelist special permission to use district property and unique access to a captive audience of students to promote his worship event, the district displayed blatant favoritism toward religion over nonreligion, and in this case, evangelical Christianity over all other faiths.
The district’s partnership with an overtly evangelical ministry also sends the message that Horry County Schools favors those students and community members who subscribe to this particular brand of evangelical Christianity. This excludes and marginalizes district students and families who belong to the 37 percent of the American population that is non-Christian, including the almost 30 percent who are nonreligious.
FFRF reiterates that the district must enforce its constitutional obligation to remain neutral toward religion and stick to the task of providing a secular education. It cannot be a venue for evangelists to recruit students for religious events.
“The district will likely try to create the illusion that it wasn’t aware of, or complicit in, Drake’s ruse to convert students to his brand of Christianity,” states FFRF Co-President Annie Laurie Gaylor. “But FFRF isn’t fooled, and neither will be district parents whose children were targeted.”
The Freedom From Religion Foundation is a national nonprofit organization with 40,000 members across the country, including hundreds of members in South Carolina. Our purposes are to protect the constitutional principle of separation between state and church, and to educate the public on matters relating to nontheism.
