Religious services disguised as graduation celebrations will no longer be hosted by the Community Independent School District in Texas, thanks to the work of the Freedom From Religion Foundation.
A concerned community member informed FFRF that Community ISD hosted and promoted a baccalaureate service in the auditorium of Community High School in Nevada, Texas, on May 19.
According to its own advertisements, pastors delivered sermons to students at the district venue. District staff escorted students inside. Opening prayer, worship, Christian hymns, sermons and a closing prayer were delivered by various local Christian clergy. The district advertised the event via Facebook and asked seniors to “please bring your full regalia,” thereby confusing the baccalaureate with the official graduation ceremony. The district’s own invitation read: “You are invited to celebrate through praise and worship the graduating class of 2024.” The district later published photographs of the event on its social media.
“[Community High School] promoted, sponsored, and spent money for a religious ceremony on its property,” FFRF Patrick O’Reiley Legal Fellow Hirsh M. Joshi wrote to the district. “The district must respect the constitutional rights of all its students to be free from religious coercion and indoctrination in their public schools, and so it must cease sponsoring or promoting baccalaureate ceremonies.”
Baccalaureate programs are religious services with prayer and worship. By hosting and promoting a baccalaureate ceremony, the district demonstrated clear favoritism toward religion over nonreligion, and Christianity above all other faiths. It is also telling that the service was held on a Sunday, the Christian sabbath. By hosting and promoting a church service, the district abdicated the constitutional duty to remain neutral toward religion, also needlessly sending a message to its nonreligious and nonChristian students that they are second-class citizens. Today 49 percent of Generation Z are religiously unaffiliated.
After FFRF sent the letter, action was taken.
The district’s legal representative, Robb D. Decker, confirmed that the issue has been resolved. “Based on the concerns raised in your letter, and in review of the materials that were published, the district has spoken with the leaders of that group and made clear to them that future services and materials promoting the event need to be far clearer about their sponsorship of the event and not creating an appearance that the district is a sponsor of or participant in the event,” he wrote.
FFRF is pleased the district will honor its obligation to separate religion from its publicly supported ceremonies.
“Private groups and churches may put on their own religious celebrations of graduating high school seniors, even renting school facilities, but the public schools may not promote, pay for, host or otherwise endorse these private events,” comments Annie Laurie Gaylor, FFRF co-president. “When they wish to celebrate graduating seniors, public schools must do so free from religious ritual at the official commencement ceremony.”
The Freedom From Religion Foundation is a national nonprofit organization with 40,000 members across the country, including more than 1,700 members in Texas. Our purposes are to protect the constitutional principle of separation between state and church, and to educate the public on matters relating to nontheism.
