The Freedom From Religion Foundation is urging the Englewood Schools system in Colorado to put a stop to a school counselor’s Christian proselytization.
A concerned district employee reported that a school counselor at Englewood High School has been using their position to promote personal beliefs to students and co-workers. FFRF’s complainant reported that the employee has used a bible quote in their official school email signature: “‘For as people think in their hearts, so they are.’ Proverbs 23:7.” Egregiously, a sign posted on their classroom door says, “I’m reading… [the Holy Bible]. Ask me about it!”
“We understand, of course, that the district cannot monitor every email sent by employees or every posting in the school,” FFRF Staff Attorney Chris Line writes. “But we do ask that it take the appropriate steps to ensure that employees, including [the school counselor] are made aware of their constitutional obligation to remain neutral toward religion while acting in their official capacity.”
The statements of a district employee and the signs they put up for public view in the school are attributable to the district, FFRF emphasizes. It is inappropriate and unconstitutional for the district or its agents to promote religious messages because it conveys government preference for religion over nonreligion. When employees use official channels of communication to promote their religious beliefs, it sends a message of exclusion that needlessly alienates the students and families among the 37 percent of Americans that is non-Christian, including the nearly one in three adult Americans who are religiously unaffiliated.
“School districts exist to educate, not indoctrinate into religion,” FFRF Co-President Annie Laurie Gaylor says. “School counselors have immense authority and are often sought out by vulnerable students, and have a duty to separate their personal religious views from their professional obligations.”
The Freedom From Religion Foundation is a national nonprofit organization with 40,000 members and several chapters across the country, including more than 1,300 members and a chapter in Colorado. Its purposes are to protect the constitutional principle of separation between state and church, and to educate the public on matters relating to nontheism.
