[Vision2020] 08-04-04 Washington Post OP/ED: Schools and Faith

[Art Deco aka W. Fox]

Schools and Faith


Wednesday, August 4, 2004; Page A18


AS MISSION statements go, the Child Evangelism Fellowship's is a model of
clarity. The purpose of the organization's after-school Good News Clubs, of
which there are well over 4,000 nationwide, is "to evangelize boys and girls
with the Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ and establish (disciple) them in the
Word of God and in a local church for Christian living," according to its Web
site. All children in a Good News Club are urged to pray, attend church and
"trust Jesus as Savior." That's a suitable message coming from a religious
organization. It is not appropriate coming from public elementary schools, whose
role in society is to educate children, not summon them to worship. By insisting
on their supposed right to have their fliers distributed to pupils in Montgomery
County elementary schools -- by school staff and volunteers, no less -- the
clubs would transform teachers into agents of evangelism, and convert schools
into seedbeds of faith.

That is unconstitutional. We've said before that parents should be able to send
their children to public schools without fear they will be proselytized. But a
three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit, based in
Richmond, disagreed. In a 2 to 1 decision on June 30 that overturned a federal
district judge's ruling, the court said that Montgomery County schools could not
refuse to distribute the Good News Club recruitment fliers while continuing to
dispense fliers for other nonprofit groups engaged in the fine arts, drama,
sports, music and dance. By doing so, said the court, the schools were guilty of
viewpoint discrimination.

Montgomery's Board of Education last week sought to cope with this decision by
adopting a new policy: From now on, the board decided in a 7 to 1 vote,
virtually all nonprofit community groups -- not just the Good News Club but also
the Boy Scouts and many others -- will be barred from distributing fliers in the
schools. Exceptions to the new policy are to be made only for PTAs, government
agencies, student groups, in-school day-care centers and the schools themselves.
In addition, the schools will permit nonprofit sports leagues to distribute
their fliers. Virtually all community groups, including Good News Clubs, will
continue to have access to school facilities during off-hours for organizational
meetings and the like, as mandated by a Supreme Court decision in 2001.

The board's new policy has triggered a torrent of e-mailed abuse, much of it
from out of state. The Good News Clubs are threatening to sue the school board,
as are the Boy Scouts. We hope the board of education sticks to its guns; if
anything, the board should make its policy stricter, by eliminating the
exception for sports leagues. By distributing recruitment literature from
community groups, the schools implicitly stamp their imprimatur on outside
groups about which they know little, while squandering the time of teachers and
volunteers whose main contribution should be to academics. The Boy Scouts, the
Bible clubs and other nonprofits can and do reach potential recruits without
using schools as their mailrooms and 8-year-olds as their couriers.




© 2004 The Washington Post
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