An anti-Christian organization that harassed a Georgia school district because football coaches were praying with players isn’t satisfied that the head of the school district has banned coaches from praying. Now they’re angry because they think Christians are still a majority.
Hall County Superintendent Will Schofield, caving into to pressure from the anti-Christian American Humanist Association, sent an e-mail to staff members saying that prayer is “off-limits for teachers and coaches” and that students alone can do their own prayers.
“The Hall County School District wholeheartedly defends the almost unlimited rights of students to exercise their religious beliefs,” Schofield wrote. “As long as activities do not infringe upon or disrespect the religious beliefs of others, or disrupt classroom instruction or school routines, students have the right to pray, read religious materials, talk to their classmates about their beliefs, and … form clubs or associations with students who share similar interests.”
The anti-Christianists made it clear their motivation was not really about stopping teachers from praying with students, but the elimination of Christians.
“It is not encouraging that Schofield referred to students’ religious freedom while in school as almost unlimited, as that sends a signal to the community that a culture of Christian predominance can continue,” AHA attorney David Noise wrote. “Based on the extensive feedback that we’ve received from the community, it’s clear that non-Christians feel that the atmosphere of Christian privilege is overwhelming, and the Schofield statement seems more concerned about appeasing the majority than addressing that problem.”
The AHA did not say if they will abandon their threat of a lawsuit.
Residents of Gainesville, Georgia are telling an anti-Christian organization to mind their own business and to quit attempting to bully their children.
The anti-Christian American Humanist Association has been harassing the Chestatee High School officials and students because of the football team’s staff participating in team prayers and for religious messages appearing at times in team documents.
Over 200 people showed up for an unplanned prayer rally in the middle of the football field Wednesday morning with a simple message: stay out of our town.
“I am a mom of two of the football players on the CHS football team and I consider it an honor and a privilege to have my boys on a team that is led by men that believe and trust in God,” a woman said. “I think it’s a shame for one person to try and take that away from them.”
The anti-Christianists say that offenses include coaches “having clasped hands with players” while prayers were taking place and that cheerleaders once held a banner that said “Iron sharpens iron, Proverbs 21:17.”
“The liberal atheist interest groups trying to bully Chestatee High School kids say they have a reason to believe that expressions of religious freedom are ‘not an isolated event’ in Northeast Georgia,” Congressman Doug Collins wrote in a statement to Fox News. “They’re right. In Hall County and throughout Georgia’s 9th district, we understand and respect the Constitution and cherish our right to worship in our own way.”
Collins said it was interesting that the American Humanist Association is focusing on harassing Christian students at the same time Christians are being killed in Iraq for simply being Christians.
“It’s utterly disgusting that while innocent lives are being lost in Iraq and other places at the hands of radical religious terrorists, a bunch of Washington lawyers are finding the time to pick on kids in Northeast Georgia,” he said.
An anti-Christian organization is threatening to sue the Missouri National Guard because a display of Bibles was located on a base.
The anti-Christian American Humanist Association had a lawyer send a threatening letter to the Missouri National Guard demanding the removal of a display of Gideon Bibles from the General Services Administration building in St. Louis.
The AHA claims that the Bibles in a government building “represents a clear breach of the Establishment Clause of the United States Constitution.”
“The machinery of the U.S. military … is being used to distribute Bibles,” the letter claims. “ … The religious endorsement is particularly egregious in this case because unlike in many of the school cases where private citizens distributed the Bibles, the government is the entity distributing the Bibles here.”
The Bibles are available for someone to take if they want them but they are not given to soldiers nor are soldiers required to take them. Various courts have permitted similar placement of Bibles across the nation.
However, the anti-Christianists say the mere existence of the Bibles is coercion.
A Maryland county commissioner says she’s ready to go to jail for her faith in Christ.
Robin Bartlett Frazier, a Carroll County commissioner, said that she will refuse to acknowledge a federal judge’s order that the county’s meetings no longer open with prayers that mention Jesus Christ or any deity.
“If we cease to believe that our rights come from God, we cease to be America,” Robin Bartlett Frazier told CBS. “We’ve been told to be careful. But we’re going to be careful all the way to Communism if we don’t start standing up and saying ‘no.’”
The anti-Christian group American Humanist Association had filed a lawsuit in 2012 on behalf of what they claimed were three residents of the county. Judge William Quarles Jr. ruled on Wednesday the board must stop opening meetings with sectarian prayers.
The Supreme Court is currently considering a similar case.
An anti-Christian group is seeking to have a memorial to men killed during World War I removed because it is in the shape of a cross in a public area.
The American Humanist Association sent a letter threatening a lawsuit if the 40-foot tall Bladensburg Cross is not immediately turn down. The anti-Christianists say that the location of the cross violates the First Amendment of the Constitution.
The 40-foot concrete memorial to 49 Prince George’s County men who were killed in combat during World War I was built by the American Legion in 1925. The monument was initially owned by the state but then deeded to the Maryland-National Capital Park and Planning Commission in 1960.
Steven Lowe, a man from Washington, claims in the complaint that he was “shocked” when he first saw the cross and gets “upset” every time he has to pass it because he is exposed to something that could possibly be Christian. Lowe is trying to perpetuate the myth that the existence of the cross in itself is the state promoting Christianity over other religions.
The town administrator said that the cross has historic and patriotic value and they will not remove it because of the anti-Christian group’s efforts.
An atheist family in Massachusetts is about to petition the Massachusetts Supreme Court to have the phrase “under God” removed from the Pledge of Allegiance.
The executive director of the American Humanist Association, one of the plaintiffs in the case, said they are taking a different stance in their attempt to eliminate God from the pledge. Continue reading →