It’s an exorcism, not a sexorcism

Here’s a news story out of Virginia, where a woman is suing Rev. Thomas Euteneuer, the Catholic priest she’d gone to for an exorcism. According to the suit brought against the Diocese of Arlington (and the anti-abortion group he’d been president of for some reason), his behaviour made the woman feel she wasn’t being exorcised as much as sexually molested. And not just once. This went on for nearly two years.

The woman, identified in the suit as Jane Doe, said she signed an “agreement for spiritual help” with Euteneuer in February 2008 because “she believed she was in desperate need of the rite of exorcism,” the suit said.

Euteneuer repeatedly hugged, kissed and groped the woman, and said he was “blowing the Holy Spirit into her,” according to the suit, which was filed on June 19.

Euteneuer told the woman to undress on about six occasions, touched and kissed her body, and put his finger in her vagina, court documents said.

The suit alleges that [Bishop] Loverde and the Diocese of Arlington knew Euteneuer would perform an exorcism on the woman.

But, the question needs to be asked, how aware were they of Euteneuer’s style? Did they know that when he said “exorcism” he really meant “get it on with a gullible woman”?

Asked about the suit, the Diocese of Arlington said Euteneuer had never been its employee. He worked for Human Life International, an independent company, subject to his bishop in Palm Beach, it said.

“Rev. Euteneuer was not authorized to perform an exorcism on the plaintiff,” it said in a statement, adding that the diocese had its own exorcist.

And there’s the apparent answer. She didn’t go to a proper exorcist. So really, this is all her fault…

According to the article, she and Euteneuer reached a private settlement on the issue earlier and his status as priest has essentially been revoked by the Diocese of Palm Beach. It makes little sense to include Human Life International in the suit. President he might have been, but this doesn’t seem to have anything to do with the group itself. It sounds like they’ve since distanced themselves from him and want to keep their reputation from being sullied further.

The woman is hoping for a $5.3 million payout. I know you can’t really put a price on human suffering but I really doubt she’ll get anywhere near that amount, if anything at all. Sexual abuse trials are hard to win at the best of times, let alone when it’s a church involved.

I’ll update if I ever see more about it.

Sexual assault scandal hits religion TV – again

The Trinity Broadcasting Network is under fire at the moment on account of a lawsuit going on. It involves a granddaughter of the network’s founders. Carra Crouch, age 19, is claiming she was raped by a 30 year male employee when she was thirteen and that TBN executives hushed it up rather than report it to the authorities.

“Jan (Crouch) became furious and began screaming at Ms. Crouch, a thirteen year old girl, and began telling her ‘it is your fault,’” according to the suit.

Carra Crouch then told John Casoria, TBN’s in-house counsel and her second cousin; he became agitated and told her that he didn’t believe her, it says. “He elaborated by stating he further believed she was already sexually active ‘so it did not really matter’ and he ‘believed she may have propositioned him,’ ” the suit alleges.

Unfortunately, that’s often the way rape reports are received. A fine upstanding man.. he must have been coerced by that Lolita!

“Ms. Crouch, a thirteen year old girl, had not been sexually active and was absolutely devastated about what happened and about how John and Jan responded to her.”

Both Jan Crouch and John Casoria are ordained ministers, and as such, are legally required to report suspected child abuse to authorities under the Child Abuse and Neglect Reporting Act, the suit says. No report was made, and TBN “deliberately covered up the incident to protect Trinity Broadcasting from negative publicity,” it alleges.

I knew about this station, I think, but being Canadian and without cable or satellite (by choice), no surprise it never occurred to me to look into news about them. Apparently I missed a money scandal back in February. Brittany Koper, Carra’s sister, accused the TBN board of diverting millions of dollars away from their charity work. TBN, on the other hand, filed suit against Koper and her husband the month before, accusing them of siphoning the money while they were on TBN’s board. That suit was dismissed in January, unsettled.

Redemption Strategies Inc. — a corporation formed by Loe on Oct. 17 — sued the Koperts on Oct. 18, charging embezzlement, fraud, intentional misrepresentation and other misdeeds. At the time, Davert & Loe were still representing Koper, MacLeod said.

“It’s kind of a sordid affair,” said MacLeod, Koper’s attorney. “Many layers. But at the heart is the wrongful termination. She was terminated for insider whistleblowing.”

MacLeod is getting to be something of an old hand at suing TBN: He represented Brian Dugger, a gay broadcast engineer who sued Trinity in 2009, claiming he was harassed and discriminated against by employees of the world’s largest Christian broadcasting empire. Paul Crouch Jr. allegedly taunted Dugger with pornography, said TBN was no place for fairies and declared that ‘Brian has a man-gina!’ ”

Nice.

A bit more hunting got me a story from 2004 involving President and founder, Paul Crouch, and an accusation that he had a brief affair with a man by the name of Lonnie Ford back in 1996. That article reminds readers of other televangelist scandals, namely Jim Bakker (affair with and attempted pay off of a former Playboy playmate employed by him) and Jimmy Swaggart (admitted porn and prostitute addict).

The Crouches also have a singular line in defensiveness when it comes to criticism of the station – criticism that has spanned many lawsuits and included accusations from rival Christian organisations that TBN is spreading blasphemy.

“God, we proclaim death to anything or anyone that will lift a hand against this network and this ministry that belongs to you, God,” Crouch said in 1997.

A few years earlier, he reacted even more vehemently to critics he characterised as “heresy hunters.” “To hell with you!” he ranted during a praise-a-thon in 1991. “Quit blocking God’s bridges or God’s going to shoot you – if I don’t.”

The Crouches are positively tame compared with Benny Hinn, the network’s star performer, who has preached that Adam was a superman who flew to the moon and expressed his belief that one day the dead will be raised by watching TBN from inside their coffins.

I admit to a bit of a cackle over that one. I’ve heard of Benny Hinn somehow..or am I thinking of Benny Hill? Who’s funnier?

Anyway, this whole group seems like one I should do more research on. I’m really wondering what else I might have missed.

Corporation sued over questioning Christianity

I think I’ve created a misleading headline but here’s the story. Edward Wolfe applied for a job with the Voss Lighting Company of Lincoln, Nebraska and sailed through the first interview. On the second, he claims, is where he ran into trouble. The interviewer insisted on knowing what churches Wolfe had attended and when and where he was saved.

In the interview, Wolfe claims he was told most employees at Voss were Southern Baptist, but employees could go to any church, as long as they were “born again.”

The complaint claims the manager asked Wolfe if he would “have a problem” coming to work early, without pay, to attend Bible study.

Wolfe, a single parent who says he cannot attend church on Sundays, told lawyers the branch manager was “agitated” at his answers.

He didn’t get the job.

The suit is filed under Title VII, part of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which makes it illegal to discriminate in hiring on the basis of religion.

The company, though, claims he was passed over because someone more technically qualified applied also.

Hopefully it’ll occur to me to check for an update to this one. I can’t imagine applying for a job where those kinds of questions would be asked anyway. Crazy, if you ask me.

Indonesia atheist update

I wrote about it in May, although it happened back in January. Alexander Aan wrote “God does not exist” on his Facebook page and New Humanist is reporting that Aan is heading for prison for 2.5 years under a guilty charge of “deliberately spreading information inciting religious hatred and animosity”.

He was also accused of posting cartoon strips deemed insulting to the Prophet Muhammad.

In passing the sentence, the presiding judge Eka Prasetya Budi Dharma told the the Muaro Sijunjung district court in western Sumatra that Aan had “caused anxiety to the community and tarnished Islam”.

Prosecutors had sought a lengthier jail sentence for Aan, but in finding him guilty of inciting religious hatred, the court dropped two additional, less serious charges of blasphemy and persuading others to embrace atheism.

While Indonesian law guarantees citizens freedom of religion, it only protects those who follow Islam, Catholicism, Protestantism, Buddhism, Confucianism or Hinduism, leaving those who publicly express their atheism vulnerable to the kinds of charges brought against Aan.

They include a link to Atheist Alliance International which has taken up the cause and is urging anyone interested to donate towards an appeal.

Linkskrieg! (Second pass)

More things I never made time to write about.

1. “Unnecessary conflict” between science and evangelicalism:

This is not to say that I want to reject reason or science – quite the contrary! My point here is that understanding distinction between these truths of mythos and logos points the way towards realizing the compatibility of scientific and religious thought. We need them both. They don’t have to be enemies, as they represent different aspects of the human search for truth.

2. Live Science’s article on the extremes between the religious and the atheist:

Psychologists, sociologists and neurologists continue to study why some gobble up religion as profound truth while others reject it as superstition.

“This whole area [of research] teaches us something about the human mind and brain,” said Andrew Newberg, director of research at the Myrna Brind Center of Integrative Medicine at Thomas Jefferson University and author of “How God Changes Your Brain” (Ballantine Books, 2009).

“There are a lot of philosophical and theological implications of this work and about how we understand the world,” Newberg added.

3. More about earthquakes and the Dead Sea’s “proof” that Jesus died on Friday April 3rd, 33AD:

In terms of the earthquake data alone, Williams and his team acknowledge that the seismic activity associated with the crucifixion could refer to “an earthquake that occurred sometime before or after the crucifixion and was in effect ‘borrowed’ by the author of the Gospel of Matthew, and a local earthquake between 26 and 36 A.D. that was sufficiently energetic to deform the sediments of Ein Gedi but not energetic enough to produce a still extant and extra-biblical historical record.”

“If the last possibility is true, this would mean that the report of an earthquake in the Gospel of Matthew is a type of allegory,” they write.

(I’m always amused by people who turn to science in the hopes of proving their religious texts aren’t just a bunch of made up hooey.)

4. Japanese Jesus tomb a big tourist draw:

Some 500 tourists attended a festival Sunday in the village of Shingo, Aomori Prefecture, where women in kimono danced in a circle around a cross erected on a spot that locals believe is the tomb of Jesus Christ.

Village legend has it Jesus survived his crucifixion and secretly came to Japan and lived out his natural life and died in the village, which used to be called Herai, a word that apparently came from the word Hebrew.

5. Pastor accused of beating kids:

Officials say the boy told deputies that the day before, his mother took him and his brother to see the pastor after church to talk with him about their misbehavior during services at the church on Ames Blvd.

“They were misbehaving in church, and usually, according to the mom’s statements, she would let the pastor discipline the kids following church,” said sheriff’s office spokesman Glen Boyd.

Investigators say the 10-year-old told them it was during that session when Smith, a Gretna resident, beat them with a belt.

6. Do secular TV shows offer enough morality lessons for Christian kids?

here’s where I tend to differ from many Christian parents I know: I’m not protective because I fear the moral damage television might do to my children. I’m protective because I want my children to stay children and not have to watch people being killed or hurt or harassed. I don’t want them to see how awful people can be to each other—not yet. I’m protecting their outlook on humanity.

7. Pastor accused of swindling an elderly woman out of property worth a fortune:

Abakporo, who owns a home in the wealthy part of Jamaica Estates in Queens, N.Y., is also a pastor at Deeper Life Bible Church, investigators said.

Instead of turning the checks over to McCarther, who prosecutors say was in declining physical and mental health, they deposited the rental checks into their own bank accounts.

Federal prosecutors say Abakporo and Pierce further tangled McCarther in a “web of lies” and ultimately persuaded her to sell them her property for $3.1 million. But instead of giving her real money, they paid her in phony checks, prosecutors said.

8. A bill in California has been offered banning conversion therapy:

The bill would ban anyone under age 18 from receiving sexual-orientation change efforts (SOCE). It would also require adults seeking SOCE to first sign a statement warning that that SOCE is “unlikely to be effective,” could be harmful, and is not recommended by mental health professional groups.

Efforts to change sexual orientation are “junk science, and it must stop,” said Democratic state Sen. Ted W. Lieu, the bill’s author.

Family gives church bad review. Church decides: let’s sue!

Last September I ran across a story about a website designed to rate one’s pastor. I thought it sounded like a good idea at the time and I still think it is. A church and those who operate it should be held accountable for what they do, including how they treat those who choose to attend that church and how they treat those who choose to leave.

Julie Anne Smith of Beaverton, Oregon claims that when her family decided to leave the church they’d been attending, the rest of the congregation was essentially encouraged to shun them. Smith chose the internet as her soapbox to describe her family’s negative experiences and eventually felt compelled to start a blog called Beaverton Grace Bible Church Survivors. It looks like interesting reading. Unfortunately for Smith, the church sees it as evidence of slander and defamation and is taking her to civil court.

“What somebody does in the church is one thing, but when you get out into society we have the right to free speech, and it may not be what people want to hear, but we absolutely have that right,” Smith said.

The lawsuit didn’t just target Smith. Her daughter and three other commenters are also being sued.

“He can say what he wants in the church and say, don’t talk about this or don’t talk about that, or don’t talk to this person, but when you’re out in the civil world, you don’t do that anymore,” Smith said. “And he’s not my pastor anymore. He does not have that right to keep people from talking.”

The Smiths filed a special free speech motion to dismiss the lawsuit. It goes before a judge later this month.

Attempts by KATU.com to get the pastor’s side of the story failed and one anonymous commenter on the site notes that the “opposing side” is choosing to focus on “name-calling, correction of spelling errors” and refuting things that have zero relevance to the issue at hand.

Where are the rebuttals? The clarifications? Why are they not decrying statements made by those who have been shunned or given the boot? Why? Well, I think we all know the answer to that!

Like the old adage, there are three sides to every story – his, hers and the truth. Smith and company are probably not intentionally lying about what they experienced under the roof of this church and after. There are people who can only run things in a heavy-handed kind of way and make it rough on anyone who doesn’t agree. They’re saying that’s what they were up against and the pastor chose a heavy-handed kind of way to deal with their criticisms. Civil lawsuits can’t be cheap.

Hopefully I’ll remember to check back on this and see what results.

Old news: Judge orders school district to apologize to agnostics

I was off blogging for a while and not really in the mood to keep up with what others found to write about, either. If you know of anything that’s gone on in the past few months that you think I should be aware of, or might interest me in general, add a link to the comments and I’ll check it out.

When I did feel like poking around for potential blog fodder (which wasn’t often, admittedly), I saved links in a draft post. That’s where this story was. From March 20th via the Christian Post:

The situation began in May of last year, when Americans United for Separation of Church and State filed a suit against Medina Valley on behalf of the Schultz family who took issue with various religious activities at a high school Schultz’s two sons attended. These included student-led prayers and other alleged promotions of Christianity.

Judge Biery ruled in favor of the Schultz family. But Texas Governor Rick Perry denounced the decision and State Attorney General Greg Abbot filed an appeal on behalf of Medina Valley.

The ruling was soon overturned by the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals and the school was allowed to continue with its religious habits. Just in time for student graduation prayers, too.

“We are not persuaded that plaintiffs have shown that they are substantially likely to prevail on the merits, particularly on the issue that the individual prayers or other remarks to be given by students at graduation are, in fact, school sponsored,” wrote the appeals court.

In protest, the Schultz family refused to attend.

The legal battles continued, however, with Medina Valley and the Schultz family reaching a settlement in February. The agreement stated that faculty and staff could not be involved in prayers or other promotions of Christianity, yet at the same they could wear religious jewelry and student remarks at graduation could include prayers.

That’s fair. The school can no longer promote a religion but will not curtail the religious expression of individual students. That is how it should be and that’s how it always should have been. That would have saved the Shultz family and the district and the state so much money. Unfortunate it took lawsuits and publicity to get to this point, but that does seem to be the way these things roll. The obvious answer is rarely obvious to those used to being immersed in a faith. Saskatoon is seeing that now with this whole Solo thing.

Letters from eight people commenting on the prayer were included in the agenda for Monday’s city council meeting.

Clark Bymoen of Saskatoon was among those saying they support Donauer.

“I would encourage councillor Donauer and his worship the mayor to let Mr. Solo take his concerns to Human Rights if he wishes. Christians have rights, too.”

Shirley Young from Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, also urged council to stick up for prayer.

“Soon we will have to hide in caves or have 666 printed on our foreheads,” she wrote.

Way to sound sane, Shirley. Taking it to extremes. Heaven forbid people don’t pray out loud before civic dinners. It’s the end of the world as we know it…

Christianity and all its trappings became the default setting for communities because for the longest time the church was the center of the community. That can’t be said anymore. Now communities have grown and changed and made more room for other cultures and viewpoints and experiences. Christianity can’t be considered the default position anymore. It doesn’t matter how much people might still want it to be, how many Christians might be in the audience. The real default has to be secularism. That truly is the only way to keep things fair and inoffensive. Intelligent Christians should be willing to accept that. It’s not denying the right for Christians to be Christian. Be Christian. Go to church. Pray with your family and friends. Just please stop assuming everybody in the entire universe wants to do things your way or should. I know that’s hard, but try. Quit hogging. Make room at the table for everyone else, okay?

FFRF not finished fight over Big Mountain Jesus

I missed this on Wednesday, but the Wisconsin-based group has been trying to get this Jesus statue (image via The Blaze) removed from Montana’s Whitefish Mountain Resort. At the end of January the Forestry Service renewed the special permit the Knights of Columbus needed to keep their memorial in place for another ten years. I figured that would be the end of it, that the Freedom from Religion Foundation would consider it a loss and move their “separation of church and state” issue to another public religious eyesore but clearly I missed the part where they said, “We’re not done here.” The FFRF was, shall we say, disappointed over the Service’s choice to side with “tradition” and “historic” and the Jesus loving KOC and have decided to take the issue a step further – now they’re suing.

Ian Cameron of the newly formed Flathead Area Secular Humanist Association provided some more information about how the statue got there.

Cameron pointed to a 1954 Whitefish Pilot article about the statue’s dedication ceremony as evidence of its unabashed religious symbolism. The article refers to the statue as a “shrine” whose placement on the mountain came at the behest of Catholic skiers participating in the National Ski Championships, which were held at Big Mountain in 1949 and 1951.

“Several of the world’s leading skiers are Catholics and they asked why a shrine had not been placed,” according to the article. Those skiers included early pioneers of the Big Mountain ski area like Toni Matt, former U.S. downhill champion who served as a lieutenant in the 10th Mountain Division.

Still, Cameron said the religious connotations cannot be ignored.

“That contradicts all of the previous reports,” Cameron said. “We are not militant atheists out to stamp out religion. We are fighting to make sure that everyone has a seat at the table.”

Cameron said he formed the Flathead Area Secular Humanist Association last September, just as news of the statue’s uncertain fate was reported. Until then, he never knew the statue existed, and to his knowledge none of the association’s roughly two dozen members had complained.

“I’m not a skier so I hadn’t seen it, but now that I know it’s out there looking down on the valley, I am offended,” Cameron said. “It bothers me that it’s up there and that it’s on government land.”

Ubiquitous is the word. Statues are all over the place and often they have some sort of symbolic connection to a faith or religion and most people probably acknowledge their existence without thinking much about them, or simply ignore them altogether. Well, the Freedom from Religion Foundation is standing firm on the idea that it’s time to stop ignoring them. If the statues are on public property, especially government property, then everyone who walks past the thing without thinking needs to be reminded to think about the separation of church and state and why it’s so important to maintain that.

U.S. Rep. Denny Rehberg, R-Mont., a vocal supporter of the statue from the beginning, pledged to continue his support of the statue.

“The Whitefish community and the Forest Service did not ask for this fight, but we’re going to do whatever is necessary to win it,” he said Wednesday in an email responding to the lawsuit. “In this case, the Forest Service made the right decision to extend the permit and let the monument stand. They have the overwhelming support of the local community and the American people in their stand against litigious bullies who want to force their narrow beliefs on the rest of us.”

This old canard again? Believe whatever the hell you want. Just don’t force others to do the same and don’t assume you deserve any special treatments because of your beliefs. The statue needs to be moved. It’s promoting a religion and it’s on government property. That is, and has always been, a no no in your country. Never mind how many people and organizations have gotten away with it for years, it’s still wrong. If people still desire a war memorial on the property, design a secular themed one that recognizes the sacrifices made by all soldiers, not just the ones who died Catholic. Why act like it’s more complicated than that? The Blaze article included a link to the FFRF’s site so I’ll finish with a quote from that:

“A federal agency should not hold a vote on whether to obey the Constitution!” said Annie Laurie Gaylor, FFRF co-president.

“The U.S. Forest Service has unlawfully misused federal land owned by all of us to further Christianity in general, and Roman Catholicism in particular. This diminishes the civil and political standing of nonreligious and nonChristian Americans, and shows flagrant governmental preference for religion and Christianity.”

It’s important for people to continue to speak out against that kind of thing. I know it starts to look like they’re tilting at windmills and making pests out of themselves but it’s still an important issue and it’s high time more people started calling “Foul!” rather then put up with it silently. That’s why it’s such a drama to get this kind of thing stopped now. Too many years of being silent. Now there’s a vocal atheist minority that’s tired of going unheard. I don’t know if they’ll win this, but I’m glad to see they want to try.

Former Saskatoon priest charged with sexual abuse

CBC Radio 1 mentioned 89 year old William Hodgson Marshall this morning so I went hunting for more information. From CBC I learn he’s in custody in Kingston, Ontario and awaiting trial:

Marshall was a priest, basketball coach and mathematics teacher at St. Paul’s High School in Saskatoon between 1958 and 1961. The all-boys school, which was on the 400 block of 22nd St. E. downtown, closed in 1967.

On Tuesday, the Saskatoon police said Marshall has been charged in connection with indecent assaults that took place in 1959 and 1960.

The two alleged victims, now both 66 years old, were 14 at the time.

The Crown prosecutor’s office is arranging for a court appearance to take place in Ontario, Saskatoon police said.

In a written statement, Saskatoon Bishop Donald Bolen said the diocese was recently informed of the new charges.

“In all such cases, our first concern is for the suffering of those who have been abused. We are called to listen and to assist in whatever way possible as they move toward healing,” Bolen said.

Hmm. In other such cases I’ve read about, the Catholic church’s first concern has been to move the priest and/or pretend it never happened. Like in Memphis, and France, and Ireland and elsewhere. And, in a lot of cases, possibly all of them, it was a Vatican approved decision. These days the Vatican is under fire for not doing enough to protect victims and people are demanding a change. A New York Times article posted yesterday notes a conference finishing up in Europe where this has been the main issue being discussed.

Terence McKiernan, president of BishopAccountability.org , said the conference was intended to “change the subject and look like progress.”

“The Vatican is afraid, and it has reason to be,” he said, in light of recent charges against the church, including a complaint filed against the Vatican with the International Criminal Court.

The conference, which began on Monday and runs for four days, drew about 200 delegates, more than half of them bishops but also victims, rectors of Catholic universities and religious superiors. Cardinal William J. Levada, who heads the Vatican office that deals with allegations of clerical abuse, said Monday in his keynote speech that over 4,000 cases of sexual abuse of minors had been reported to his office in the past decade as the church toughened its responses. “We are still learning,” he said. “We need to help each other find the best ways to help victims, protect children,” and to educate priests “to be aware of this scourge and to eliminate it from the priesthood.”

Would step one be to boot out the priests known to be doing it and let the police and courts make mincemeat out of them? Put the ones suspected on some kind of probation where they’re never allowed to be alone with young boys? Apologize profusely for letting this get so out of hand and then offer to build and fund (but not operate) real counseling centers where real psychologists and other professionals won’t resort to prayer as a band-aid fix-it-all? That’s just off the top of my head, of course. I don’t know what they’ll actually decide on as a course of action.

It’ll be interesting to see what, if anything, comes of this.

“Atheist teen forces school to remove prayer from wall after 49 years” Good!

Sadly, in a poll where the question is “Do you think a federal judge was right in ruling that the school prayer hanging on the wall of the Cranston High School West gym was unconstitutional?” the YES answers were woefully trailing the NOs when I voted this morning:

The vote numbers wound up a bit unreadable: 587 to 1,266 with undecided sitting at 10 votes. Results as of noon today look a lot better, 71,338 votes of yes to 18,309 votes for no. (79.1% vs 20.3%) And gosh, gee willikers I wonder why…

Moving to the story itself, teen student and “outspoken atheist” Jessica Ahlquist succeeded in getting a court to take her side regarding a prayer display on the wall of her school auditorium. The move has “incensed this heavily Roman Catholic city” of Cranston, Rhode Island. And that might be an understatement.

A federal judge ruled this month that the prayer’s presence at Cranston High School West was unconstitutional, concluding that it violated the principle of government neutrality in religion.

In the weeks since, residents have crowded school board meetings to demand an appeal, Jessica has received online threats and the police have escorted her at school, and Cranston, a dense city of 80,000 just south of Providence, has throbbed with raw emotion.

State Representative Peter G. Palumbo, a Democrat from Cranston, called Jessica “an evil little thing” on a popular talk radio show. Three separate florists refused to deliver her roses sent from a national atheist group. The group, the Freedom From Religion Foundation, has filed a complaint with the Rhode Island Commission for Human Rights.

I commend her bravery. I really do. I can’t imagine I would have raised the issue had I been in her shoes. I would have put up with it, ignored it, or even more likely, never make a connection between what the wall sign represented and why it was wrong to be in a school.

The prayer, eight feet tall, is papered onto the wall in the Cranston West auditorium, near the stage. It has hung there since 1963, when a seventh grader wrote it as a sort of moral guide and that year’s graduating class presented it as a gift. It was a year after a landmark Supreme Court ruling barring organized prayer in public schools.

The sign is printed on t-shirts, too, the image of which was used in the article. Jessica was baptized Catholic but quit believing by the age of 10, she reports, and seeing that sign every day started to make her feel like she wasn’t welcome there. She wasn’t the one who raised the red flags, though, some anonymous parent “filed a complaint with the American Civil Liberties Union.” Jessica got involved in the issue once meetings were being held to discuss that. She talked at every one of them.

Last March, at a rancorous meeting that Judge Ronald R. Lagueux of United States District Court in Providence described in his ruling as resembling “a religious revival,” the school board voted 4-3 to keep the prayer. Some members said it was an important piece of the school’s history; others said it reflected secular values they held dear.

If morality, kindness, helpfulness, honesty, good sportsmanship, friendliness, and good conduct truly are “secular values” then they can certainly eliminate mention of god and still promote the message. An “important piece” of history maybe, but not something that should be hung so prominently in the school.

Does she empathize in any way with members of her community who want the prayer to stay?

“I’ve never been asked this before,” she said. A pause, and then: “It’s almost like making a child get a shot even though they don’t want to. It’s for their own good. I feel like they might see it as a very negative thing right now, but I’m defending their Constitution, too.”

Smart of her to reason it out that way. The choice might not be popular but if it’s the right choice, then it’s the one you have to go with. Tough tits, believers. Take your lumps, cry your tears, and get on with your lives the way you want to lead them, just like Jessica no doubt plans to do. Now is the time to be better Christians and turn the other cheek.