Christian Valedictorian Who Spoke About Jesus Responds

It seems hypocritical to have students speak and then censor them. While a public school is not a public forum, I don’t like telling students what they can or cannot say – as long as it’s relevant to the event. It’s likely that she would have tied in her religion with her scholastic success or her future plans.

God tells kids to break the rules. I thought they were to render unto Caesar?

Is this the new form of “I was only obeying orders!”?

“if that is what I felt God calling me to do”

At least she doesn’t think god is LITERALLY telling her things.

“It’s easier to ask forgiveness than it is to get permission.”
– Grace Hopper

Or you can just skip the forgiveness and go straight for the law suit. 🙂

I doubt that the situation would have been handled the same if I had not used Jesus’ name.

Ah, the persecuted Christian angle. Let’s imagine another scenario; student turns in a conventional uncontroversial speech for approval and then when show time comes does five minutes on gay rights or a secular pledge of allegiance. I doubt the situation would have been handled any differently.

Ms. Corder knew exactly what she was doing and knew why it was wrong and rather than benefitting future students at her high school, may have stripped them of the opportunity to say anything at all when their turn comes.

The questions that I would like to ask Ms. Corder are:

1.) You broke your agreement with the school officials by not informing them correctly of the content of your speech, and by submitting a speech draft to them that you had no intention of following, you lied to them.

My first question is, Ms. Corder, do you think that your religion gives you license to break your agreements with people and to lie, and if so, why?

2.) You said that if you felt that God was calling you to do the same thing again, you would do it again.

Then my second, multiple facet question is this: How far does that willingness to break agreements and to lie on God’s behalf go? You have already shown that you are willing to break rules of interpersonal ethics. Are you also willing to break rules of professional ethics as well? Ethics that govern teachers, counselors, doctors, journalists, lawyers, and many others who hold the safety and well being of the public in their hands? Would you be willing to break the law? Laws that protect people from slander, libel, fraud, abuse, robbery, violence and murder?

Once you cross the line of being willing to lie and cheat for God, where else, if anywhere, will you draw the line again?

Ms. Corder, you are now attending Wheaton College, and presumably your education will bring you into a profession or some other position of trust, power and influence, where people whom you serve will be depending on you to follow ethical rules and the law. If you are going to be expedient about those rules and laws, because you think that a voice in your head trumps those rules and laws, then I strongly urge you to not go into any of those positions of trust, power and influence.

Lying and breaking agreements is not witnessing your faith well.

@PrimeNumbers: Indeed, look where that statement got Eichman.

@Tony: Daniel Pearl comes to mind.

Yes, anyone who claims they are doing something for a deity or an authority figure is trying to absolve themselves of the responsibility of the act. The girl is acting like a twit, and I personally hope she grows up, but xtians acting like they usually do, I hold little hope.

I don’t see this situation as that clear-cut. The principal stated that she wouldn’t have been allowed to give the Christian speech if she submitted it in advance. If a school told students that they could give a speech, and then didn’t allow a speech that supported gay marriage, I would feel the school was wrong. It’s arguably a violation of the student’s free speech (although court decisions are generally against students in these sorts of situations). But even if it’s a legally valid rule, I don’t have much respect for a system that allows students to speak, and then censors them based on their content, and don’t really have a problem with breaking this rule.

Autumnal Harvest,
I agree with you about the school’s conflicted stance, and I don’t have that much sympathy for the school. I think the school had the right and responsibility to review what the valedictorians were planning to say in their 30 seconds, but the school should only have objected to the speeches’ content if they were really outrageous or vulgar. Ms. Corder’s speech was heavily religious, perhaps annoying to more secular folks, but I don’t think it was outrageous or vulgar. It was one half minute cliche out of a total of 15 half minute speeches. The worst reaction it probably got was some people rolling their eyes and being glad that she only had 30 seconds.

But to me, that is not the issue here, and I’m not talking about the Appellate Court’s decision either. I’m talking about Ms. Corbin’s personal conduct and ethical fiber.

Unfair rule or not, the issue is that Ms. Corder chose to deceive the school, she lied, she broke the rule and she got the consequences. When you break a rule or your agreement with others, regardless of the valid justification you may have, or the vacuous rationalization you cook up in your mind, you still must face the consequences unflinchingly. That is the choice you have made. Rebels may break rules that they find unjust, but they still have to take the punishment.

There are other ways she could have handled it. She seems to have known ahead of time that her religious mini-speech would raise objections. If she had submitted an accurate draft of her intended speech, she might have been able to negotiate with the school, discuss their concerns with them and perhaps could have come up with some mutually acceptable solution. Or if the school remained adamant, she could have refused to speak at all, and publicized her protest in the local paper, putting the embarrassment on the school and putting herself in the righteous role.

Instead, she put herself into the questionable position of at the very least implying that her religion sanctifies lying and breaking agreements, and then later in her interview with Hemant above, she stated that she’d do it again if she felt that God was calling her to do that. That remark raises a host of other objectionable implications that are much more alarming than her original tort.

I’m going to skip over ethics, law, her position, the school’s position and just get to the point — what she did was rude and selfish. She had a captive audience. No one was there because they wanted to hear her talk (okay, maybe her parents). She willfully offended many of the people in the audience for no reason other than to gratify her ego (I am a servant of God). Why does this offend me so? Because the one student who spoke at my high school graduation 35 years ago gave a long-winded come to Jesus talk. It ruined the day for me.

Little John-
High School kids are just as much people as you and me. When I was 18 I was just starting to educate myself about feminism and other things that are very important to me. Just because they are young doesn’t mean they shouldn’t speak. We shouldn’t be so cynical.

The point is that she had one speech approved and totally derailed off-topic.

Hemant: Has this case affected you in any way in college?

Since Wheaton is a primarily fundagelical christian college I don’t see why it would affect her in a negative way.

I think the biggest thing Erica missed was the selection of her venue. As if anyone remembers what ANYONE says at a HS graduation.

Having recently attended a HS graduation where 4 students got to speak for a minute or two each – I couldn’t begin to tell you what any of them said. All my graduating daughter could recall is that one of them cried.

I do remember that it was hot and stuffy in the gym, and my butt was going numb from sitting too long, but not the content of any of the speeches.

I just saw this while catching up with blog reading. I knew Erica at Wheaton (in passing), and had a class with her in which she gave a speech about her high school graduation speech. She said she had been planning it for a long time and felt that God had been leading her to say it. As much as I think it was a stupid thing to do and the school’s response was entirely lenient, I can kind of understand the mindset of following God no matter what. After all, the only reason I went to Wheaton College was because I thought God wanted me to. Thank God he didn’t tell me I was going to become an atheist there.

This brings up another Wheaton student who sued his high school at about the same time. Chase Harper was suspended from his public high school in 2006 for wearing a shirt that said “homosexuality is shameful” in protest on the Day of Silence. He then founded the Day of Truth together with the Alliance Defense Fund in response.

Chase was featured on the front page of the Wheaton student newspaper during his freshman year (my senior year), along with a photo of him wearing the black t-shirt with “homosexuality is shameful” written on white masking tape across the front. An hour after the newspaper came out, I was stomping through the student center in anger. To my delight, on the student bulletin board was a huge poster board cut-out of a black t-shirt with a masking tape label that said “Chase Harper is shameful”. An hour later it was gone, but I was so glad to have seen it before it was taken down. It gave me hope that not all of my classmates were douchebags.

There’s no reason to take a good cause for celebration and turn it into a divisive piece of sectarian crap where you get to spew your moral high ground.