The Christianity Epidemic in the Van Buren School District

That’s why I don;t live in the bible belt. Too many pychopaths running around babbling about 2000 year old jewish zombi for my liking. they should fire that teacher,but considering it’s the south they’ll just promote her.

@Thaddeus: That’s weird. Jews are actually forbidden to proselytize to non-Jews. It’s one of my favorite things about Judaism!

So she obviously knew less about Judaism than she thought. ::snort::

It sounds like Becky Guthrie is really more qualified to lead a Youth Ministry at a local Southern Baptist church. Or perhaps the bible Sunday School at the church. She seems to be confusing what is common practice and language within the church community with public education in a pluralistic society. I hope she ends up in a leadership role better suited to how she likes to communicate. IMO, she should resign from her post and look for employment within a church.

Is there any indication that if such things continue to happen the school district will be facing legal issues? The story seemed to explain everything that’s been happening but does not seem to give any idea on a strong push to get this stuff stopped.

I have to say I’m glad I never ran into this while attending high school in Georgia. Evolution was taught with no added drama and things were as peaceful as you could get in a school of 5,000.

You might want to read the response (by gsavonarola posted at 12:12 am on Thu, Apr 28, 2011) in the comments over there; awesome rebuttal.

If we replaced the word God with Satan, and used Anton LaVey quotes, the offending officials wouldn’t even have time to clear out their desks. Since they are a majority religion, however, its okay…

NOT.

First comment on the Becky Guthrie link above (Comments) is great.

I went to 6th 7th and 8th grade back in the early ’80s in Searcy County, one county over from Van Buren County. In 6th grade, every Wednesday morning, they’d bring in these two ladies to teach us from the Bible. Not kidding. I vaguely remember being taught about Esau and Jacob, and about the weird animal husbandry stuff in the Bible. At some point during 6th grade, that stopped, as apparently someone had complained (wasn’t my parents, I don’t think.) I thought it was weird as hell, and knew it wasn’t right, but being a sixth grader, I didn’t want to make any big fuss, and so just sat through it. That area of the state is thoroughly saturated with a ridiculous kind of Christianity (as if there were any other kind.) It is a pretty remote and very backwoods area of the state.

I can remember recently going back to that place during thanksgiving time, and some of our friends there prayed that we’d have a safe trip back, which is not that unusual, but the way they expressed it was “let the blood of Jesus pour down upon them and protect them in their journey,” or some equally ridiculous and graphic way of putting it.

Edit: I’m thinking Van Buren Arkansas (the town) and Van Buren County, Arkansas are not synonymous, so my 6th grade experience was not quite a proximate as I had at first thought.

I’ve always considered proselytizing to involve an attempt to convince people to believe what you believe or to join your group.

Maybe I’m being thick, but I don’t quite see how a religious themed celebration like an invitation to a prayer circle rises to the level of proselytizing unless school time was used to conduct the ritual or students were pressured into it by their teachers. Merely having one doesn’t seem like a violation of church and state.

In a perfect world, I’d love there to be more freedom of speech in our public schools, not less. Wouldn’t it be great if our teachers could speak freely for or against Christianity when the topic comes up in our schools? I wonder how many here would cry foul if an atheist got fired for telling a science class that faith isn’t evidence and you need evidence to determine the truth about reality in response to a question about creationism being justified by the bible.

Surely the response to a letter calling employees to prayer in hard times is to write letter in reply calling employees to ignore religious differences and to donate to the red cross or organize a fundraiser for the unfortunate victim of cancer – maybe with a little jab like “You know, actually do something.”

In my years I’ve learned one thing about Christians: the scary ones are not the ones who talk about God all the time. The scary ones are the ones who talk about Satan. The ones who feel that he’s real, and he’s a tangible enemy in our midst, and that we have to rise up and fight him. They’re the ones who will do whatever it takes to defeat this “enemy”.

I suspect this type of thing is rampant especially in the southern U.S. One day my son bowed his head at the dinner table and began to mumble “God is great, God is goo…”.
I asked him where he learned it and he said “Miss P taught us at school. You have to say it before you can go to lunch.”
“Oh honey, you don’t HAVE to say it, you can just do that if you WANT to.”
“No! You HAVE to say it or you don’t get your lunch.”

I’d have complained if I’d have liked a cross burning on my front yard.

I now homeshool my kids.

Amazing how divisive “under god” has been to this “one nation indivisible”. They trample our sensibilities with impunity.

I will “defend” Arkansas when it come to education. They sit at 32nd in the last comparison I read. Not the best, but they could be Arizona (50th).

Protestants are the largest religious group in America, but in few places do they have a theological majority, much less a super-duper majority.

The difference between a nonreligious person and an atheist is that the former may be practicing the latter’s lifestyle but won’t admit it to a pollster or to themselves, much less to their friends. In other words, we can effectively discount the nonreligious in the public court of ideas. When you do this, Arkansas is over 90% Protestant, and over 60% Evangelical at that, with no competition but a few Catholics. Atheists, Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus, Mormons, JWs, and Orthodox Christians together are less than 1% of the population with a committed view.

Few Americans outside the Bible Belt understand what happens when religion becomes truly homogeneous. There is less will and even less point in protecting an invisible minority. Besides, the minority is wrong, duh, or haven’t you read your scripture? Minority ideologies cease to shout as loudly, while the dominant religion becomes much more vocal without any pushback from other theologies. Before you know it people simply don’t talk about religion unless they are evangelicals, and that becomes the cultural norm.

Jesus saves isn’t a religious statement in Arkansas, it’s just a true expression. Biblical interpretation is important as it holds secrets to how people should act in the world. Biblical arguments are secular arguments here, as the bible is obviously inerrant, dummy.

If atheists don’t understand how Bible Belt evangelicals can think that freedom of religion means the freedom to suppress other religions and spread yours using state resources, it’s because those atheists don’t understand the power of homogeneity. Nobody challenges you.

i went to a teachers meeting there weekly for a semester, during one meeting a sheet with 12 important pieces of knowledge or character the kids needed to know before leaving high school, one of the things was called the keys to life, each piece of knowledge or character had a symbol, the symbol for keys was the bible, if any one is interested, i believe i can find it and post it

I went to Van Buren High School. Once in the morning before school i destroyed my own bible and threw it in the trash. I was suspended for 3 days and the principle told me that i was “going to pay a terrible price.”