Why Did This City Council Use Public Funds to Bring in a Christian Band?

I can’t be bothered with a Parks and Rec department unless I can speak directly with the awesome Leslie Knope.

Seriously though, I can understand where the Parks people are coming from if the band appeals to the taste of the public in the area. Doesn’t make it right, and it would annoy me personally if I was there. I might even say something if I were. It doesn’t sound like it was meant to be proselytizing, though.

AndrewFinden:

What if it were a group whose lyrics were explicitly atheistic, would you complain?

Explicitly atheistic? What, “Oh, yeah, there’s no god, there’s no god, yeah”? There isn’t anything else you could write to have it atheistic. Maybe you could have scientific lyrics, or logical lyrics, but “atheistic” doesn’t really provide much for a single song, never mind a whole band.

That aside, the point is we don’t want our tax money paying for any religion. It just so happens that Christian bands are always getting funded from the government. Would the government fund Pagan bands or Wiccan bands or Satanist bands? I doubt it. And would we want them to? Not really.

I think we should have a sliding scale as to how we react to these things. A tentative scale could be

0. Don’t touch it. Either because it’s too small an issue to bother with (eg. Obama saying “God bless America”) or because the PR is too toxic (as with the 9/11 responders memorial a week or two back).

1. Small protestations required. I see this situation as fitting. No obvious sign of ill intentions, may be part of a good cause. A letter of polite complaint, recognizing that intentions may have been good but reminding of the requirements of the law.

3. Time to get pissy. For more cut and dried violations that are unlikely to happen without the full knowledge of violators. I place manger scenes and opening prayers in city councils here. Complaints to newspapers, letters of warning from the ACLU and possible legal action.

4. Full shitstorm. Reserved for egregious violations that cause real harm. Kansas trying to get creationism in schools, discrimination against soldiers for being nonbelievers and exclusion and oppression of young nonbelievers who stand up for themselves etc. At that point, you throw everything plus the kitchen sink at them. Angry letters to anyone that will listen, stir up the situation to get larger media involved, national organizations weighing in, and any and all legal action that is viable. Make them rue the day…

I’d be willing to bet there’s some competent high school death metal bands that would loooove to have some o’ that sweet sweet city money, or even just the exposure. The pierced youth of the city should demand equal time. This could be a great opportunity!

I don’t see how this is really an issue. It sounds like what they did was on the up-and-up and brought a good turnout to the event. Since there’s a line-up of bands playing over the Summer in this series and not all of them are explicitly Christian, it just sounds like they’re trying to provide well-rounded entertainment that will appeal to different types of people.

Getting up in arms about something like this would be petty, IMO.

I think the problem with allowing an overtly christian band perform is that outspoken religious bands also preach their religion through their songs, similar to a preacher at church. Would it be okay for the city to pay for a preacher to get up on stage and spew the bible? Absolutely not, but a band that does the same thing is okay? No way. Now I’m not saying that only religious bands are guilty of saying what they think, but if a band says we are Christian, you can almost guarantee their songs preach the bible, and that in a public setting, paid for by tax payers is unconstitutional.

Look, I’m a hugely outspoken atheist. This is still just petty. I see this as having the same mentality as when I as an atheist teenager had my bands lyrics examined under a microscope before being allowed to play a talent show in a local church. Whether or not you agree with the message, the community is supportg art, with tax money. That is to be encouraged.

I made the same argument to defend public funding from the national endowment for the arts in the piss christ debacle. Art is art. We can nitpick and get offended because we aren’t being explicitly catered to, or we can be adults and not freak out when exposed to a contrary or foreign ideology.

If I lived in Liberty, though, I would be pretty pissed off that my city officials paid for a Christian band to come to town to spread their gospel.

They didn’t, they paid for them to come to town to play their music. As part of a concert series that is open to everyone and features secular artists. I am not seeing a first amendment issue here.

Wow. I don’t think this is a violation of any law, and it’s definitely really petty to complain about it. There are better things to focus on. Sometime I think this site should be called The Bitching Atheist.

Edit: SeekerLancer and Philbert nailed it.

Maybe it’s just because I’m in a band myself (albeit an “atheist” band), I’m gonna have to take the “not a big deal” side of this one. You can argue about whether their music is shit or not, but the fact remains that bands write songs about what they know/like/believe; bands are generally hired for being bands and providing music, not for providing ideology. You find a band that plays stuff that’s safe or appropriate for the venue (i.e. a punk band at a downtown club, or a country band at a redneck bar, a safe pop/rock/etc. band for a family event). That’s what seems to be the case here. And even if it wasn’t, frankly I don’t care, as long as there’s no blatant discrimination against “non-Christian” acts and equal opportunity is provided.

The thing to keep in mind is, what would normally be considered objectionable under normal conditions in society is not necessarily objectionable in musical form — that’s why The Offspring can release a song called “Kill The President” and not be tried for treason, just like a Christian band can get on stage and preach during an event when normal proselytizing is considered unconstitutional. Music is expression and art, which is protected by the first amendment.

Some people might say, “But the Christians KNOW that, and they’re just TAKING ADVANTAGE of the first amendment to spread their message!” To which I say, “So fucking what?” That’s what it’s there for. If you have something better to say, meet them on the same terms — use your own free speech to respond to them. Don’t try to silence theirs just because you don’t like what they have to say.

Another thing that’s begun to bother me in recent months is how “Status Quo” this whole atheist movement is starting to seem. People raising a fuss because there are “more Christian bands than secular bands?” I always hated the implications of this sort of fuss-raising — that if there aren’t exactly the same number of Christian and secular bands, that means there’s something amiss. As champions of science and reason, we atheists should know better — simple probability says that it’s very unlikely that there will be the *exact same* number of Christian vs. secular bands chosen for a given event. If there’s one more Christian band than secular, does that mean there’s discrimination? What about two more? When does it go from being “we just thought that more of the Christian bands met our standards than the secular bands” to “we’re discriminating against atheists?”

I mean, keep in mind, this is the same kind of shit Christians pull — we both know that if there’s a job open for a single band, it’s either gonna be one kind of band or another kind. If it’s a Christian band, does that automatically mean discrimination against atheists? If it’s a secular band, does that automatically mean discrimination against Christians and other religions? What about a Jewish band? Where do we draw the line, here? It doesn’t have to be “discrimination” just because one guy got the job when another didn’t. It can just be that there was only one job, several qualified applicants, and one slightly more qualified applicant.

I guess I just think we run the risk of cheapening the whole movement if we keep overreacting to little things like this. Keep this up and it’ll become an internet meme like the Dave Silverman thing, just in the opposite direction.

It appears to me that those who see this as “no big deal” have confused “Christian band” with “a band that happens to be Christian”.
Have any of you actually listened to Christian bands?
I have. They are preaching the gospel of their Jebus through music. Whether it’s prose, poetry, music or fucking finger puppets government has no business introducing religion into events of this sort.
“No big deal” my ass. These clowns did an end run around the Constitution and they got away with it. If you don’t see a problem with this, then you may as well let the fucktards do whatever their inbred little hearts want to do whenever they want to do it. Slippery slope and all that…
A line has to be drawn somewhere. This is as good a place to draw it as anywhere.

I was under the impression that this was about taxes, not whether they should be allowed to sing or not, or anyone’s free speech or artistic expression. If my money were being used to promote this, I wouldn’t be happy about it either. They should have maybe set up donations or something, not just up and used tax money.

Yes, but why? Why is it such a big deal that taxes were used to support a Christian band in this one instance? It’s part of a concert series; not all of the bands are Christian. I can’t say anything else without any specific knowledge of how the bands were chosen, but in itself I just can’t see how this is a problem.

It appears to me that those who see this as “no big deal” have confused “Christian band” with “a band that happens to be Christian”.
Have any of you actually listened to Christian bands?
I have. They are preaching the gospel of their Jebus through music. Whether it’s prose, poetry, music or fucking finger puppets government has no business introducing religion into events of this sort.
“No big deal” my ass. These clowns did an end run around the Constitution and they got away with it. If you don’t see a problem with this, then you may as well let the fucktards do whatever their inbred little hearts want to do whenever they want to do it. Slippery slope and all that…
A line has to be drawn somewhere. This is as good a place to draw it as anywhere.

So what, are they supposed to discriminate against bands of a certain religion, or of no religion? They need people to provide music; if we’re gonna set a precedent that the subject matter of the songs can be a criteria for automatic disqualification from a government-funded event (in any sense other than what is generally considered appropriate for an all-ages event), then that opens the door to swing both ways; not only does it bring up the possibility of discrimination against bands just for being religious, but it may also provide grounds for Christian authority figures to disqualify secular bands on the basis of religious content.

When we’re swinging the club around at Christians, we have to be careful not to swing it so hard that it arcs round and hits us in the back of the head~

Firstly, couldn’t we just say “in God we trust” on our money is just art? If there was a crucifixion over the white house with a poem about God, isn’t that okay, because it’s art? And our taxes going to it is okay, too, because it’s art, isn’t it?

Whether or not it’s art is not really the issue, the issue is whether the government’s actions constitute an establishment of religion under the Lemon test or some other recognized legal principle. A depiction of the crucifixion installed over the White House is unconstitutional, but a depiction of the crucifixion at the National Gallery of Art is not unconstitutional. It’s all about context.

Secondly, I don’t think government funding was necessary in the first place, regardless of who was playing. They could have easily gotten the money from donations. If someone wants to fund the whole event or a part of the event, that’s their choice. Using taxes wasn’t the tax payers’ choice. You could say that relates to the government on the grounds it was taxes, not donations, and then it relates to the separation of church and state. (Again, though, it wasn’t necessary for the event or any of the bands.)

This is true, the dispute could be avoided if the government wasn’t in the music promotion business, but given that it is, I don’t see why a religious band can’t be part of the event on an equal footing with non-religious bands.

Thank you! This is not and has never been an issue of “OMG, a band with Christian members is allowed to freely play its music!” It’s a matter of government funding and endorsement of explicitly religious content. There are bands with Christian members, and then there are Christian bands–these are two different things, with two different implications. A band with Christian members can easily be secular in nature and pass the Lemon test (while even having the occasional religious-sounding song), on the other hand a Christian band implies a missionary agenda that does not.

For some perspective, please see the whole “Rock Beyond Belief” issue. When it was Christian proselytizing, we got the whole “well, it’s just a bunch of bands that happen to be Christian, what’s your problem, it’s no big deal, and if you deny them a government funded and endorsed venue, you are denying them their 1st Amendment rights!” Plus the disingenuous claim that they would equally fund a similar atheistic event. We all know what happened after that.

No, they are not so much “taking advantage of the First Amendment to speak their message”. It’s more like they are warping the First Amendment in an effort to retain the overprivileged status they once had, wherein their religious agendas and messages were both funded and endorsed by the government and made it nearly impossible for non-xians/unbelievers to avoid having to participate in some way. And those rules never apply equally to anyone else either, as we’ve all seen too many times. Since the dawn of xianity, there have been rules just for them and rules only for everyone else. Government funding and endorsement for them is just “free speech”, while when an atheist or other non-Christian applies for the same we suddenly go back to the old interpretation of the First Amendment, the one where the government isn’t supposed to fund and endorse religious views. Until the next time a Christian group wants government funding and endorsement for their views, that is. And it’s not that I really want the government to be endorsing any religious views, it’s the selective application that pisses me off, where it applies only to non-xians and is creatively interpreted when xians want taxpayer money backing their views.

And how is “well, they’re just choosing a band that the majority will like” any different from things like Prop 8, wherein you put the rights of the minority up to a popular vote, as if that’s even constitutional? That it’s okay because the majority likes it? And no, I don’t buy that the only alternative was choosing a band everyone would hate. You can’t tell me they had no choice and the majority of people just had to have this band and that no other would do, that there is absolutely no non-religious band that everyone including non-xians would have enjoyed. Or that this was a necessary inclusion, if there were other secular bands. And if there were other secular bands, wouldn’t placing this band in there be a bit like starting the town meeting with a heartfelt entreaty to Jesus–hey, there’s plenty of secular stuff in the meeting, and it’s only one prayer even if it is technically getting government endorsement, so what is everyone getting worked up about?

I agree with whoever was saying above that the fundies are going to get a lot smarter and are polishing up their “plausible deniability” schtick.

A better question is why did the city council use public funds to bring in ANY band?

“Can’t you see you’re not making christianity any better, you’re just making rock ‘n roll worse…”

There isn’t anything else you could write to have it atheistic.

ahem.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o1ngMz92vwA

Firstly, couldn’t we just say “in God we trust” on our money is just art? If there was a crucifixion over the white house with a poem about God, isn’t that okay, because it’s art? And our taxes going to it is okay, too, because it’s art, isn’t it?

(1) No, because it’s *not* art. We know why it was put there and when, and by whom, because they told us when they did it. I’m not just calling it “art” as an excuse to ignore the fact that they’re Christian, the fact is that they’re a band — they’ll be playing music, not just preaching. If they preach THROUGH music then so be it, but as long as they’re not just going up on stage and dry-preaching then the fact of the matter is that they’re not actually breaking the law. It’s sort of a loophole in that respect. If we don’t like it, that’s fine and dandy, but that doesn’t mean the law was broken.

(2) You have to put this in context with the other acts as well. There were other acts which were not Christian acts; what I don’t understand is, why is it okay to discriminate against Christian bands in this one case by not giving them the same job opportunities as “secular” bands?

Secondly, I don’t think government funding was necessary in the first place, regardless of who was playing. They could have easily gotten the money from donations. If someone wants to fund the whole event or a part of the event, that’s their choice. Using taxes wasn’t the tax payers’ choice.

I’d like to see the breakdown of where the tax dollars came from. My guess would be that it was part of some fund which was approved by the local governance at some point, and which was collected for the express purpose of something like tourism. If that’s the case, then I really wouldn’t see any problem, because it actually *would* have been the taxpayer’s choice. If it’s something else, then I’d be open to changing my mind, though.

You could say that relates to the government on the grounds it was taxes, not donations, and then it relates to the separation of church and state. (Again, though, it wasn’t necessary for the event or any of the bands.)

Again, I don’t see how this counts as a violation of “separation of church and state” *just* because *one* Christian band was allowed to perform in a concert series. If it was a completely Christian event, then that would be different, but it’s clearly not. The fact that Christian stations hyped this band’s appearance and used it as a means to take up donations for food banks is, in my opinion, no different than if the band had been, say, Green Day or Alkaline Trio, and a bunch of punk kids and teens flocked to the event and a bunch of indie magazines and websites gave it a lot of press. Certain bands attract certain scenes and certain attentions; this is a Christian band so it drew the attention of Christians.

It’s a matter of government funding and endorsement of explicitly religious content. There are bands with Christian members, and then there are Christian bands–these are two different things, with two different implications. A band with Christian members can easily be secular in nature and pass the Lemon test (while even having the occasional religious-sounding song), on the other hand a Christian band implies a missionary agenda that does not.

See, here’s what gets me: the government isn’t *directly* funding religious content. They are funding an event which will be attended by one Christian band. I see this as more of a “everyone gets a chance for a seat at the table” sort of thing than an explicit endorsement of any one type of band or view. I mean, shit, Christians pay taxes, too.

For some perspective, please see the whole “Rock Beyond Belief” issue. When it was Christian proselytizing, we got the whole “well, it’s just a bunch of bands that happen to be Christian, what’s your problem, it’s no big deal, and if you deny them a government funded and endorsed venue, you are denying them their 1st Amendment rights!” Plus the disingenuous claim that they would equally fund a similar atheistic event. We all know what happened after that.

Yes, but that was a different issue. They deliberately and disingenuously funded an explicity Christian event which did discriminate against nontheists and nonChristians. That is certainly not the case here; this is not an explicitly Christian event, and I certainly don’t see how it’s discriminating against nontheists and nonChristians.

Let me phrase it this way….I feel that if an event is government-funded, then people should not be able to be *automatically* disqualified because of religious beliefs. The separation of church and state goes both ways — people should not use the government as a platform to directly spread their religion, but they should also not use it to deliberately quash and silence certain groups by not giving them the same opportunities as other groups. To me, THAT would be disingenuous.

No, they are not so much “taking advantage of the First Amendment to speak their message”. It’s more like they are warping the First Amendment in an effort to retain the overprivileged status they once had, wherein their religious agendas and messages were both funded and endorsed by the government and made it nearly impossible for non-xians/unbelievers to avoid having to participate in some way.

They’re “overprivileged” because they went through the same process as all the other bands that got the job, and they got the job as well? I don’t see any evidence that their Christianity is the *reason* they got the job. If there was, then I might have a problem with that. But even Hemant doesn’t seem to think so, and I’m inclined to believe him on this one.

And no, I don’t buy that the only alternative was choosing a band everyone would hate. You can’t tell me they had no choice and the majority of people just had to have this band and that no other would do, that there is absolutely no non-religious band that everyone including non-xians would have enjoyed.

I don’t really see how this is any different than saying the event is discriminatory because I don’t like the band they chose. What if they had chosen Green Day instead? Someone might say, “I don’t like Green Day, why couldn’t they get a band that everyone could enjoy? I don’t buy that the majority of people just had to have THIS band and that no other would do.”

“on the radar”. really? This is a non-issue that just goes to show how similar theists and atheists can be.

The Parks and Rec Department did their job. They used funds they put aside for such occasions to support the community. The City where I work for example, makes NO money on the pools and parks but we support them so people can use and enjoy them. We also support a yearly 4th of July party. The whole “my tax dollars” really gets old when your petty about it.

What if a secular band covers Spirit in the Sky?

To exclude a band because they are Christian seems like religious discrimination to me. Freedom of speech? Freedom of religion? Since when did those freedoms mean that atheism always wins?

As the person who sent the link originally to Hemant, I think it’s worth mentioning how I came across this story: In my Facebook news feed being reposted by several of my very conservative Christian friends as an example of a town finally using public funds to do some good and to spread the gospel. I understand the points being made by people here about this not worth getting riled up about, and I certainly don’t think that it’s a huge deal. I also appreciate that the presence of Christian-themed music in a public or government-sponsored setting is not inherently bad. I spent many years singing religious and secular music in school and it has its place.

However, I think that in small towns people often do things that intermingle government and religion out of ignorance, not realizing that it does, in fact, bother some people, not to mention infringe on their rights. Those people may not be willing to speak out. (When I led a protest against an organized prayer during my high school graduation ceremony, I was approached privately by some students, parents, and school staff indicating that I had wider support than I knew, especially from some of the few Jewish students in our school, who didn’t want to be seen as troublemakers but felt uncomfortable with the prayer.) Bringing attention to the subject can help people understand when they otherwise might never even think about the non-Christians among us.