The Current Look of the Cranston High School West Prayer Banner

You have to wonder why nobody noticed (and most news reports still ignore) the words “SCHOOL PRAYER” at the top, in judging whether or not this is a, well, prayer in a school.  Must be a fnord in there or something.

Looks like they covered it with a brand-new unfolded leaf-bag and hung a banner in front of it.    tacky, but still an improvement. 

I’d guess they covered it with a tarp thinking that, after “all this blows over”, they could uncover it. 

Somehow I don’t think this banner will go away. I assume some religious folks may want it so they can display it and use it for fundraising purposes. 

Wouldn’t it have been easier to just take it down?
They could even do something good with it like auction it off to a religious person with too much money and buy textbooks with the proceeds.

You know… after reading the banner it would seem their prayer was indirectly answered, they have been forced to “grow mentally and morally”, forced to be “kind and helpful”,  forced to be “honest” with themselves and others, and have been taught that the value of “true” friendship means committing to ‘equality’, ‘neutrality’ and ‘compromise’.

Time will tell if they actual learn the true meaning of the sentiments held in the banner.

If they just got rid of the title, the “Heavenly Father” and the “Amen”, changed “Grant us” to “May we have”, and “Help us, always, to” to “May we always”, there’d be absolutely nothing wrong with it as a statement of objectives for a school, its teachers and its pupils.

The sentiment’s good, just get rid of the supernatural!

Correct me if I’m wrong, but I’m pretty sure something like this was suggested but they refused to change it.

That tarpaulin set-up does indeed have a distinctly temporary look.  It would probably also have been less work, and looked a whole lot neater, if they’d simply painted over the top to match the wall around it – but we can all probably guess why they didn’t just do that.  Evidently they couldn’t even bring themselves to cover the thing up entirely, and left as much sticking out at the top as they could without revealing the text – perhaps to remind everyone in the know that it’s actually still there.

Petulant children, when you make them do something they don’t really want to, sometimes do the absolute minimum and deliberately make a complete pig’s-ear of even that, then act as if the unacceptability of the result were entirely your fault for asking.  I’m beginning to suspect that whoever did this did it with all the wilful incompetence they could muster.

It’s the wrong shape, wrinkled, off-centre, leaves a bit sticking out, is more complex than it needs to be (just paint the damn thing – surely a sensible school keeps a reserve of wall-coloured paint as a matter of course?), it isn’t even close to an appropriate colour and, last but not least, it’s debatable whether it even complies with the instruction to remove the mural.  Technically, painting over it wouldn’t remove it either, but it would have all the appearance of there being nothing there; if necessary, stripping before painting would solve that problem entirely.  Covering it with a butt-ugly tarpaulin doesn’t give this appearance; if anything, it draws even more attention to that spot.

I would chip in but I think that this intelligent articulate young lady is going to have an easy enough time getting a good post secondary education. She seems to be able to accomplish what she sets her mind to. I’ll save my money for my own 5 children.

Covering it seems more like a statement of protest than compliance with the judge’s order.  It seems similar to those nuts who walk around with tape over their mouths to protest abortions.  The covering of the banner seem to serve a similar purpose to say…’look at what those nasty people discriminating and suppressing on our wholesome xian values made us do.’

I thought the court documents stated that it was a banner that had been hung there, and then the edges had been painted over basically joing the banner with the wall, basically the same way an old window becomes attached to the wall when you aren’t careful painting.

Don’t neglect to notice though,they still haven’t removed the banner, they’ve just covered it up.

Who cares?

This is correct.  They refused to budge an inch, which was how it ended up going to court.  

Citation please?  I see a menorah inside the Whitehorse, and a Christmas tree.  If the school wanted to have a bunch of banners representing different philosophies and religions that probably would have passed the Lemon test.  A banner that represents the single school prayer does not.

For that matter, the post office doesn’t work on Sunday, and nobody cares.  Most of the days of the week are named after various Pagan gods, and nobody cares.

Seperation of church and state my ass

http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2011/12/26/hanukkah-white-house-history-2011-menorah

A lot of kids are lambasting her via social network. I hope most of it is just talk. Somebody needs to have a talk with these kids. What she did was right. Letting these kids think that she was some evil bitch throwing her weight around, the leaders in the community need to make sure they understand that the school was clearly in the wrong.
It bothers me that the prayer is just covered up and not actually removed. I hope they are planning to have it taken off the wall.

Well, it’s very hard to be charitble about their motivations after reading so many vile comments and threats directed toward Ms. Ahlquist.

Looks much better!

Think Rachel Maddow would run this story?  Could be the best t hing of the week.

Ah yes, because there are SO many cases of Synagogue and State, and even more of Mosque and State, but we pick on the poor oppressed Christians.  We’ve heard this whine before.  You call it hypocritical.  We call it Christian Privilege.

That banner should still be up, you don’t look at it everyday, its in the auditorium, secondly the money wasted on this case was what put cps into MORE debt, I’m not saying I’m a religious nut, at the same time there was no need to waste more money on something that you can just look away from your there for what 4 years?  I’m sure she’s not the only atheist in our school but as a student this is gone on to far just so her father could make a quick buck on her case. That is whats WRONG! Now shes questioning going to La Salle? are you kidding me? 

A banner tucked away near the school auditorium affects her daily life? In what way? Now that is a joke. This was done for attention. Now that she has it she is surprized that some is negative? A former student wrote it 50 years ago. Now that persons creation will be destroyed because she didn’t like it being there…. Someone put her up to it. No way did this 16 year old care about it being there.

Well, It seems a LOT of people are willing to give there pennies…. I know I chipped in for her education, because she did something amazing and courageous….. 

If my people, which are called by my name,
shall humble themselves, and pray and seek
my face, and turn from their wicked ways; 
then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive
their sins, and will heal their land. 
2 Chronicles 7:14

Just another example of getting God out of our lives, soceity, and the world in general.
IT’S the ME way of life.  God, parents, police, the government, anybody CANT TELL ME WHAT TO DO, BELIEVE , or think or act.  A  Godless society is a law-less society.
And just look around, check out the fruits of our Godless world…