How Many Church/State Violations Can One School District Be Guilty Of?

Well, if the Twilight books are on a reading list, I don’t see a problem with the Left behind series. They’re both shit and they’re both complete fantasy.

I was thinking something similar, along the lines of, “Well, that’s a predictable list of fantasy books for children. They should add the bible.”

Actually, Susan didn’t brag about praying on facebook, it was on a news site that ran an article on the case which uses a facebook plugin. I know because that is my screenshot.

Well, I don’t think there are hordes of young female fans of Left Behind, so I would have to go with the sparkly vampires and “I’m nothing without a man to protect me and tell me what to do” of Twilight. 

Impressive list but I’d be leery of complaining about Left Behind series on summer list. It’s fiction and I don’t see how it can be made into a separation issue. Lots of summer school lists contain fiction that presents ideas students and their parents may find upsetting or objectionable. Think “Lord of the Flies,’ for example. And there is always the chance that students may conclude, having read a book, that it was a pretty bad one. I really don’t think we want to argue that only books we think are ideologically sound should be on such lists. The fundies argue that way all the time remember and we reject their arguments. Need to be careful not to fall into their their ways on this.

Unfortunately, at one point I was indeed a young female fan of Left Behind.

At the time I had no idea what “lesbian” meant and when one of the female characters was outed as a lesbian but “fixed” by Jesus I thought it was some kind of cult.

Doesn’t that mean it still shows up in her news feed? Or as a status?

Left Behind really stretches the definition of fiction.

Yes, the exact characters are imaginary, but the entire premise is that it is a literal prophecy of things that will LITERALLY happen. They believe that the overall storyline is factual. It is fundamentalist snuff porn.

 If they’re already receiving death threats, they must not have done a good job of remaining anonymous.

I raised my daughter here in Missouri, it wasn’t easy on her once she realized she didn’t believe in all the hooey either.  She has good friends though and that helps.

In the context of the other fantasy works, I don’t see a problem with Left Behind. The paying for summer lunches thing may be ok as long as they are also doing it for other camps, but the fact that they say it specifically about Bible Camps is worrying.

And of course even without these two, the rest of the list is damning. 

Wow.  I’m sorta glad I never got that far in the series.

It all depends on how the material is presented. It’d be perfectly legal to teach the Bible in public schools as long as it’s done as literature and in a neutral manner. Considering the list of other books I wouldn’t be too worried about the Left Behind series being an option.

I’m not familiar with the particulars of this situation, but remember that death threats can be delivered in a “To Whom it May Concern” manner, where the threat is uttered or publicized in some way saying like,

“Ifen ah fahnd ayout wut muthuh fuckuh is trahyin tuh stop our school prers, ahm agonna dee-liver Jesus’ love to ’em with mah twelve gayge.”

Such a non-focused threat should still be taken very seriously.

Yeah. Left Behind has all sorts of issues. I read the series back when it was still being released…For all it’s problems, Twilight is actually LESS horrible. 

“Why you Should Become a Scientoligist” or “Islam is the Correct Religion” would both be non-fiction works, and so raise serious questions not raised by works of fiction like the Left Behind series. Using your standard, seems to me, writers like Flannery O’Conner would be impermissible because she was a demonstrably Catholic writer whose works conveyed clearly her faith.   Works of fiction, again.

When we start to delve into the intentions of writers of fiction to discern the worthiness of including what they write on recommended reading lists we apply an ideological test to them that I am not at all comfortable doing.  The fundies are all for applying such ideological tests to school readings and I [and I think most of us there] are opposed to their doing that, to objecting to books that do not pass their ideological test.   We should not be doing it either, for works of fiction.   Slippery slope argument?  Absolutely, which does not make it one iota less compelling. 

This passive “It’s God’s will” mentality is so alien and bizarre to me. It sounds like hackneyed dialogue out of a low budget movie about an Arabian Sheik in the 1800’s. What’s even more puzzling to me is how people turn that passivity on and off depending on the problem they’re facing. When the Mississippi River starts flooding their town, they usually don’t stand around praying while the brown water rises around their ankles; they start stacking sandbags. If the sandbag barriers collapse, then they talk about God’s will.

When the problem is simple, obvious, and primal, like mud flowing toward their town, they get busy doing practical things, but when the problem is complex, subtle, and might require careful thought and discussion such as sociological and educational problems, oh no, they turn it over to the Cosmic Consultant.

Well, yes, in that case students should be presented with material from competing ideologies. If there were a class devoted to different worldviews, and the Left Behind series was presented as an example of fundamentalist Christian ideology, that would be fine. Of course, that’s not what’s happening in Georgia. The Left Behind series is being recommended for recreational reading, despite the fact that it exists solely for evangelical purposes.

Exactly. The Left Behind series is propaganda. Public schools shouldn’t be recommending conversion propaganda, unless (perhaps) it was identified as propaganda and there was some sort of project involving comparing/contrasting different types of material. I can think of a perfectly legitimate way for, say, Mein Kampf, Mao’s Little Red Book, and the Left Behind series to all be included in such a project.

Wow, glad I didn’t pick up any of that series at the library yet. I imagined the Left Behind books to be some sort of kid-friendly version of Stephen King’s The Stand, not clouded by such silly religious dogma.

Why is the required reading for a high school full of children’s shitty fantasy novels?

Do you really want local school boards deciding which works of fiction are to be designated “propaganda” and which are not? I don’t. FSM deliver us from such a fate!

The real problem with the list of “series” books recommended is that there is little of any substance on it. Where is ” Lord of the Flies”? Where is “Catcher in the Rye” or “A Separate Peace” or”The Old Man and The Sea” or “The Power and the Glory” or “King Rat” or similar chewy novels that are ( or ought to be) well within the grasp of a decently educated high school senior? Books that might raise questions a littke more meaty than whether Team Edward is the coolest one to be on.

I live here.  I agree totally.  I am sorry, but you can oly lead a horse to the water.

 I’ve read most of them & TRUST ME they are NOT good “horror novels” & you will be very disappointed. The writing is pretty childlike & if it wasn’t for the religious theme they would never have even been published. In a nutshell, they’re crap, both as literature & as a worldview.

I have no problem with the Left Behind series being included, since that list has more book choices on it than most kids will ever read in 4 years. The point of including wildly-popular series on summer reading lists is to encourage kids to get hooked on an author, any author, when they might otherwise not be reading at all. The Left Behind books are addictive, numerous, and easy reading and are a good suggestion for religious kids branching out into fantasy.

I agree.  The general quality of the books on that list is as disturbing to me as the fact that “Left Behind” is on the list.  Maybe it’s a sign of my age, but aren’t kids expected to read “classic” fiction anymore (or at least high-quality contemporary fiction)?

“Ifen ah fahnd ayout wut muthuh fuckuh is trahyin tuh stop our school
prers, ahm agonna dee-liver Jesus’ love to ’em with mah twelve gayge.”

I had to go to Google for a Redneck-to-English translator on that sentence, Richard!  🙂

I grew up in neighboring Alabama, and sadly my experiences have taught me that this is the norm in the region. I was exposed to blatant proselytizing from school faculty on a regular basis. In the seventh grade, during science class, upon reaching the chapter on evolution in our textbooks, our science teacher simply said “We all know that God created the Earth and Man in 7 days, so we’l just skip this chapter.” 

This was in the 1990’s and to hear my brother’s reports of his children’s recent experiences in public school, things haven’t changed much. His 2nd grader returned home from class the other day with questions about why “people used to live to be hundreds of years old but not anymore”. Apparently his PUBLIC SCHOOL TEACHER had been teaching her class bible stories. 

At my niece’s public high school graduation a couple of months ago, the principal delivered a prayer to begin the ceremony. Not a vague call to a higher power, but a Bible-specific, Jesus-Christ-Holy-Ghost-God-in-Heaven-Amen prayer. 

As a previous commenter noted, this sort of thing is the norm in the bible belt, the status quo. I agree with their statement that many of these people simply do not understand that what they are doing is strictly and legally not allowed. They believe that they are doing God’s work in spreading His word, and that any attempt to stop them from doing so is either an infringement on their freedom or a demonic attempt by a literal Satan to do evil upon the world. It’s truly frightening. 

I’ve known some people that take “biblical literalism” to a whole new level. I’ve witnessed seemingly rational adults have sincere debates about the ways in which Noah could have fit all the animals on the ark, fully believing that the event actually occurred. I had a community leader, when I was volunteering with the Jaycees, inform me that dinosaurs never existed and were a Satanic lie. He told me that he knew this was a fact because he once visited the Smithsonian and the dino skeletons that he saw were all made of plaster. 

 Small town. I am sure they don’t want wackos from all over the country joining them.

 Again, the House of Night series could easily be viewed as proselytizing material for pagans.  Uglies is an atheist book series, there is /zero/ mention of god or religion if I recall correctly.

The series is published by a fundamentalist Christian press, for the sole purpose of presenting “rapture” belief as a valid truth. I don’t see how these books could be considered anything but propaganda, to be quite honest. Why would a school board have to decide that? It’s self-evident, indicated by the publisher, author, marketing, etc. There’s no way these books could be considered religiously neutral. I can’t imagine evangelistic Muslim propaganda being treated the same way the Left Behind series has been by the Georgia school system.

Actually, no. The House of Night series is not intended as proselytizing material for pagans. The authors are not pagan. The publisher is not pagan. The books are not meant to lead readers to adopt paganism as their religion.

Secular books are simply not the same as books that are specifically written to encourage people to adopt certain religious views. Secular books are not atheist books. The Uglies series is not atheist. If it had been published by an atheist press, written by an atheist author, and intended to get people to adopt atheism, then, yes, it would be atheist propaganda, and equally unsuitable for public schools.

If you want to understand America, read Albion’s Seed (DH Fischer). America’s four founding cultures came from distinctly different portions of Britain.  Southern culture originated in the lawless, violent and uneducated English/Scottish borderlands. 

That culture seized Christian fundamentalism after its transplantation. America had no experience like the French wars of religion or 30-years war to break its grip. The ACW devastated the south but we didn’t experience the greater devastation of WW1 or WW2 on American soil. The ACW birthed a little cynicism, but nowhere near enough to break the grip of religious backwardness. Plus, Andrew Johnson scuttled Reconstruction right quick. The combination of WW1 and especially WW2 eradicated religion as a political force in most developed European countries. We remained untouched at home.

Georgia, like most other southern states (partial exceptions being Florida and Louisiana), has been primarily shaped by borderlands culture. Ignorance is a virtue. Diversity is a curse. The striking thing about the south is a lack of diversity among white people. Study southern surnames and you’ll find a paucity of Italian or Eastern European ancestry. Even Irish surnames are in relatively short supply. Outside influences are limited to larger cities, like Nashville and Atlanta. College towns are exceptions that define the rule. 

So it’s no surprise that a bunch of white southerners flout the constitutional separation of church and state by forcing their religious beliefs on others. The south is almost monolithicly fundamentalist. Sneering at secular outsiders and (especially) death threats are hallmarks of borderlands culture.

The Left Behind series is clever propaganda, written by a fundamentalist pastor to advance the Rapture-ready agenda. I have no issues with it being studied & criticized at the college or even high school level, but I definitely wouldn’t let 10-12 year old kids read it. 

Guns, rural America and myth that sublimates history is a toxic brew.

Okay. I don’t want to be vaporized. I understand the issues with government and public schools. But by the airwaves – surely you don’t believe that religion has no right to public broadcast. Public access radio and television is open to all as long as they don’t profiteer. Further, I don’t understand the implication that religion is indecent if it is broadcasted. With all of the truly indecent things that are broadcasted (and for much profit, I might add) I don’t understand why you would single out religious broadcasting as indecent. Hopefully, we can continue to dialogue – without fear of annihilation.

You should read the reviews of that series by Slacktivist. One of his biggest complaints is actually the LACK of any type of horror (or tention built from horror) in those novels. It’s almost erie how the authors don’t develop that at all.

 Not required, suggest summer reading–still, I would never suggest Twilight or Left Behind.

Hi. I hope you don’t mind me commenting that many times, people working with students use an odd time to make it stand out, so it will be noticed and remembered. (It got you, right?) It has nothing to do with legalism whatsoever. Truly, it’s just that simple – nothing nefarious.