ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1995, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, December 10, 1995 TAG: 9512090004
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
COLUMN: the back pew
SOURCE: CODY LOWE
"The Life of Jesus Christ."
Several versions of that story appeared in the first century after Jesus' death. Some quickly came to be viewed as divinely inspired, holy words - Scripture that we still read as the opening books of the New Testament. Others were discarded as erroneous or frivolous or otherwise uninspired.
A junior-high school student in Tennessee, Brittney Settle, proposed to write another version as a project for school a while back. The theme ended up the subject of a lawsuit that wound its way all the way to the door of the U.S. Supreme Court a couple of weeks ago.
Settle apparently had no intention of writing a replacement for any of the books we now have. She simply was assigned to write a research paper by her ninth-grade teacher, and Jesus was what she wanted to research.
The teacher rejected Settle's proposal, reportedly citing several reasons. The teacher wanted students to research something they didn't know much about. She also questioned whether Settle, a devout Christian, could write a dispassionate report on a subject she felt so strongly about. And, according to Baptist Press, anyway, the teacher is reported to have said, ``the law says we are not to deal with religious issues in the classroom.''
Oops.
The teacher was going along just fine until that point. There is no law, of course, that says students may ``not deal with religious issues in the classroom.''
Considering the amount of attention this issue has received in the past few years, it is incredible that a teacher anywhere could still harbor that particular misconception. Students have always had the right to talk about their religious beliefs, even to pray in a nondisruptive manner.
Because the Supreme Court refused to review the decision against her, Settle's case is now becoming the cause celebre of those who would like to fix the Constitution with a religious-equality or religious-liberty amendment. Michael Whitehead, general counsel of the Southern Baptist Convention's Christian Life Commission, called this yet another example of why an amendment is needed ``to prohibit discrimination against religious expression by private citizens.''
The problem is that this case really isn't about religious discrimination or religious freedom. It will be twisted by those who would like for it to be about those issues, but it isn't.
Anyone who reads more than a headline about the case will understand that this was a court test of a teacher's ``ordinary authority ... over curriculum and course content,'' as the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled.
The teacher did allow reports on religious subjects - spiritualism, reincarnation and magic religions - presumably by students who didn't know much about those subjects before they began writing the reports and who were not devout believers in them.
Even the teacher's flawed understanding that students were not to deal with religion in the classroom - which she apparently forgot when approving those other report topics - doesn't alter the fact that her other educational reasons for rejecting Settle's topic were valid.
And despite the arguments of their supporters to the contrary, we have no reason to believe either of the currently proposed religion amendments to the Constitution would have addressed this issue. Even if one or both of them had been in effect, the court wouldn't have relied on them to make this decision. It was not - the court decided - a church-state dispute.
Those wanting to make a case for an amendment would do better to try and find a situation like that of student Casaundra Swain at William Fleming High School. Swain told reporter Joel Turner last week that a teacher told her not to record church-service activities as part of a daily journal she kept as part of a class assignment.
Her teacher, Swain said, worried that ``she might get into trouble if I wrote about my religion.''
Swain argues that whenever students are free to choose topics for such work, they ought to be allowed to talk about their religious experiences and faith.
She's absolutely right, of course. It was a mistake for a teacher to tell her that she could not write about religion, providing the journal entries were otherwise open to any subject the students chose.
One of the religious-equality constitutional amendments being proposed in the House of Representatives might, indeed, address this issue. A student might be able to call upon one of those in defense of his or her right to religious expression.
But Casaundra Swain doesn't need any additional legal justification to argue that she should be allowed to write about religious services at her church.
She already has an amendment to call on in defense of that right. It is called the First Amendment.
LENGTH: Medium: 88 linesby CNB