There is no reason a public school should be handing out religious books. Period.
Hand them out at your Church if you want to give them away. Put up a big sign that says "Free Bibles", etc...
Mother challenges Bibles in North Carolina school
☥☽✪☾DAW ☽✪☾
2012/01/19 02:46:21
WEAVERVILLE, N.C. – A pagan mother's challenge to the distribution of donated Bibles at a local school has prompted the Buncombe County Board of Education to reevaluate its policies regarding religious texts.
Ginger Strivelli, who practices Wicca, said she was upset when her 12-year-old son came home from North Windy Ridge intermediate school with a Bible. The Gideons International had delivered several boxes of the sacred books to the school office. The staff allowed interested students to stop by and pick them up.
"Schools should not be giving out one religion's materials and not others," Strivelli said.
According to Strivelli, the principal assured her the school would make available religious texts donated by any group. But when Strivelli showed up at the school with pagan spell books, she was turned away.
"Buncombe County School officials are currently reviewing relevant policies and practices with school board attorneys," the district announced in a written statement. "During this review period, no school in the system will be accepting donations of materials that could be viewed as advocating a particular religion or belief."
The school board is expected to address the issue at its next meeting Feb. 2. According to legal experts, the First Amendment gives public schools two clear choices when it comes to the distribution of religious texts.
"You can either open your public school up to all religious material, or you can say no religious material," Michael Broyde, a professor and senior fellow at Emory University's Center for the Study of Law and Religion said. "You can't say, 'You can distribute religious material, but only from the good mainstream faiths.'"
Preventing government from favoring or restricting any one religion may have helped the U.S. avoid the bloodshed experienced in some other Western nations, such as Germany and Ireland, according to Broyde.
"America runs a grand, noble experiment in religious diversity without violence," he said. "There's no killing of the Jews. There's no Catholic-Protestant violence. We are very successful in this grand experiment."
Traditionally, that "grand experiment" has involved Judaism and a handful of Christian denominations. But as non-traditional faiths spread into new communities, longstanding customs such as prayer, Christmas plays and Bibles that once went unquestioned in public schools are finding themselves under increased scrutiny.
"Our country was founded on Judeo-Christian principles, not on Wiccan principles," Bobby Honeycutt, who attended public schools in Weaverville during the 1970s, said.
"Our children have access to more non-Christian print material in the libraries and online than they really do Christian stuff," he said.
While many Weaverville Christians see recent events as a threat to tradition, others see a purpose in enforcing church-state separation in public schools, because even the nation's traditional faiths have divisions.
"Many Christians have stood up and said they agree with me too," Strivelli said. "Because, as much as they may like the Bible, they don't want Jehovah's Witnesses coming in with Watch Tower (magazines) or Catholics coming in and having them pray the Rosary."
Read More: http://www.foxnews.com/us/2012/01/18/pagan-mom-cha...
Top Opinion
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socokid 2012/01/19 03:28:45
The choice is simple.
Have yet to see any person make a point with such a delicate touch, gentle words and demolishing effect!
I believed I knew how to make my points; you just showed me how much I have to learn.
I think that the mother is just annoyed that her son may be looking for beliefs that are incongruent with her own...my parents were not happy with my leaving the Catholic Church, and going my own way...
She has a valid point in that they refused her own Wiccan books! Just more uptight misconceptions about Wiccans!
The problem is the talibanist attitude of the slimmy bible giver.
Enjoy your Sunday.
The problem is not the book, nor the mother, kid or school; the problem is the underhandedness and trickery of this obssesed, fanatics.
This act of assault on the peaceful journey to school by the lunatic blind, boxed in sheep is that they are so obtuse and abtuse that can only follow orders from the Pat Robertson and the like minded mentally retarded "guides" of those herds.
We have here at work the same brainwashing that led another fascist fanacitic to assessinate in cold blooded fashion a Dr. in Florida that did abortions. These people are not human yet; you have to have a brain to be one, they are simply Homo erectus; they have a long way to go to get the sapiens word in their arquetype.
Enjoy your Sunday and rejoice, Our Lord Has risen. Allelluyah!
It will speed up evolution fowards. Nature's cycles are the Master Plan. We abide by them and scarcity and discord will dissipate in a snap.
Wiccan is the most nature oriented of all the ISMS so is on top of my list when decide to loose my sovereign mind and incorporate into a herd.
Blessings
If you're not interested, don't pick it up.
Off course that is what parents are for but this Lady is a very involved mother and could not prevent her son from falling for the trap.
The problem is the slimmy and devious fanaticism of the one who place those book there.
Funny how people like this want to push everyone around, but when others push back, they have a screaming fit.
in America we have NO STATE Religion schools are not for Religious propaganda
they are there to learn FACTS not Religious myths
they were handing out bibles as soon as she wanted to hand out wiccan books the school said no and changed thier policy
blessed be my friend