Elections have consequences:
Christians must engage on the national, state, and local level
-sex segregated locker rooms but now female students forced to share dressing spaces with male students
-offered sexually explicit reading materials in classroom assignments or in the school library
-student exposure to racially divisive or spiritually demeaning curricular content
-Federal government officials, Centers for Disease Control, teachers unions, White House kept schools closed during Covid
-attendance across the country has not rebounded from the prolonged closures
-families in crisis and mental health issues has tripled are the prolonged and unintended consequences
-Public schools administration has made sexual identity and expression the focus of education policies enforced by public schools
-the federal Department of Education’s revision of the Title IX rule is designed to force schools to prioritize teaching children that they could be born in the wrong body or that “men” can become pregnant
-the Title IX rule change undermines the efforts to protect privacy rights and athletic opportunities for women and girls
-laws prohibiting the requirement of parent notification when their child is seeking or offering services at school regarding gender identity
-schools claim that including parents in decisions and medical interventions made at school decried “forced outing of LGBTQ students”
-separation of church and state law-removal of 10 commandments from classrooms, school, and colleges/universities
-Bible removed even as a historical document
Religious Liberty in public schools:
-attempt to scare public school leaders that any mention of faith is disallowed on school property
-goal: silence students and teachers from speaking of God or faith
1st amendments:
-federal and state religious liberty statutes, secures the religious expression of teachers, employees and students at public schools
-Tinker vs. Des Moines: affirmed students’ and teachers’ free speech rights in public schools. The high court declared students and teachers do not “shed their constitutional rights to freedom of speech or expression at the schoolhouse gate”
“Free Exercise Clause does not permit the State to confine religious speech to whispers or banish it to broom closets.”
-US dept. Education “nothing in the First Amendment converts the public schools into religion free zones, or requires students, teachers, or other school officials to leave their private religious expression behind at the schoolhouse door.”
-students have free exercise of their faith with full protection of the First Amendment, they can speak about their faith to others, pray during appropriate free time, read their Bible in the classroom, write about their faith in class assignments when appropriate to the assignment, and form religious clubs if other types of clubs are permitted.
-teachers are also protected under the First Amendment
-teachers can respectfully discuss their faith with other school employees and when relevant to their classes such as religion on history, societal development, and cultural heritage
-schools can recognize religious holidays and must accommodate students’ religious beliefs
“The Supreme Court put it simply: the Constitution affirmatively mandates accommodation, not merely tolerance, of all religions, and forbids hostility toward any.”
Equal Access:
-beyond the 1st amendment: students, teachers, and employees also have strong federal and state statutory protections under the federal equal access act, secondary schools that accept federal funds so must recognize student-initiated religious clubs as secular clubs
-Title VII the federal employment discrimination statute, generally requires schools to accommodate their religious employees’ beliefs and practices.
Crisis in Higher Education:
-ferocity of this hostility is directed mainly toward Israel and Jewish people, Christian, and conservatives in general
-anything traditional thought is ostracized in higher places of learning
-youth are no longer taught to think
-now filled with platitudes, mysticism, narcissism, and the ‘freedom’ of deviant sex without responsibility
-campuses are filled with ignorant students who do not know history, civics, and other basic categories
-the “mostly peaceful” rioters can’t logically explain their vehement words
-as they shout ‘from the river to the sea’ they can’t tell you what river or which sea or the meaning of the phrase
-universities: greed
-universities: removal of classical education toward easy curriculum that attracts tuition dollars and government assistance
-government bailing out massive payouts on bloated loan forgiveness on the nation’s taxpayers
-cultural forces of Marxism and evil are lining up against Christians and Jews
-utilizing wedge issues like the ones embedded in the LGBTQ movement: so-called diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives and socialism
What to do?
-pray without ceasing
-support quality Christian education with our money and time
-attend a school that has Christian and sound academically
-Churches and families must prioritize the disciplining of our young people in a full understanding of their faith before they leave for college so they can more readily recognize deception when confronted by it.
-be informed constituents in the political process
-be determined to vote
-vocally support candidates who are favorable to both common sense secular higher education and to the principles of religious liberty in higher education and beyond
-young people deserve our efforts to impact the world of higher education, and the fate of our nation may well depend on how we as Christians react to this crisis
Here is a resource as it reveals that the Bible can be taught in schools through the state standards for each state. Click on the link and put in your information and state for your free resource on your state standards.
https://gogateways.org/articles/standards?rq=states%20academic%20standards
Also here is another resource to opt-out options for parents by state
https://pacificjustice.org/resources/for-parents/public-school-opt-out-forms/