Tuesday, November 30, 2004

More Fun from Georgia

So a high school principal in Georgia -- yep, the same Georgia where they're putting stickers on the textbooks advising their high school students that evolution (or evil-ution, as they like to pronounce it here in Arkansas) is "just a theory" -- got on the intercom and read his students what he thought was a very clever poem (what I guess he thought was a poem) which no doubt his minister or his brother in law the deacon or some other buddy emailed him. Then he was all surprised when a number of parents objected. Here's the link to the news story (http://www.grandforks.com/mld/grandforks/news/state/10299352.htm)

This school-prayer crowd puzzles me. First off, their own guy was against public prayer. Says so right there in their own text -- Matthew 6:6: "But thou, when thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret; and thy Father which seeth in secret shall reward thee openly." Not: "Get you to a a public school, and gather ye round a flagpole, and pray ye in public for the edification of the unbelievers, verily, with much outcry ye shall do it!"

Second, and more importantly, there are no rules against praying in public schools. Little Wyatt can pray all he wants in school (though he can't obstruct the hallways while he's doing it). Sallie Mae can read her little New Testament to her heart's content (so long as she's not doing it during biology class). What can't happen is the Principal of the school, being a paid agent of the state, cannot lead the school in prayer, or organize a Bible session that has as its aim leading people to Christ: because if he did that, then he would be, as an agent of the state, endorsing a particular religion: saying that that religion was the true and correct one.

Christians obviously would not want him doing that if he were, say, a Wiccan, or a Muslim, or a Jew -- teaching their children to pray to, say, Allah, now, would they?

Why can they not see that those of us who don't worship Mr. Jesus would not want our children being forced to pray to their God?

Well, because they don't see us as real, actual people, of course. I do know that. It just really makes me nuts at times.

Anyway, here's the text of the poem our obtuse principal in Georgia read, which the urban legend site Snopes(
ttp://www.snopes.com/language/document/newpray.htm )can give you the history of:


THE NEW SCHOOL PRAYER

Now I sit me down in school
Where praying is against the rule
For this great nation under God
Finds mention of Him very odd.

If Scripture now the class recites,
It violates the Bill of Rights.
And anytime my head I bow
Becomes a Federal matter now.

Our hair can be purple,
orange or green,
That's no offense;
it's a freedom scene.

The law is specific,
the law is precise.
Prayers spoken aloud
are a serious vice.

For praying in a public hall
Might offend someone with no faith at all.
In silence alone we must meditate,
God's name is prohibited by the state.

We're allowed to cuss and dress like freaks,
And pierce our noses, tongues and cheeks.
They've outlawed guns, but FIRST the Bible.
To quote the Good Book makes me liable.

We can elect a pregnant Senior Queen,
And the 'unwed daddy,' our Senior King.
It's "inappropriate" to teach right from wrong,
We're taught that such "judgments" do not belong.

We can get our condoms and birth controls,
Study witchcraft, vampires and totem poles.
But the Ten Commandments are not allowed,
No word of God must reach this crowd.

It's scary here I must confess,
When chaos reigns the school's a mess.
So, Lord, this silent plea I make:
Should I be shot; My soul please take!
Amen

(Among other things
, it's offensive because it's such a REALLY bad poem!)

1 comment:

zelda1 said...

Here's the thing about the people who are fighters for such things as school prayer, the teaching of creations and not evolution, and the fight to keep diversity out of the lives of the children in school. I know these people since I live among them in small town rurual Arkansas. Most of them think they are liberal, and they vote Democrate because their grandfathers voted Deomocrate. They still believe that the conservatives are for the rich folks. However, they want their children to be allowed to practice Christianity in school in spite of the fact that once church and state combine, the state can dictate to them which church is the one that is to be worshipped at. They don't know that if the king or president says this year we will worship as protestants and all the rest will be let's see fined, or imprisoned, or have their land removed ect. They are not smart enough to see that the seperation of church and state was done for a reason. It's sad for those who have no education but then there are those people who are educated and were taught about Bloody Marry and her father and all those heads that were posted on the london bridge for the vultures to peck the eyes out while their loved ones stood below throwing rocks to keep the vermin off their loved ones. They forgot about the Puritans who didn't like the Quakers or the Witches and thought nothing of imprissioning them and doing bad things to them at, by the way, the cost of the family of the accused. They have also forgot the more recent years say in the sixties and early seventies when prayer was allowed in school and every Friday a preacher from each church came and preached a little sermon to the kids in hopes of reaching the lost souls whose parents didn't bother bringing them to church and what happened when the catholic priest wanted to come and preach and how the community here in this little town became so irate that the protestants and catholics were at each other's throats ready to fight, and forbidding their children from being friends with one another. Dividing the town and if that issue can divide a town look what it could do to a nation or let's see, oh it already has in places like Ireland. So to wind things down, religion doesn't blong in school, at the court house, in the federal building, the white house, the pentagon, or even in the student union at a college. It belongs in the churches where, by choice, people can do whatever the hell they want.