freedom from freedom from religion

Last week the superintendent of the Putnam City School District, Dr. Paul Hurst, received a letter from an organization called "Freedom From Religion Foundation" out of Madison Wisconsin. The subject of the letter was their objection to the baccalaureates of Putnam City West High School and Putnam City North High Schools respectively. This is a radical left wing Atheist organization (with a staff of only 7 people!) whose mission is to eradicate religion from the public square. The letter threatened a law suit because of the implication that these two events, neither of which were actually sponsored by the schools, were a violation of the principles of "separation of church and state" in the U.S. constitution.

It was somewhat ironic that Chris Wall was the guest speaker at P.C. West and I was the guest speaker at the P.C. North baccalaureate. A further irony was that the subject of my talk that night was the etymology of the word "baccalaureate" in the English language and in Western civilization. Despite what many secular humanists might think, the history and meaning of this event goes back into antiquity- even predating the advent of the most historic educational institutions. It is an old Latin word that means in essence "bequeathing authority to teach".

I am very proud of our school district for not backing down to a very small radical fringe group from Wisconsin that has probably never even stepped foot in Oklahoma City and wouldn't know the difference between Council and Rockwell. Although there was a lot of chatter from the parents, teachers and administration about the letter, the events went on undeterred.

The two primary reasons I believe our community should never stop this very important milestone for high schools seniors are:

1. History. The reason these events have a somewhat religious meaning is that the very first institutions of learning in Western culture were Christian institutions. That is a fact that even the single-minded and passionate "Freedom from Religion" organization cannot deny. For our schools to stop the tradition of baccalaureates would mean that they would end a tradition that goes back not just to the beginning of public school systems in America, but to earliest centuries in Western culture.

In fact, there is a place in scripture in which the implication of this concept is clear. In Acts chapter 4 the disciples were challenged for their very effective and authoritative teaching that had resulted in thousands of conversions. The religious leaders and political authorities were not so much upset by what the disciples were teaching, but by the authority and swagger of their teaching.

"The next day the rulers, elders and teachers of the law met in Jerusalem. ⁶Annas the high priest was there, and so were Caiaphas, John, Alexander and the other men of the high priest's family. ⁷They had Peter and John brought before them and began to question them: "By what power or what name did you do this?""

They were in affect asking about their "baccaulareas"- their authority to teach- they wanted to know their credentials. How dare these uneducated men come into Jerusalem and teach with such authority!

The history of this event goes back much deeper into our culture than the concepts of school systems, school boards, and even democracy and the Bill of Rights. It is a sad day indeed when we as a people begin to deconstruct the very moorings upon which our philosophy of freedom and moral law have been carefully constructed.

2. The fallacy of their argument. A second reason I would object is that there is really no such thing as freedom from religion. Every human being is seeking meaning and purpose in something- whether it be the religion that is found in churches and synagogues and mosques or it is the religion that is found in an office building (ironically, a converted church building) in Madison Wisconsin that says its purpose is to promote Atheism. The issue at the center of the human heart is a need to find meaning and purpose - a person will look for that in God or in some substitute for God. In this case, this organization is passionately promoting their religion as aggressively as any evangelical church. They are not true atheists. Because a true atheist would be completely ambivalent about another persons belief and wouldn't care less whether a person attended a ceremony that just happens to have a tradition centuries old, regardless of the premise of the event. But they are not ambivelent- they are passionate and aggessive and are acting as if their very life (soul?) depends upon it. Thier behavior is the behavior of true religonists and believers. So if we truly seek freedom from religion it would mean that we would seek freedom from the Freedom from Religion Foundation and therefore we should not pay attention to their silly letter.

And that is exactly what I hope Putnam City Schools continues to do.