“What do you think you are doing!” an angry teacher questioned a young boy who was preaching about the gospel to his classmates. “Go to the office immediately. Do you not know that this is against the school rules? Because of your reckless actions, you will now have to suffer the consequences.”
When the U.S. was founded, it was firmly based on religious and biblical morals and principles. But, now as the century has turned away from its foundations, praying orally in a classroom or creating a bible club on campus could result in consequences.
“I feel that it is very sad and unjust how they are taking prayer out of school,” Suyen Millian, ’05, said. “Slowly, people are trying to take away the God-given rights we have that are promised to us in our own constitution!”
Not only do these new rules and regulations affect the students, but they also affect the teachers. In the halls of a public school it might be harder to find a teacher who feels distraught about the new rules.
Yet if these rules were exercised on campus the teaching staff may cause an up rise amongst the staff and students. Many of the teachers on campus have different views of why they feel prayer might be taken out of school.
“I believe that the prayer the schools prayed in the past decades was really generic,” Ellen King, bible instructor, said. “Yet some people felt it was a breech of the church and state policy.
“Today opponents of school prayer feel it advocates Christianity and exceeds other religious beliefs. But, I believe the real reason prayer has been taken out of school is that Satan is working to defeat Christianity and doing it by destroying the faith of the next generation.”
Good and bad decisions often become blurred making it hard to determine what is right or wrong.
“In this day and age there is no black and white what the definition of good and evil is,” Greg Page, bible instructor, said. “Good and bad is what the individual decides what is good to them and what is bad to them. Yet, Satan in his plan for this country is doing his best to get ride of God in America.”
During September, a Shell gas station on the corner of Kings Canyon and Clovis set up a billboard which seemed to question a common American statement: “God bless America? But we don’t want prayer in our schools or the Ten Commandments?”” “Madeline Ervin, Photographer” “Despite the elimination of prayer from public schools, Ellen King’s second period Bible class is still able the discuss matters of religion freely on campus on Oct.8. King’s class often takes advantage of this privilege as they converse about the recent controversy surrounding the Ten Commandment monument in Montgomery, Alabama.” “” “” “