First up from the God machine this week is a startling example of how much work still needs to be done when it comes to respecting the rights of religious minorities.
A Delaware school district has agreed to revise its policies on religion as part of a settlement with two Jewish families who had sued over the pervasiveness of Christian prayer and other religious activities in the schools.
One family said it was forced to leave its home in Georgetown because of an anti-Semitic backlash.
The settlement, which was approved Tuesday, includes payments to the families that both sides would not disclose. Although the settlement resolves many complaints in the suit, against the Indian River School District, the parties are proceeding with litigation over the school board practice of beginning its sessions with prayer.
Lawyers for the plaintiffs and defendants said their clients were satisfied with the settlement. On local blogs, the anger many people felt toward the families for protesting Christian prayer at school events has flared anew.
This is actually one of the more painful church-state controversies in recent years. Two Jewish families in Delaware, for years, saw blatantly unconstitutional state-sponsored religious exercises in public schools, but they said nothing. The families didn’t want to “rock the boat,” so they tolerated official endorsements of Christianity.
Eventually, after the school district invited a minister to tell students and their families that Jesus was the only way to the truth, they couldn’t take it anymore. When school officials refused to consider more generic and less exclusionary prayers, the families hired a lawyer.
Then matters grew considerably worse. Jewish students were taunted with anti-Semitic slurs. The families were threatened. They ultimately had to move to a new town, all because they didn’t want public schools promoting Christian proselytism.
One of the families tried to have their son return to the community. It wasn’t long before he was approached by some kids in the area who approached him and said, “There’s that boy who’s suing Jesus.”
Whatever those families got by way of a settlement, it probably wasn’t enough.
Other items from the God Machine this week:
* The ever-changing religious landscape in the United States is a sight to behold.
The United States, founded by dissident Protestants seeking religious freedom, is on the verge of becoming a nation in which Protestants are a minority.
A growing fraction of Americans identify themselves as unaffiliated with any religious tradition, and a small but increasingly significant number say they are Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, or Orthodox Christian. And a flood of overwhelmingly Catholic immigrants, mostly from Latin America, is helping to offset a high dropout rate among US-born Catholics.
These are among the key findings of a groundbreaking study of the American religious landscape released yesterday by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life. The study, which is the most comprehensive such examination of the country in at least a half century, finds that the United States is in the midst of a period of unprecedented religious fluidity, in which 44 percent of American adults have left the denomination of their childhood for another denomination, another faith, or no faith at all.
“Americans are not only changing jobs, changing locations, changing spouses, but they’re also changing religions on a regular basis,” said Luis E. Lugo, director of the Pew Forum. “We have nearly half the American public telling us they’re something different today than they were as a child, and that’s a staggering number. It’s such a dynamic religious marketplace and very competitive.”
And there’s a bizarre religious controversy in California’s State Assembly.
This week, quasi-official Chaplain Ralph Drollinger ignited a religious tit-for-tat, when he touted his Bible study and disparaged a more religiously inclusive group of lawmakers as “disgusting to our Lord.”
Drollinger, a controversial fundamentalist Christian preacher (and former UCLA basketball player), has conducted weekly Bible studies for California legislators for more than a decade, the Sacramento Bee reports. His work is supported financially by a private entity called Capital Ministries, but his weekly Capitol sessions are attended by about a half-dozen lawmakers and are sponsored by Assembly Republican leader Mike Villines. (Villines declined to comment, the newspaper said.)
Drollinger’s ire has been directed at a fellowship group that welcomes legislators from a variety of faith perspectives. In a posting this week on Capitol Ministries’ Web site, Drollinger wrote, “Although they are pleasant men in their personal demeanor, their group is more than disgusting to our Lord and Savior.”
Not surprisingly, Drollinger’s intemperate words sparked response. Sen. Darrell Steinberg (D-Sacramento) denounced Drollinger’s words as “intolerant,” “troubling” and “deplorable.” Another California lawmaker, responding to Drollinger, told the Sacramento Bee that Christianity is not the sole path to God.
Drollinger fired back.
“Far be it from any professing Christian, in the Capitol or elsewhere, to neuter the message of Christ in order to make unbelievers feel comfortable in their sin,” he posted on the Capital Ministries’ Web site. “This is tantamount to putting a terminal patient on a morphine drip – they die slowly, and to hell forever, but feel pretty good about themselves on the way.”
Oh my.