School administrators have to worry about a lot of things, including drugs or weapons kids might bring to school, but what concerns the Wisconsin-based Freedom from Religion Foundation (FFRF) is the recent distribution of Bibles to fifth-grade students in multiple school districts in Oklahoma. In an interesting twist, the FFRF found it relevant that one of the Gideons placing the Bibles —James Faught — is the son of a Republican state representative.
Apparently the FFRF fears that the father-son connection is added proof that Oklahoma is in the process of “establishing” an official religion. State Representative George Faught, Jamison’s father, did tell the Oklahoman newspaper that he supported his son’s distribution of Bibles to school children.
When contacted by New American, Jamison Faught said, “We don’t force Bibles on anybody. We simply ask if anyone would like them,” and then anyone raising his hand gets one. “It is all voluntary,” Faught said.
Someone spotted a post on the younger Faught’s Facebook page, in which he commented, “Last several years, we’ve been able to do it at every school in Mcintosh, Okmulgee, and Okfuskee counties except one or two,” adding that the Checotah principal even helped the Gideons in the distribution. Faught’s announcement on Facebook that he had spent his morning with other Gideons in distributing Bibles in Checotah, Eufaula, and Stidham was passed onto the watchdogs at the Freedom of Religion Foundation. They reacted immediately.
“It is unconstitutional,” insisted Andrew Seidel, an attorney for FFRF. Apparently Seidel is convinced that James Madison had the prevention of Bible distribution to schoolchildren in mind when he penned the First Amendment, which actually applied to the U.S. Congress (“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion…”), though much later the federal judiciary has applied the First Amendment to any governmental entity including local public schools based on its interpretation of the 14th Amendment. FFRF sent complaint letters to 26 schools in Oklahoma.
FFRF not only wants to keep Bibles out of the hands of elementary schoolchildren, it also favors the “right to choose contraception, sterilization and abortion,” arguing that those who support these causes have always been “free thinkers” like those at FFRF. “Free thinker” is a term generally used as a synonym with atheism. Among the “accomplishments” the group lists on its website are winning a federal lawsuit to overturn a law that declared Good Friday a state holiday, getting commencement prayers stopped at some colleges, and even halting religious postal cancellations.
But FFRF does have its heroes. A photograph of Charles Darwin, the father of the evolutionary theory of human origins, is prominently displayed on its website.
Recently, the FFRF heard that a kindergarten student in the Whitefield County school district of Georgia was told by a teacher that Christmas was “Jesus’ birthday.” The group won another “victory” when it convinced the school district to chastize the teacher who so informed the impressionable child of what Christmas was actually about.
Seidel, a lawyer for the group, said that if any school district attempts to get Bibles distributed by having a day when people can pass out any type of literature they want, then his group would be there to pass out atheist literature. Not only that, Seidel added that he would invite Satanists to come and distribute their literature as well. After all, school children need to be informed about the supposed merits of Satanism.
In contrast, the Gideons International, the group that the Faughts are part of, has been providing Bibles and New Testaments for decades to hotels, schools, colleges, prisons and jails, hospitals, and medical offices. In its history, the Gideons, a nondenominational Christian organization consisting of Christian business men and professionals and their wives, has placed 1.9 billion copies of the Scriptures.
The Freedom From Religion Foundation claims the U.S. Constitution is a “completely godless document.” While it is true that the Constitution did not establish a religion, and even prohibits any “religious Test … as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States,” to call it “completely godless” is certainly inaccurate. The delegates at the convention who adopted the Constitution wrote that it was adopted on the 17th day of September, “in the year of our Lord, seventeen hundred and eighty-seven.” This is a clear reference to Jesus Christ, whom most of the men at the convention regarded as the Second Person of the Trinity. Also, the Constitution stipulates that a president has 10 days to either sign or veto legislation, Sundays excepted. While this certainly did not make Sundays a required day of worship, it was clearly a recognition that the Christian day of worship, Sunday, was not considered a regular work day for the president.
Not only that, but the purpose behind the new government that the Founding Fathers created by writing the Constitution can be better understood when viewed in the context of an earlier founding document, the Declaration of Independence, which boldly declared that “all men … are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights,” and that, “to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men.”
Jamison’s father, George Faught, told the Oklahoman, the Freedom from Religion Foundation “uses scare tactics.” In many of these types of cases, school districts do not want to spend the money necessary to defend themselves against some well-funded atheist group, and simply buckle when threatened with a lawsuit. This tactic enables such groups to bully school administrators and school boards into taking hostile attitudes toward religion in general, and Christianity in particular.
