Bible Classes Can Remain, Says Virginia School Board
by Jim Brown and Jody Brown
February 18, 2005
(AgapePress) - After holding lengthy public debate on the matter, a school board in rural Virginia has decided to continue offering Bible classes in the district.The six-member Staunton School Board voted 5-1 in favor of retaining Weekday Religious Education (WRE) in schools. The program, under which parents give written permission for their child to leave the school campus for non-denominational religious education, has been in existence in Staunton for more than 50 years. However some parents in the district, with aid from the American Civil Liberties Union, have assailed the program, arguing it has no place in public schools.
Jack Hinton heads a group affiliated with the Virginia Council of Churches, which funds and administers the Bible classes. Hinton says opponents of WRE "fallaciously" claimed the program would negatively affect learning standards required under President Bush's No Child Left Behind Act. He explains those opponents changed their tune when proponents of the program began to move.
"Shooting down the opponents' argument and the threat of a lawsuit carried all the way possibly to the Supreme Court -- and we were prepared [to do that] -- gave pause to the school board," Hinton says, "and they opted wisely not to pursue it any further."
According to The Rutherford Institute, a non-profit civil liberties group in Charlottesville, Virginia, the school board may have been in trouble had they chosen otherwise. John Whitehead, the Institute's president, says programs such as WRE are "wholly consistent" with the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution and the religious heritage of the nation.
"[F]ar from being illegal," Whitehead stated earlier this month, "Stauton's [WRE] program is in the best tradition of cooperation between the state institutions and the people represented by those institutions." And any claims the program is constitutionally suspect, he added, "must be rejected."
There may have been another factor behind the board's decision, according to Hinton. He contends the board may have been influenced by a high-profile Christian attorney, former Paula Jones attorney Gil Davis, who lobbied on behalf of WRE proponents.
"The very presence of [Davis] and the threat of a lawsuit based on First Amendment rights, and [the opposition's hostility] to religious freedom and the exercise of it, I think turned the tide," he says.
Hinton says 95 percent of eligible students in grades 1 through 3 have participated in the WRE program, which is supported by 85 percent of the Staunton community. A neighboring school board in Harrisonburg, Virginia, voted last summer to dump Weekday Religious Education classes.
