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Charlie Brown has been sent home from a public school district.
Was he misbehaving, disrupting the class---or displaying terrorist tendencies?
No. He was too religious.
Good grief.
The superintendent of schools in Johnson County, Kentucky has censored all references to religion in this year's Christmas celebrations in the school district.
Specifically, the super has censored Charlie Brown---kicked him out of school.
Charlie wasn't misbehaving, he is just too religious.
He didn't used to be too religious, but now he is. And he's still saying the same words he started out saying when he was born on Charles Shultz's sketch pad on October 2, 1950.
Public education has changed---it isn't Charlie.
One school in the district had planned a presentation of "A Charlie Brown Christmas" but Superintendent Thomas Saylor said the school's lawyers have advised him to dispense with Charlie.
Separation of church and state.
Another school in the district has been told to scrub "Silent Night" from their program.
Same reason.
Parents are shocked. Charlie Brown is too religious?
Bill Donohue, President and CEO of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights---the nation's largest Catholic civil rights organization, is beyond shocked. He's outraged. He says, "This is madness."
And he is giving the super a lesson on what is, and what is not constitutional in this regard.
Donohue has written a letter to Superintendent Salyer.
He points out in his letter that the US Supreme Court let stand a 1980 ruling by the US Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circut, "Florey v. Sioux Falls, that conditionally permitted religious themes at Christmas assemblies."
Pursuant to this ruling, the Sioux Falls School District allowed Christmas presentations of a religious nature to be performed as long as they were presented "in a prudent and objective manner and as a traditional part of the culture and religious heritage of the particular holiday."
Donohue says, "This is a reasonable and not very high bar to clear."
His letter to the superintendent reminds him that the school web site says you made this decision "in accordance with federal laws."
"In fact," Donohue says, "there is nothing in federal law that mandates this censorial approach."
"To be sure," he says, "school officials such as Superintendent Salyer are neither required nor forbidden from allowing from allowing assemblies of a religious nature. But if anything, the ruling in Florey v. Sioux Falls empowers them to permit these annual events."
Charlie Brown, in his saga with friends Snoopy, Lucy and Linus, always seems to lose, but he carries on.
He will survive all this madness and insanity, but will our kids?
And will our nation?
Interestingly, Charlie Brown stands much closer to our Founding Fathers than he does to our current public school system.
David Barton has researched the many quotes of our Founding Fathers regarding their high esteem for God and Christianity. This link is very informing and inspiring.
Here's one of many quotes:
John Adams
SIGNER OF THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE; JUDGE; DIPLOMAT; ONE OF TWO SIGNERS OF THE BILL OF RIGHTS; SECOND PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES
The general principles on which the fathers achieved independence were the general principles of Christianity. I will avow that I then believed, and now believe, that those general principles of Christianity are as eternal and immutable as the existence and attributes of God.1
Without religion, this world would be something not fit to be mentioned in polite company: I mean hell.2
The Christian religion is, above all the religions that ever prevailed or existed in ancient or modern times, the religion of wisdom, virtue, equity and humanity.3
Be Vigilant. Be Discerning. Be Prayerful. Be Joyful.