FFRF and Alabama School At Odds
School board members in Jackson County have decided not to ban a man known as the “Bible Man” from holding monthly meetings with elementary school children.
The board took up the matter this week in response to complaints that religious assemblies were being held during the school day. The Wisconsin-based Freedom from Religion Foundation objected to the voluntary school meetings on behalf of some parents.
The board deliberated for an hour, as a standing-room-only crowd of more than 100 people prayed, sang and shared stories of the “Bible Man,” as Horace Turner Jr. is known, The Huntsville Times reported (http://bit.ly/z7PqOc ).
Turner leads assemblies with elementary children to tell stories from the Bible, Superintendent Kenneth Harding said.
“This is totally unacceptable,” said Annie Laurie Gaylor, co-president of the Freedom from Religion Foundation in Madison, Wisc.
She said public schools “are not to be a conduit for missionaries.”
“We cannot put the power of religious interpretation in the hands of the Bible Man, the Quran Man or anyone else,” Gaylor said.
Officials say the meetings have always been voluntary, but Gaylor says courts have said elementary school children can’t discern what is required and what is not.
A state lawmaker says any parent who objects to the Bible Man should consider home-schooling their children.
“We were established to be a godly nation, a Christian nation,” said Alabama Sen. Shadrack McGill, a Republican from the state’s Eighth District. “We need God in government. We need God in the public school. The more we trend away from God, the more we suffer – morally and spiritually.”
