After event at Mansfield high school, questions arise about separation of church & state
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When he learned that his son had been forced to attend a religious meeting at his high school, Jon Luna immediately went to the school to take him home for the day.
His son had received an email from a Mansfield Lake Ridge teacher saying that his class was to attend a meeting of the Fellowship of Christian Athletes. The student recorded audio of a pastor leading students in prayer and asking if they accepted Jesus.
His son, who is not Christian, was confused about what was happening and why he was told to be there, Luna said.
A spokesperson for the school district told the Star-Telegram that it reviewed the communication the students were sent, and they did not include the words “mandatory” or “required.”
“Participation in FCA is a voluntary activity for Lake Ridge students who choose to attend,” the district said in an emailed statement. “The opportunity to attend FCA during advisory is a recent scheduling change at the campus. Going forward, the teacher will ensure that students understand their attendance at such a meeting is entirely optional, and alternatives will be made clear.”
Still, his son was told to go to the assembly, and he did not feel as though he was free to leave, despite his discomfort with the situation, Luna said.
He also questioned why a person who to all appearances was a Christian pastor was allowed to give what sounded like a sermon to students on a public high school campus.
The district spokesperson said that the person leading the event was “an adult with FCA,” but did not specify who it was or if he was an ordained minister.
The event obviously prompts questions of legality and the issue of the separation of church and state. What kinds of religious activities are allowed on public school campuses? Are pastors allowed to lead students in prayer and ask them to accept Jesus on school property?
The Establishment Clause vs. the Free Exercise Clause
The separation of church and state is not explicitly codified in U.S. law. Proponents base their belief in what Thomas Jefferson called a “wall of separation” between church and state stipulated by the first 10 words in the Bill of Rights.
“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion,” begins the First Amendment. Known as the Establishment Clause, it is the legal basis for prohibiting the government from establishing a religion.
It is immediately followed by what is known as the Free Exercise Clause — “or prohibiting the free exercise thereof” — and the two often come into conflict in debates over the separation of church and state.
So while students have the right to voluntarily organize and gather for FCA and other religious activities on campus, teachers or administrators forcing them to do so violates their constitutional right to freedom from government-sanctioned religion, according to Hirsh Joshi, a legal fellow with the Freedom From Religion Foundation, a nonprofit organization that works to promote and protect the separation of church and state.
The event at Lake Ridge High School presents “huge concerns” of legality, Joshi said, calling it “a pretty textbook church-state violation under the Establishment Clause.”
“You just cannot force someone to attend any house of worship or including any point of worship,” he said, adding that the event appears to have closely resembled a worship service or Sunday school class.
“This person seemed to have been delivering the sermons, and the student didn’t really have a choice in the matter as to whether to receive it or not. They were told they have to be there. In terms of legality, there is a violation here.”
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The FCA said in a statement that all its activities are voluntary and all are invited to attend.
“For more than 70 years, the Fellowship of Christian Athletes has held steadfast to the ideal that every athlete has the right to choose or decline to participate in religious activities and express their faith according to their individual convictions,” the organization said.
Founded in 1954 as an organization by which athletes could express their Christian faith, the FCA now has a presence in 115 countries.
Issues of such an event being mandatory aside, bringing a pastor on campus to lead students in prayer and ask them to accept Jesus also undermines the wall of separation between church and state, Joshi said.
“For that type of thing to be permitted, several additional safeguards need to be followed,” he said. “For instance, religious clubs have to be student-ran and student-orchestrated. They also have to be during free periods where instruction is not expected. Even at a basic level: permission slips need to be signed by parents.”
The broader context of church-state issues in Texas public schools
Luna questioned whether non-Christian religions would have been given such freedom of expression on his son’s campus.
“There’s plenty of Muslims that go to my kid’s high school, but none of them are carrying their prayer rugs because … it would be an outrage,” he said.
The concern is also top of mind for academic researchers who focus on the issue of religion in schools.
Independent of the teacher’s motives for telling students to attend the meeting, the event “underscores the need for public schools to refrain from endorsing or promoting any particular religion,” said David Brockman, nonresident scholar for the Baker Institute’s Religion and Public Policy Program at Rice University.
This is “not only because such behavior is unconstitutional, but also because it turns students and parents of other faiths or no faith into outsiders in their own public schools,” he said.
Brockman put the Lake Ridge FCA meeting in the broader context of “recent moves by Texas lawmakers to inject Christianity and the Bible into public education.”
He pointed to a Senate bill in the 2023 Texas legislature that proposed requiring the Ten Commandments be posted in classrooms and what he called a “Bible-infused” elementary reading curriculum \under consideration by the State Board of Education.
Citing a policy brief he published with the Baker Institute in September, Brockman said, “Education policy must address the need for students to access accurate and balanced information about various major religious traditions that they will encounter in an increasingly diverse society.”
Joshi, of the Freedom from Religion Foundation, mentioned a case in Tennessee in which an “After School Satan Club” sponsored by the Satanic Temple was met with “over hostility” by the school district and county school board, according to a lawsuit filed by the Satanic Temple.