Religious Freedom At Stake
April 29, 2005
I believe one great natural resource is our children, to be nurtured and developed by our schools. After reading statements by Kathy Martin, one of three Kansas Board of Education members, I am seriously worried. The purpose of education is to create open minds, yet the mind of Ms. Martin is demonstrably fixed.
I refute that this is a Christian nation. Not yet, it isn't, in spite of the fact that this president wishes to take us there. The correct phrase is Judeo-Christian and it refers to a framework of our system, in part. More important is the fact that our country was founded on religious freedom for all, after reverberating from the lack of it. If Iraq teaches us anything, it should be how state-sponsored religion tears at the fabric of nations. We are there, supposedly, to liberate them from oppression and dominance of the few over the many, yet here we are in America facing the self-righteous moral dictates of some over us all.
This is no small issue. When I hear the words, "It's the Christian thing to do," it is spoken with the absolute conviction that only Christians know what the right thing to do is, and more, it implies everyone else is too heathen, or stupid, to know right from wrong. That thinking is a formula for disaster, and it is alive and well in the leadership of our schools. Whatever your religion, you too should be worried.
Alan P. Miller,
Baldwin, KS