Here’s a happy ending to a controversial story.

Last week, I posted about how atheist Robert Nickelson tried to give a $4,000 scholarship to a student at Winters High School in California. The winner would be the student who wrote the best essay on the topic of Humanism or church/state separation — meaning it was open to everyone, even religious students — but the school refused to publicize it. It was only when he threatened to bring it up to the district’s board of trustees that the school let students know about the opportunity.

Superintendent Todd Cutler was one of the people who didn’t want to publicize the scholarship in part because he didn’t like that Nickelson had arranged with a local newspaper to publish the winning essay.

Well, a student named Sarah Hagy won the scholarship, and the Winters Express just published her piece.

The day I told my father I didn’t want to go to church anymore, I may as well have turned into Satan himself. For hours, I tried to explain how I do not agree with the church’s teachings, but he wasn’t budging. I was just another “brainwashed liberal” that gathered all my ideologies from the internet. … Ultimately, I found that there a superficial mantra of positivity in church that I could just not get over. Having a God that can take away depression and lack of motivation at the snap of his fingers sounds awesome, but there’s also Prozac and Zoloft that can do the job.

Check it out for yourself and you’ll see why Nickelson told me her essay was “worth every dime to me.”

(Image via Shutterstock)

