It’s in Mississippi, of course, perhaps America’s most benighted state. Although the news is a bit late (this was reported three weeks ago), it’s timely in representing the never-flagging forces of religious indoctrination in my country:

From The Raw Story:

A high school in central Mississippi allegedly forced students to watch a Christian video and listen to church officials preach about Jesus Christ. The American Humanist Association’s [AHA] legal center filed a lawsuit against Northwest Rankin High School in Flowood on Wednesday, accusing the school of violating the student’s First Amendment rights. The school has held at least three mandatory assemblies about finding hope in Jesus Christ this month, according to the lawsuit. The assemblies showed a video laced with Christian messages about overcoming personal hardships through Jesus Christ and were allegedly led by local church officials. “See, before Jesus came, innocent blood had to be shed for our sins,” one of the church officials allegedly told the students. “There had to be an animal that was sacrificed toatone for our sin. There had to be innocent blood. So Jesus came and he was the innocent blood because he lived a perfect life. He was that innocent blood. See the last few years of Jesus’ life he traveled from region to region and country to country and he had 12 disciples that followed him everywhere. And he talked about the hope he was bringing.” The assemblies concluded with a prayer and teachers blocked the exits to prevent students from leaving, the lawsuit claimed. A disillusioned student videotaped one of the assemblies.

The Christian News (whose story is called, humorously, “Humanists fuming over high school assembly offering hope in Christ to troubled teens” gives a bit more information (by the way, Jews, nonbelievers, and even Christians who support the Constitution should be fuming, too):

According to reports, on April 9th, a representative of Pinelake Baptist Church participated in a student-organized assembly that included a video dealing with teen problems, such as premarital sex, drugs, cutting, suicide and other issues. The two individuals featured in the film explained that they were able to overcome their struggles through the power of Jesus Christ. The presenter also spoke to students about the hope that is found in Christ, and led students in prayer.

That, of course, clearly violates the First Amendment, for the assemblies were held during school hours and were mandatory for the students. Given that, who organizes the assembly is irrelevant. (The school disagrees that it was mandatory.) A voluntary student-promoted presentation after school hours would, I think, have been legal.

The Appignani Humanist Legal Center in Washington, D.C., a branch of the the American Humanist Association, nonetheless sent a letter to school officials, rebuking them for permitting the event. “This practice is unquestionably a serious violation of the separation of church and state required by the Constitution,” the letter stated. “Pursuant to Supreme Court precedent, the school’s sponsoring of and affiliation with, as well as endorsement of, Christianity through this event was unconstitutional.” “It is sufficient that the presentation was school-sponsored and held on school grounds during class-time,” it continued. “The fact that this event was mandatory, and was promoted by the school principal only compounded the Establishment Clause violation.” The Center then demanded that all events of similar nature be terminated, insinuating that a lawsuit could be filed against the school if it refuses to act. “The event promoted by this school was conducted during class-time and was mandated by the principal. It has hard to imagine a more blatant violation of the Establishment Clause than the one complained of herein,” it stated.

Over at The Friendly Atheist, Hemant Mehta has posted part of a transcript from one assembly; the link to the lawsuit filed by the AHA is here. Read it only if you can tolerate stuff like this:

We are here today to tell you where we find our hope. We find our hope in Jesus Christ. As I say that I know some of you go, ‘Yeah I know who Jesus is and I’m not really… I’m not about that life.’ And we know it is not cool for us to stand up here and tell you that we follow Jesus. We understand that. But that’s okay. Because we care about you so much that there is no way that we could graduate from high school and have a hope that we believe is for our eternity and not share it with you guys. How selfish of us would that be. That we know there is a life changing hope out there and we not share it with you.

The heartening thing is that one of the plaintiffs is a female student—a 16-year-old junior, and clearly a very brave one. She’s identified in the lawsuit as “M.B., a minor by and through her next friend, Alexis Smith” (Smith, 18, is a member of the AHA). You can imagine what ostracism M. B. will experience should her name go public. Do we have another Jessica Alquist here?

In other related news, I haven’t forgotten about the execrable incursion of Christian teaching into a science class at Ball State University in Indiana. (Ball State is a public university, which makes it an arm of the U.S. government). Although both P. Z. Myers and Larry Moran have weighed in, arguing that, in the name of academic freedom, a science teacher should be able to tell his students whatever he wants in a science class, I disagree. To quote Larry, “I defend the right of a tenured professor to teach whatever he/she believes to be true no matter how stupid it seems to the rest of us.” (Of course both Myers and Moran deplore shoving Christianity down students’ throats in a science class, but hey, that’s academic freedom!).

Well, I think lawyers know the law better than do professors, and Constitutional lawyers disagree with the “right” of college professors at state universities to teach religion in science class. We’ll have more about that soon.

h/t: Barry