A high school pre-AP Biology teacher in Kentucky has been accused of promoting Christianity in the classroom, and you don’t have to take my word for it, because there’s video evidence.

Where there are apparently multiple instances of this happening, one particular incident was caught on tape. It began when the teacher showed this wordless one-minute video of the M51 Whirlpool Galaxy in which, from a distance, it appears as if there’s a cross at the center of it. (It’s nothing of the sort.)

Then, to hammer the point home, the same teacher showed students a video of Pastor Louie Giglio explaining that the image is somehow proof of “Jesus everywhere.” (Giglio is the same science-ignorant Christian who claimed that the structure of a laminin molecule also showed God’s existence.)

And if you think there’s no way a teacher would be dumb enough to show this to students, a girl in the class recorded the entire thing:

The girl’s mother gave even more context to the situation on the Blasphemy in the Bluegrass podcast. Another student apparently ratted out her daughter to the teacher, saying she had recorded that particular lesson. The teacher asked the girl to delete the video. She said she would. She didn’t. And that’s why we have the recording you see above.

The same girl told her vice principal about it earlier this week… and that led to him fighting over the phone with her father about how the girl wasn’t allowed to record in the classroom. (The VP didn’t address the proselytizing.) Principal Matt Mason was of little help, too.

Now the Freedom From Religion Foundation has written a letter to Superintendent Matt Robbins, who oversees Daviess County High School. The specific names of the people involved have been redacted in the previous link at the request of the family. FFRF says this is not the only example of the same teacher promoting Christianity in the classroom; in fact, the same teacher shows videos of “church sermons” in class.

Ms. [redacted]’s actions constitute an egregious violation of the First Amendment. We write to request that Ms. [redacted] be formally reprimanded for her conduct, and that the District provide adequate assurances that no [Daviess County] Public Schools teachers will be permitted to use their classroom to proselytize other peoples’ children.

For now, according to the girl’s mother, the administrators at the school say they’ve begun an investigation — though who knows what that entails — and the girl has been moved to a different biology class during the same period.

What we don’t know is what the District will do about this teacher. There’s absolutely no room in a public school to promote Christianity — certainly not in a science class, and certainly not with the sort of bullshit theology that people like Giglio use to “prove” God is everywhere.

It’s bad enough when he does it in church. For a teacher to spread his Christian nonsense is flat-out illegal.

