Author: Duncan Mansfield
Publication: Associated Press
Date:
Every year, hundreds of Union County
students take a field trip for the soul. Children are excused from class,
loaded onto school buses with teachers and sent to Christian revival meetings
for three days.
"I am going to ask you a question,"
an evangelical leader recently yelled to a sea of students ready for their
field trip. "If you are glad to be here, say amen!"
With the ardor of a pep rally, the
students shouted back: "AAAA-men!"
Not everyone is so enthusiastic.
Fourteen-year-old India Tracy said
she was harassed and attacked by classmates for nearly three years after
she declined to attend Baptist Pastor Gary Beeler's annual crusade because
of her family's pagan religion.
Her family has filed a federal lawsuit
against Union County schools, claiming the crusade, prayers over the loudspeaker,
a Christmas nativity play, a Bible handout and other proselytizing activities
in the rural school system have become so pervasive they are a threat to
safety and religious liberty.
Union County officials say the system
is neutral when it comes to religious activities, pointing out that the
crusade is voluntary, teachers chaperone on their own time and school buses
are operated by private contractors.
"We do not endorse, promote or prohibit
it," said school spokesman Wayne Goforth.
District officials say the crusade,
now in its sixth year, is like any other field trip, with parental permission
required to let the children attend. After the two-hour meetings for each
of three mornings, the children return to class for the rest of the day.
On the crusade's final day this year, April 30, more than 1,300 of the
school system's 3,000 students attended.
"All local boards of education have
the authority to allow students to voluntarily attend these types of events,"
said Christy Ballard, legal counsel to the Tennessee Department of Education.
But, she added, "it is very clear
in the statute that they can't harass a student or coerce them to participate
... and, of course, they can't be school-sponsored."
Charles Haynes, a senior scholar
at the Freedom Forum's First Amendment Center in Arlington, Va., said school
officials and Christian leaders in Union County need a "crash course on
the meaning of the First Amendment - especially the part that separates
church from state."
Beeler, 63, who lives and preaches
in Union County, said he has been contacted by communities around the country
wanting to set up similar crusades, and sees nothing wrong with children
getting time off from school to attend them.
"The principals, the teachers, the
bus drivers all have told us that they have less behavior problems after
this crusade than they do before. So that tells us the positive effect,"
he said.
India said she was called "Satan
worshipper" and accused of eating babies when it was revealed she was a
pagan. She said she was taunted, found slurs painted over her locker and
was injured when classmates assaulted her and slammed her head into the
locker.
The lawsuit said school officials
took no disciplinary action. In a May 2 legal response, school officials
said they acted appropriately, denied the attacks happened, or said they
were unaware of them.
Paganism is an ancient religious
tradition that embraces kinship with nature, positive morality and the
idea that there is both a female and male side of Deity.
After Christmas break in early 2002,
India said three boys chased her down a hall at Horace Maynard Middle School,
grabbed her by the neck and said, "You better change your religion or we'll
change it for you."
She broke free and fled into the
girls' bathroom. A teacher stopped the boys from following her, the lawsuit
said. "That was pretty much the last straw because she was terrified,"
said India's father, Greg Tracy.
The Tracys took India out of school
on Feb. 26, 2002. A straight-A student, she belonged to the leadership-service
organization Beta Club, chess club, and band. She was the only girl on
the middle school football team.
Now she takes Internet courses at
home and hopes to transfer to a public school in Knoxville, 25 miles away.
"When was it too hard? I don't know,"
India said. "On a couple of occasions it was too hard and then it got easier
and then it started getting bad again and I would come home bawling my
eyes out."
