catholicsphere

A senior at Higley High School in Gilbert, AZ tried to give God the credit for the great things that happened over the course of his high school career. But, when he received his yearbook this week, he found the school had removed “God” from his bio page.

“All these great things have happened to me, but it’s all from God,” explained the honors senior in the Arizona Republic. “I don’t want people to be scared to talk about this. I ask other Christians why they never talk about their faith, and they say they feel they can’t do that.

This is the problem that we’re experiencing now. Christians have a faith that calls them to be evangelistic, but their expressions of their faith are being censored. It’s why we must express our faith, especially in the public square.

Seventeenth century English churchman and historian, Thomas Fuller, once wrote:

He does not believe that does not live according to his belief

We find a lot of people these days who say that they believe in God, but it ends up being lip-service. After all, at least 90% of all American say they believe in God. Yet, you wouldn’t know it by looking or listening in their daily lives. In fact, we get all worried that someone will be offended because we believe in God. So, we get a kid who has faith not being allowed to even mention God in his personal bio.

The yearbook’s faculty adviser, Jennifer Wojtulewicz, explained that the staff had not taken out the excerpt to be biased. The yearbook personnel must accommodate the entire student body, so deleted the portion speaking about God. She insisted that his faith was still shown through his page, however.

In addition, Wojtulewicz reported that the yearbook’s two student editors-in-chief had already told Sciubba in advance that they could not include any references to God in the publication.

The fact is … they aren’t really in their rights to make such a distinction. There is no problem with “separation of church and state” — and if they felt there might be, they should have consulted lawyers about that beforehand. This is a personal statement of a student. He should not be told what he can and cannot say. Freedom of expression is allowable under the Constitution of the United States of America. It is the first thing that the founding fathers addressed.

But, now we’ve got people regulating expression; doing the exact thing that the founding fathers sought to protect. In that day, these men were coming from a land where they didn’t have freedom of religion; they had to subscribe to the “state church”. Today, it is becoming just the same. Where we must worship at the “church of the secular”. Where God and faith are not allowed.

[tags]school, education, separation of church and state, news, faith, God, christian, religion, catholicsphere, law, constitution, first amendment, freedom[/tags]