Seven Religious Liberties Every Student Needs to Know About

Religious Freedom, ,

This month Family Research Council published a list of seven religious liberties everyone needs to know that public school students have.

FRC writes,

Censoring of religious expression in schools often comes from teachers and school administrators being unaware of students’ freedoms. However, the U.S. Department of Education has already clarified that students are free to speak about their faith at school. . . .Since 1995, the U.S. Department of Education has issued guidelines clarifying students’ freedom to express their faith. There are seven key liberties every student and educator needs to know.

Family Research Council says those seven rights are:

  1. The right to pray and read the Bible at school.
  2. The right to express faith in class work or homework.
  3. The right to organize prayer groups and religious clubs at school.
  4. The right to express religious belief at school events.
  5. The right to go off campus for religious studies in some states.
  6. The right to express faith at graduation ceremonies.
  7. The right of teachers to organize prayer groups with other teachers.

This is a welcome reminder once again that student’s and teachers do not shed their religious liberties at the schoolhouse doors.

One way we encourage students to exercise these religious liberties is to take part in the annual Bring Your Bible to School Day that Focus on the Family organizes each year. You can learn more about Bring Your Bible to School Day here.

You can download FRC’s printable flyer explaining these seven liberties here.

Photo Credit: Batotman [CC BY 3.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0)], from Wikimedia Commons

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Satanic Temple Holds Protest On Arkansas Capitol Steps

Current Events, ,

In what can best be described as a circus, the Satanic Temple held a protest rally on the steps of the Arkansas Capitol Building yesterday.

The Satanic Temple held the event to protest Arkansas’ monument of the Ten Commandments unveiled earlier this year; the monument celebrates the impact and legacy of the Ten Commandments in American law.

In protest, the group parked a flatbed trailer holding a 7½-foot statue of baphomet — a satanic figure — in front of the Capitol Building. Protesters cheered and shouted expletives as the statue was unveiled.

The group had originally threatened to put the monument on the Capitol grounds, but nothing ever came of the threat, because monuments require legislative approval.

Altogether, we estimate there were somewhere around 100 participants in the satanic rally. An additional 100 – 200 people were also present on the Capitol lawn as part of various counter-protests or as onlookers.

Frankly, there just shouldn’t be anything controversial about honoring the significance of the Ten Commandments.

As we’ve said many times, the Ten Commandments are one of the earliest examples of the rule of law in human history, and they have had a tremendous impact on western civilization. The Magna Carta, the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights are amazing documents, but the Ten Commandments are the great-great-granddaddy of them all.

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