Biblical controversy hits Butler County public school, raising church-state questions | Opinion

One day a little over 50 years ago, I was sitting in class in my public school in Arizona when a couple of men in suits came in and gave all us kids a free miniature copy of the New Testament, Psalms and Proverbs.

The men in suits were members of the Gideons, Protestant and evangelical churchmen whose mission is to distribute as many Bibles and New Testaments as they can. You’ve no doubt seen the fruit of their efforts in hotel-room drawers, hospitals and doctors’ offices

Nobody thought much about it when I was in school, including me, although my family was nonreligious.

I’ve still got my mini Testament, although I can’t say I ever got much use out of it. I didn’t become a Christian myself until age 27, and when I did, I just went out a bought a whole Bible.

Frankly, I thought the distribution of New Testaments in public schools ended years ago.

So I was surprised to learn it was still going on from Katie Roggenbaum, a mother whose three children go to Bluestem Elementary School in the Butler County town of Leon.

“(Wednesday) I got an announcement through the school app from one of my daughter’s teachers — she’s a fifth-grader — that the Gideons would be at the school on the 24th handing out Bibles to the students,” Roggenbaum said.

That afternoon, her daughter brought home a permission slip reading: “If you wish to opt your child out of this offer, please sign this form and return it to your child’s teacher by Tuesday, April 23, 2024.”

That bothered her, even though she and her family are members of Christ Church in Wichita. A big issue for her is that it was presented as an opt-out, which she thought would separate the Christian children from non-Christians in the classroom.

“We are a Christian family, we go to church every Sunday, my kids have Bibles,” she said. “But I did not put my children in public schools to have them be proselytized to. We don’t know what anybody’s religion is in that school and violating another child’s civil rights is absolutely insane to me, that a school district would even entertain this. I believe, based on what I read, that it’s illegal for them to come to the school and be on school grounds, especially during instructional time.”

Is this legal?

The law is actually somewhat muddy when it comes to handing out Bibles in public schools, said Jeffrey Jackson, a constitutional law professor and dean of the Washburn University School of Law.

The Supreme Court has never directly ruled on the Gideons’ activities, so case law has been stitched together from lower-court opinions over many years, he said.

The current state of the law is “If you have Gideons coming into the classrooms to distribute Bibles, that’s pretty easy, not allowed,” Jackson said. “Gideons giving Bibles to teachers (for distribution to students), even worse.”

It has, however, been ruled legal to set up a table at lunchtime and give Bibles to students who voluntarily ask for them. But that case law applies at the high school level, where the students are presumed mature enough to make their own decision, Jackson said.

I was unable to reach Bluestem school Superintendent Joel Lovesee on Friday, but Roggenbaum got word late Thursday that the Bible giveaway has been called off.

She received this announcement from her daughter’s teacher: “Please disregard the permission slip sent home yesterday from The Gideons International. There will not be a new testament Bible offering on April 24, 2024. We apologize for any inconvenience.”

“My mom spoke to the superintendent and he indicated that the school has done this for years at the suggestion of the school board,” Roggenbaum said. “He said after consulting with other districts and the district’s attorney, they decided to cancel the event. He said in years past, the Gideons would just come to the school and place the Bibles in the children’s backpacks without their knowledge.”

Not the first incident

Roggenbaum said it’s not the first time she’s observed efforts at the school to blur the line between church and state.

“Last year, I was the room mom for my son’s school,” she said. “He was a second-grader. And I was doing snowmen for the theme for their winter party. And a mom, who is also a teacher at the high school, came after me, because ‘I was taking Christmas away from her son.’

“I said, ‘I’m not taking Christmas away from your son. You can do whatever you want outside of school, but this is not the place for our religion, in the school.’ ”

But it wasn’t the end of it.

“That person chose to spread rumors about us that we were not Christian, and even told other parents,” Roggenbaum said. “This year, my son was told by another child that he could not be friends with my son because my son’s mom was not Christian. So there is a problem in that district with understanding what belongs in a public school setting and what doesn’t.”

She said she let that go, but filed a complaint with the Freedom From Religion Foundation over the Gideons giveaway.

Annie Laurie Gaylor, co-president of the foundation, said the organization will be following up with a letter to the school district telling them it’s not allowed.

“This has been going on for decades,” she said. “This is a new one, where they’re sending permission slips in an attempt to justify this.”

She said the slips don’t make it legal. “You should never have to opt out from getting religion in your school. It is not the business of schools to distribute Christian Bibles.”

And the message it sends to children of other religions, or who are non-religious, is “they’re wrong and have to be converted, which is really the point of handing out Bibles.”

What’s the effect?

I can’t say I was scarred by the Bible giveaway at my school.

It had no effect on my later decision to become a follower of Jesus, or pursuing my later calling to lay servant ministry, where I fill in preaching for ordained clergy when they’re sick or on vacation.

But America 50-plus years ago was different than America today.

When I was a fifth grader, 90% of Americans identified as Christian. Now it’s 68% and dropping, according to Gallup polling. “No religion” has spiked from 5% in my youth to 22% today.

There was a reason my family didn’t go to church, and it wasn’t because we were secretly Jewish (although that was rumored from time to time).

My mother was raised Catholic and my father, Baptist.

They were married at a time and place where such interdenominational intermingling was very much frowned upon.

Facing withering disapproval from both sides of the Reformation, they decided they didn’t need that noise in their life.

Though that was long ago, their experience has its parallels today.

The steepest decline in the church in America has been since 2000, as conservative branches of Christianity have become more aggressively tied to a political package of divisive social issues — fighting abortion, gay rights and a trumped-up “War on Christmas” pushed by Fox News talking heads, which transformed innocent snowmen from happy symbols of holiday greetings into enemies of the faith.

And they’ll howl like scalded cats that their religious freedom is being infringed when anyone opposes their efforts to “put God back in the schools” by handing out pocket Bibles or trying to insert religious symbols into the holiday party.

But I can’t help but think Christian conservatives would switch sides pretty fast if someone showed up at their children’s elementary school with free copies of the Quran for the kids.