A Great Disappointment from Ohio

On Tuesday, the Ohio Supreme Court affirmed the lower courts in upholding the Mount Vernon City School District's termination of 8th-grade science teacher John Freshwater. (If you missed the background of my involvement with this case, click here and here.)

A "loss" was the expected result, at least before the oral arguments last February. But the great disappointment is that the Ohio Supreme Court disposed of the case without ruling on its core, substantive constitutional issues--whether or not Mr. Freshwater "injected his personal religious beliefs into the classroom" by allowing his students to critically examine the evidence for and against evolution theories. Instead, the Court decided the case based solely on the narrow, subsidiary issue of "insubordination."

The insubordination allegation stems from a principal's order for Mr. Freshwater to remove certain religious items from his classroom, including some book covers that listed the Ten Commandments, some posters quoting from Proverbs and Confucious, and, most importantly, Mr. Freshwater's personal Bible, which he often read quietly during his own free time, when students were not in the classroom.

Mr. Freshwater responded to the order by removing everything mentioned except for his personal Bible (which he purposefully refused to remove) and a poster behind his desk which depicted President George W. Bush and Colin Powell in the Cabinet Room with bowed heads (which he was never instructed to remove). Mr. Freshwater had also checked out two school library books--an Oxford Bible and Jesus of Nazareth, which investigators found strewn among papers, boxes, and films on a table in his personal work area.

Interestingly enough, the Ohio Supreme Court found that the order for Mr. Freshwater to remove his personal Bible from his desk was a violation of Mr. Freshwater's Free Exercise rights under the First Amendment (this part is a big win!). But the presence of the George Bush poster--which, incidentally, he had received from the school office and was hanging in at least 4 other classrooms at the time--and the religious school library books constituted "insubordination."

The decision was 4-3, and two of the three dissenting Justices wrote scathing dissents. Justice Pfeifer may have summed it up best:

"John Freshwater is not today’s big loser, because he fought to prove that he actually followed the rules, that he taught well, and that over a lifetime of dedication to the students in his classrooms he made a positive contribution to their lives. That proof is uncontroverted. In that most important measure of public education, John Freshwater is a winner and his final departure is a loss to the Mount Vernon schools."

I am hard at work now on a "Motion for Reconsideration." Please join me and many others in praying that perhaps one Justice, who may have been on the fence, will perceive the errors that I will be pointing out and choose to give the case one last look.

I am so grateful that God is a God of Justice, and that one day all things will be set right.

If you would like to read the majority and dissenting opinions, you can find them here.

Truth is Not a Fragile Thing

Tonight in Bridgewater, conservative and liberal elements of my community will gather for an exercise in disciplined listening. We will hear two different pastoral perspectives on "The Church and Same-Sex Marriage." This "encounter" is the first of two on this topic; the next one, tentatively scheduled for next spring, will feature two policy experts discussing public policy considerations surrounding same-sex marriage.

I hope that we can pack the house tonight with folks who are willing to listen in good faith to both positions, and to consider their respective merits and shortcomings.

I say this despite the fact that I have a definite belief as to which position is "true," "good," and "beautiful." I welcome the discussion and the challenge it poses to my worldview, because Truth is not a fragile thing.

I submit that anyone who is committed to the existence of absolute Truth, absolute Values, should welcome every opportunity to discuss their existence. For if they do exist, they cannot ultimately be disproven, nor will their existence be diminished by any person's refusal or failure to acknowledge them. On the other hand, if they do exist, every opportunity to discuss their existence is an opportunity to allow others to see them.

In The Abolition of Man, C.S. Lewis argues that teachers do their students--and, by extension, society at large--a great disservice when they set out to "debunk" the emotion or dismiss its importance. He writes, "For every one pupil who needs to be guarded from a weak excess of sensibility there are three who need to be awakened from the slumber of cold vulgarity. The task of the modern educator is not to cut down jungles but to irrigate deserts. The right defense against false sentiments is to inculcate just sentiments. By starving the sensibility of our pupils we only make them easier prey to the propagandist when he comes. For famished nature will be avenged and a hard heart is no infallible protection against a soft head."

In the same way, I think "Christian conservatives" do a great disservice to society when they dismiss liberal, relativist worldviews with an arrogant shaking of the head, as if those who held such worldvivews were a lost cause, not worth the time and effort of engagement. First of all, "we" don't know everything, and not everything is absolute. But beyond that, we serve as poor spokespersons for our own worldview when we walk away from the table. When we behave as if Truth is no better than a spoonful of canned peas, having no real flavor or textural value, but simply demanding digestion as a matter of lukewarm nutritional fact, I wonder if we, ourselves, really understand Truth so well as we think.

Truth is not a fragile thing, nor is it tasteless, nor dependent upon our blind, unthinking, submissive digestion. It is the stuff that both cuts down jungles and irrigates deserts. It is robust, vigorous and vibrant. It is so whether we know it or not, whether we like it or not. It is too great for us to fully or perfectly comprehend and verbalize, and yet enough of it has been revealed--and enough is innately known--to attract our devotion and pursuit.

Let us, who believe that Truth IS, welcome those to the table who believe that it is not. Let us go to THEIR table. Let us hear their best explanations and struggle over them. We may all walk back to our same "corners" in the end, but we will walk back wiser, perhaps questioning some of our assumptions while our brethren question some of theirs. But Truth will shine on, unchanged and unsoiled, and those who truly seek it will find it.

Be Part of the Solution

It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.

--Theodore Roosevelt

Everyone I know has an opinion about politics and what direction our government should take. Yet voter turnout for tomorrow is expected to be dismal--something like 30%.

Don't be just another critic. Go out and vote.