In August, the Liberty Institute and the Family Research Council released a joint report entitled “The Survey on Religious Hostility in America” which purported to be a “collection of more than 600 cases, detailing religious bigotry throughout America” … but, for some reason, the incident they love to cite more than any other is a nearly twenty year old myth about an elementary school student who was supposedly yanked out of his seat and yelled at simply for praying before eating his lunch in the school cafeteria.
In reality, the student was disciplined for fighting in the lunch room in 1994 but the Religious Right continues to perpetuate this lie to this day. In fact, David Barton cites it repeatedly despite the fact that it is demonstrably false, and did so again today on “WallBuilders Live,” as did the Liberty Institute’s Kelly Shackelford, who was on the program to promote the report:
Barton: What does it say to that elementary kid who got jerked out of his seat and hauled to the principle’s office in front of everybody else and told don’t you ever pray over your lunch again, period? What kind of impression is that giving? Jesus said “suffer the little children to come unto me” and we’re doing our best to say “absolutely no way, absolutely not will we ever allow any kid to get to you” … this is crazy stuff.
Shackelford: It’s all the way from a ten-year old boy who was quote “caught” praying over his meal in the lunch cafeteria who was lifted out of his chair and carried to the principle’s office where he was told to never do that again while he was at school.
Even though this incident never actually happened, Barton sees it as proof that we at PFAW and other groups have created a “toxic” and “hostile” environment in which public officials are pressured into persecuting Christians:
Barton: And I really blame this climate on the secular groups, the Freedom From Religion Foundation, the Americans United, the People For the American Way, the Military Freedom Foundation, all these guys who have so made the climate so toxic that if you share your faith, public officials feel like they have to come down on you with both feet otherwise they’ll get sued and end up in court and have to spend millions of dollars defending something religions. And so these guys have created such a hostility in the public that now public officials and school officials and city council officials and those who run senior’s centers and everything else are so scared to death of seeing faith that if they see it, they feel like they have to jump on it with both feet and both hands and bring out the hammers and run over you with a car and pull out a chainsaw and cut you to pieces. They over-react and I really blame a lot of those organizations.
