Public School Chaplains

As with any piece of legislation that seeks to collapse the wall of separation between Church and State, attempts at allowing chaplains to provide religious “support services” to students in public schools have manifested in multiple jurisdictions all at once. This is because the claimed authors of these bills are not the authors at all, but rather mindless minions of larger national theocratic interest groups, like the Congressional Prayer Caucus, from whom they receive their marching orders and legislative templates. It all follows an identical pattern that has already played out, as Christian interest groups push for more and more unique accommodations that are presented as broadly “religious” with deference or hostility to none, even as those interest groups have no intention of allowing those accommodations to be shared with another religious identification without challenge. Only when The Satanic Temple feels called to offer a non-indoctrinating alternative to these programs do local journalists feel moved to sound the alarm and move parents to ask why schools should be getting in the business of religious instruction where such matters have been long agreed to be separate and personal.

In Florida, Democrats, either from utter spinelessness or an impressive gullibility, have mostly supported the GOP-proposed bill calling for public school chaplains, claiming, according to the Florida Phoenix, that, “the bill does not force anyone into any religion and that districts and parents have the right to choose whether they want chaplains in their schools. The districts would also have to outline what kind of services the chaplains would provide,” all of which is beside the point and calls into question the competence of the politicians in question. Public schools are for education, not “religious instruction,” and there is no reason a student can not go to a church on Sunday, or reserve religious instruction until after school, as has been the norm for only the entirety of our lives. If any of these politicians need to be corrected of the delusion that no parent or student is likely to perceive the presence of a chaplain as an endorsement from the school district of the chaplains religion, they need only look at After School Satan Clubs.

In 2001, the Supreme Court, ruling in favor of “Good News Clubs” having the “religious freedom” to use school property to indoctrinate children into an evangelical world-view under threat of eternal damnation during after school programs, claimed that even children were unlikely to translate the presence of such after school clubs as an endorsement by the school district of its particular religious views. Clarence Thomas claimed that he did not “believe that such an argument could be reasonably advanced.” And yet, now, every time we submit to hold After School Satan Clubs in districts that host Good News Clubs, we find that before the children even receive the permission slips, the local parents, and even the school boards themselves, having been made aware of our application, are often clearly under the impression that our approval is dependent upon the school district’s endorsement.

And this is why, to us, exercising our equal access to these accommodations is necessary. The appearance of specific endorsement is harmful, especially as our politicians are increasingly as uneducated as the average idiot who fails to pass a test of discernment that Chief Justice Thomas claimed was a low bar for even a small child. When After School Satan Clubs enter school districts that have Good News Clubs, suddenly the policies surrounding after school clubs do become more neutral in some cases. Suddenly, school districts think harder about the limits of advertising, flyering, and distributing permission slips on their bulletin boards and in their classrooms. And, most importantly, we offer an open alternative to children who now find themselves in a culture war battleground created by opportunistic politicians who do not care about the childrens’ education or the potential for religious coercion being introduced in such a wildly inappropriate forum.

In Indiana, where bills are being advanced both for public school chaplains and off-site religious instruction during school days, a dickhead by the name of Joel Penton who operates the Christian LifeWise Bible instruction program argues for students being sent to his classes during schooling hours. According to the Indiana Capital Chronicle, “[w]hen asked why the programming couldn’t take place after school, Penton maintained that many students still need to catch the bus to get home, and others are already involved in after-school extracurriculars.” Yes, grade school children are not able to drive cars, but it has never been the business of schools to accommodate students’ travel needs during the school day. Sunday is typically the Christian day of “religious instruction,” and there is clearly no support for the idea that Christian children are compelled, by religious belief, to receive such instruction in the middle of the weekdays during schooling.

So why do they claim they need to send children to religious classes during the school day? Why do they need chaplains in the schools when Christian priests are notoriously (infamously, even) happy to make time for children during off-hours? The same reason they feel a need to try and erect 10 Commandments monuments on public grounds and insist that a coach needs to pray at the 50-yard line with his high school football team: to advance the notion that we are a Christian nation. 

Each advance in their agenda is but a stepping-stone for the next, and they have no intention of seeing their “religious liberty” shared equally with other religious identifications.