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Public schools in St. Johns County, Florida have been infiltrated by Christianist radicals from the top of the organization down, leaving the community in an uproar and the school district in federal court.
The trouble started when several teachers at Webster Elementary School in St. Augustine decided this little ditty, “In God We Still Trust” by the country music group Diamond Rio, should be sung by third graders in their annual assembly at the end of the year.
Parents of several children objected to the song, which calls for an end to separation of church and state through a Christian uprising.
Now there are those among us
Who want to push him out
And erase his name from everything
This country’s all about
From the schoolhouse to the courthouse
They’re silencing his word
Now it’s time for all believers
To make our voices heard
The parents were told their children didn’t have to sing this song. There’s just one little catch. If they chose to abstain they would be barred from participation in the entire program. Cue up the first lawsuit.
Only upon being informed the suit was filed did the school district pull the song from the program. But not without whining in a press release first.
“This is obviously someone again using the school system (as well as taxpayers’ money to defend the lawsuit) for their own personal agenda,” [said Superintendent Joseph Joyner]. “Unfortunately, this is not unusual and distracts us from our mission.”
The nature of Joyner’s “mission” is the issue. The superintendent and other county notables, including the sheriff, tax collector, and members of the state’s attorneys office, belong to the steering committee of a group called “The Marketplace,” whose flagrant goal is to bring Jesus into the office.
The purpose of The Marketplace is to help men and women fulfill their call right in their own place of work. To realize that their workplace IS their ministry…
Where do the majority of people spend the majority of time interacting with the majority of unsaved people? …it is where most people spend 60-70% of their waking hours – the workplace. If we are going to see our society changed for Jesus Christ we will have to change the way we equip believers to live out their faith where they spend a majority of their time.
If you thought there was a “wait, there’s more” coming, you’re right.
Even after a judge ruled in a preliminary injunction that the school had violated the First Amendment rights of the students and parents, the teachers and administrators still didn’t get it. U.S. District Judge Harvey E. Schlesinger broke it down as clearly as he could.
“In God We Still Trust” is a “song overtly espousing a specific religious viewpoint and attacking of those who do not share in the same belief,” Schlesinger wrote in a 24-page decision…
Schlesinger also wrote that, as third-graders, the younger plaintiffs are “more easily influenced by their teachers” and “extremely sensitive to signs of disapproval and disappointment from the same teachers and their classmates.”
To that end, the defense — which includes the school district, Webster Principal George Leidigh and the two teachers in charge of the program, Dawn Caronna and Debbie Moore — “ostracized the objecting students from their classmates and effectively penalized them for exercising their constitutional right to object,” the judge ruled.
O.K., these are presumably intelligent people, since they graduated from college and know how to read and write. And the judge explained the problem in terms most people could grasp. So here’s the song the teachers chose to replace the first one.
I couldn’t find much background on “Chatter with the Angels” except that the sheet music is available at Wal-mart for both children’s choirs and handbells. I also noticed all the videos of it on YouTube show it being performed by white children, even though it has a gospel vibe, in a Jim Jones flying saucer cult suicide kind of way.
(Chatter with the Angels)
Soon in the morning
(Chatter with the Angels)
In that land!
(Chatter with the Angels)
Soon in the Morning
(Chatter with the Angels)
Join that Band!
I hope to join that band and
Chatter with the Angels
All day long!
Needless to say, another injunction is in the works.
On Tuesday attorneys Bill Sheppard and Gray Thomas sought another preliminary injunction for a second tune also being taught to third-graders at Webster. They’re asking the judge to order the school to stop having the pupils sing the song until the judge can decided if they should be prohibited from learning it in school…
St. Johns County Superintendent of Schools Joseph Joyner
This injunction request named the school board, Joyner, the principal and three teachers, including the music teacher…
The suit claims directing the students to rehearse or perform the “Chatter” song constitutes “retaliation against Plaintiffs for their having instituted” the case for “In God We Trust.”
As might be expected in a town founded by Christian missionaries in the 1500s, the school district found a lot of sympathy in the first go-round. Many Christian tea bagger types added their “go get ‘ems” on comment pages of news reports. This time, it seems the tide has turned. It is now the school district being accused of wasting scarce education dollars on frivolous lawsuits, as the ease with which this one could have been avoided is plain.
The suit itself has yet to come to trial. My own hope is that one outcome will be that the employees of the superintendent, sheriff’s office, county government, etc. whose leaders belong to this Marketplace group will come forward with their own class action suit to get these bozos to leave their bibles at home.
If you are moved to do so, you could send an email to Superintendent Joseph Joyner at joynerj@stjohns.k12.fl.us. I’m sure he’d welcome your thoughts on who is really wasting taxpayer dollars.
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Reading this reminds me of an incident when my son was in elementary school. It was a few months after 9/11, and his teacher and teacher’s aide assembled the children to attention, and with the aide standing in front of the class, they started singing and ordered the children to sing along with “My Country Tis of Thee”, only they substituted “He is Our King” for Let Freedom Ring” referring to GWB. At the end of the song, the aide let the flag touch the floor, and one of the more impish boys in the class said, “You have to burn that flag now since it touched the ground,” and the aide ran to the janitor’s closet and came back with some flammable cleaning fluid and was about to light the flag on fire until the teacher stopped her. I have repeated this story here exactly as my son related it to me.
Don’t forget to e-mail and cc. the head of the FL Dept. of Education at Commissioner@fldoe.org
They love to hear that schools are more interested in making students sing about god than that silly No Child Left Behind thing.
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As a music teacher I have no problem with some religiously oriented music used in context, especially spirituals. I’ve done many spirituals in the past and will continue to do them as they are examples of peoples’ hopes and aspirations especially in a time when they had very little hope and I am definitely an irreligious person. Many of them were not only used in a “religious” sense but as “code” songs in the days of the Underground Railroad and as such they are historically significant. BTW “Chatter With the Angels” is a traditional Spiritual that can be found in some secular K-5 music texts and it’s unfair to put it in the same bag as that Diamond Rio song. I will not force a child to sing a song that is against his or her beliefs and at my programs have allowed children to participate but to come in late or leave early if they or their parents objected to some material. The Supreme Court decisions, though, have upheld the right to use Religious Music in programs as long as it is not used to the exclusion of other music or to proselytize. For example, the old christmas concert is now a winter holiday concert and other traditions are celebrated, but if I were to do a whole concert of just carols that would be a problem in a public school setting. That decision also stated that almost all of the great music of the past was religiously oriented and if you cut it all you would be cutting out a large body of awesome music. There is, however, no comparison to any part of a Mozart Mass and that nonsense by Diamond Rio . If you would like more info you could probably get it from the local supervisor of music ed in your district provided that the district wasn’t totally Bible Belt.
For a second i thought the chatter with angles was a “death with dignity” statement. Oh well. (A religion where there is nirvana after death but you cant die no matter how long and much you suffer, %@$#*^!).
What a beautifully written piece. The St. Augustine Record & Florida Times Union (Johns & Duval County newspapers ) neglected to print any negative details on Joyner. They apparently are spineless and must be owned in some way by this group. Why else show any allegience to them by omitting facts in their articles? Way to go Trish !!